If someone googles your ministry, what will they see? Maintaining your ministry’s website will help you present an active ministry and make a great first impression. You can make sure your website authentically represents the vitality of your ministry. Your website is your church’s digital front door.
Use a Team
Think of your website like your digital building. Maintaining your building can be left to one person, but it’s much easier if there is a team. Just like your building, there are tons of moving parts within a ministry’s website like page updates, software updates, and announcements. Website management is a full-time job that most administrative staff or volunteers can’t do alone. Forming a team with specific roles can help your ministry maintain and update your ministry website.
Create Once, Post Everywhere
Creating content for your website and social media is easier than you think. Using a “create-once, post-everywhere" or C.O.P.E. digital media strategy will help you keep all your digital outlets up-to-date. With this strategy, you create content for a primary platform - your website - and then share the content on your secondary platforms, social media, email, etc. Be sure to post your announcements on your website. By using social sharing tools on website management systems like Wix, Squarespace, or WordPress, you can post to your social media accounts when you post to your website. No more posting in four separate places.
Review Content
When you post, make sure it’s correct. Your ministry should develop a content review process for both written and graphic content. While this may slow down your posting process, having multiple people look for spelling and grammatical errors will help your ministry maintain a professional presence on your digital outlets, and assure your ministry message is clear.
Schedule Content Time
It can be difficult but setting a specific time to gather and post content for your ministry website will help you maintain a consistent web presence. Splitting the work into writing and posting sessions will help you manage the website fatigue. Also, most website management platforms will allow you to schedule a post to publish on a future date.
Share the Content You Have
You may not know it, but you create content for your website every day. Your announcements, birthdays, prayer, sermons, etc., are all information you can share creatively on your website. A website that isn’t updated can give the perception on a non-functioning ministry. You are a vibrant ministry; make sure a website visitor knows that.
Tags and Categories
Keeping your website organized can be easy. By using post categories and content tags you can help your website viewers find the sermon from two weeks ago without looking through all your announcements and updates. Using these tools also helps your website’s SEO performance and search rankings.
Maintaining your website will only help your ministry. If you are struggling with your current website, contact our Connectional Relations team at UMC Support to schedule a consultation with our award-winning Communications and Marketing team.