PRAY|THE|REVOLUTION

I’ve always held that we as believers have an unique opportunity and responsibility to effectively get our message out.   Of course, I have my own design and marketing business, so this is a topic that’s close to my heart.

I often meet ministers who are tentative about marketing their ministries.  They feel that promotion of ministry equals promotion of self.  I always argue that excellent promotion of ministry, when done well with pure motives, equals promotion of God and the mission he’s given us.  It’s easy to fall into false humility when God has actually called us to boldly proclaim.  Paul unashamedly directed people to follow him as he followed Christ.  He marketed, drew attention from others and led them in a specific direction.  Toward Christ! 

As anointed men and women of God, we must smash through fears and struggles regarding communication and into the place of vivid, continual, powerful presentation of the message from Heaven.

Not only do we have the opportunity to market, but we have the responsibility.  As visionaries who have been assigned a specific, non-negotiable mission by God we must keep that mission and message in front of our audience.

I believe the statistics reveal that approximately 80% of people will not visit a church that doesn’t have a sharp, up to date website.  Yet, while there are churches on most corners in our nation, few even have a website, much less a podcast, email marketing strategy, blog or video.

When I was pastoring Revolution Church I bet over 90% of our visitors reported that they came because of our website.  Several said they listened to teachings and read the blog for months before they decided to visit.

Additionally, we’ll see email marketing function as a call to action for those who are already in the mix.  We will discover that such a strategy will be much more effective than Sunday bulletins, phone calls, mailers or anything else.  In fact, while we did have a Sunday bulletin at Revolution Church, the majority of our announcements were made via email.  If we decided to have a special prayer event, a call to fast, a social event or a spontaneous worship service on a weekday evening, we’d simply send out an email and/or text message that afternoon.

The two top marketing strategies that all churches, ministries and individual ministers must implement are email marketing and video.  This is not only a trend in the Christian world, but in secular society as well. 

Often, web design clients will ask me how to have the most impact, climb to the top in the search engines and develop a strong community.  They are always shocked when I reveal the degree of communication that is necessary.

To be effective, to develop an alert community that’s excited about your ministry, and who’s eagerly expecting the next post… to cause them to visit your site several times a day… you have to post something TWELVE TIMES A DAY!

Yes, twelve.  Why do people visit CNN.com or YouTube.com several times a day?  Because there is something new GUARANTEED to be there!  Those sites change several times an hour, most usually.

I think about ministries like the Elijah List that sends out emails several times a week, and sometimes several times a day, with fresh content.  I LOVE to receive those emails.  The same goes for my other email subscriptions (or RSS feeds) like PCWorld, the Chicago Tribune or Google news alerts.

If you use services like Twitter, YouTube, Hellotxt, blogs, Feedburner, Flickr, Digg, Stumbleupon, Facebook (NOT Myspace ), Tumblr and others it can actually be quite easy to add to your online experience twelve or more times a day.

Here’s an example of how powerful this can be:  Go to www.google.com.  Enter the search words Stacey Campbell Prophecy.  You’ll notice that my site is #4 (or, something close… it’s always changing).

Better yet, search for Revival Prayer Prophecy.  I’m #1.  This is very helpful as most people won’t look past the first five or six results when searching.  A high rank will result in a lot of hits on your site, which results in your God given message penetrating many more people.  You’ll see in the screen shot below that due to a lot of email marketing, blogging, Twittering, etc. that every day I’m receiving several thousand hits.

Depending on your target market, you can work your online marketing strategy any way you’d like.  Yes, it takes some time (not a lot, but some), and yes, you must be finished with fear of marketing and promotion.

If we as Christians desire to aggressively develop an online community based around the unique mission that God has placed in our heart, we must use the tools of today to capture their attention.  The message is that important!  Oh yeah, and the best part?  It’s a lot of fun and you meet a lot of amazing people!

Leave some comments.  What do you think?  What has worked for you?  Visit www.johnburtondesign.com for info on design and marketing campaigns!

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