Online Promotion for Your Church
Methodist Communications

When you launch a Web presence for your church or organization’s Web ministry, you will want to have a plan for communicating or marketing it in the offline world so people can visit you in the online world. Here are a few easy ways to promote your church’s Web presence:

• Put your church or organization’s physical address on all websites or other Web presences so people in the online world can find you in the offline world.

• Put your Web address on all printed materials produced by your church or organization. This includes newsletters, bulletins, letterhead, business cards, outdoor signs, advertisements in newspapers, the yellow pages, etc., and in the signature block of your email messages.

• If your church has more than one Web presence (and all U.S. churches do with Find-A-Church.org), make sure you place reciprocal links on all of these sites. For example, add your Web address to your Find-A-Church profile and place a link to UMC.org or Find-A-Church.org on your website or other Web presence (such as a blog or social network group for your church).

• Ask church members to provide a link to your church’s Web address on their websites or other Web presences as appropriate. For example, some members may have Facebook profiles and can select your church Web address or Facebook group (if you have one) to list with their profile. The same is possible with blogs and other online social media tools.

• Submit your church’s Web address to online directories and local online community listings to increase visibility on the world-wide Web.

• Submit your website to search engines for indexing so when people “Google” keywords related to your site it can be found easily and quickly. Learn more about Search Engine Optimization

The above article, “Online Promotion for Your Church” was written by Methodist Communications. The article was excerpted from umcomm.org web site. September 2017.

The material is copyrighted and should not be reprinted under any other name or author. However, this material may be freely used for personal study or research purposes.

This article may not be written by an Apostolic author, but it contains many excellent principles and concepts that can be adapted to most churches. As the old saying goes, “Eat the meat. Throw away the bones.”