What to Blog About
Posted on 27. Aug, 2009 by Steve Swisher in Social Media, Website
Ok, so you got your blog site up and running and the layout is what you want, but now you’re wondering…”What do I blog about?” Well you can blog about whatever you want, but it will probably take you about a month or so before you really know what you will be blogging about. Eventually you’ll find a style and type of content that you enjoy doing and your church begins to follow.
To help you get started here are some ideas:
1. Promote Events: There are some pastors that are better at this than others. [Here's one example] You can either just put a blog post that lists the upcoming events for the week or month, or you can pick one or two things a month that you really hype up. Tease them with the details of the event being shared piece by piece each day of the week. With scheduled blog releases this is easy to do. Share information with your church about planning meetings you’ve had or about people you’ve talked to that are excited about the event.
2. Sermon Overflow/Preview: If you’re like me then you spend the car ride home on Sunday afternoons kicking yourself for forgetting to share something in the sermon that you had planned on saying. You then try to comfort yourself by saying, “Well I guess the Holy Spirit didn’t want it shared.” With a blog, you now have a way to share all that stuff you forgot to say on Sunday morning. Some pastors just cut and paste their notes on to their blog. Others will use the blog to expand on a key part of the message or something that is relevant, but just didn’t fit in with the flow of the message. You can also send out something on Thursday or Friday giving people a taste of what to expect on the following Sunday morning. It’s a great way to hype the message and the service. People can see what the topic is and perhaps invite a friend that would be interested in the topic.
3. Devotional Thoughts: The pastors that I’ve seen that do this well are ones that tend to journal after doing their personal quiet time. They cut and paste the scripture passage and then just type in some of their thoughts and reflections from their own quiet time. This can inspire people to do their own quiet time as well as give them some insight into your own devotional life.
4. Personal Info: This has never been my thing, but it works for a lot of my friends. They share what their doing during the week. Things like date nights with the wife or attending a ball game with their kids. I think this might work well for churches in which the pastor isn’t available a lot during the week. I’ve seen this with a bi-vocational pastor or for a pastor of a large church where the distance between the pastor and the people is a little greater than the norm. It can be a way for you to model how a husband and father ought to be as well as share your own weaknesses and struggles.
These are just some broad categories. Let us know how you use your blog by leaving comments below.
Share on FacebookRelated posts:
Leave a reply