Reaching out…

Contacting your peeps

Regular touches ( personal, print and email )

Emails

Back in the day, sending out a newsletter was the way to go. I have a friend who was an instructor in the Business Department of the University of Washington who swore by newsletters. He said, “If there is one thing that I encourage people to do its newsletters. They aren’t sexy but they work”  Well there is truth to that. However the cost of a mailing can make this prohibitive for some. ENTER EMAIL…. Suddenly the cost of mailings just went way down, now you will have to collect email address and that can be challenging by itself, but emails work. They connect you tot he people who care about what you are doing.  I don’t think that emails should replace mailings, but WOW, they are effective. In your emails steer people to your site content.  For example you might say something like:

The auction is coming up, for expanded coverage, please visit the website ( http://tinyurl.com/cwxtjw ) to let us know that you are coming.

Or, there is new content on the website, I dug a little bit deeper than an email could handle and I have posted that to the Blog ( http://www.jcyl.org )

One note, I am a firm believer in always spelling out the URL, you don’t have to do it, but I want the URL to stick in the minds of the people I sending stuff to.

And… Please use tools that distribute emails for you Constant Contact and MyEmma, they keep tracking of who is opening your emails. This gives you a better idea of who is in your community and who is not.

Organic SEO/SEM

Getting links to your site

You should always try to get links from your site from as many people as possible, because that in itself will drive traffic. If you are a para-church ministry, could the churches that support you create links back to your website. If you are a church ministry could the parachurch ministries that you support link back to you. This has a multiple levels of value. People will come to your site because the link that linked you there gave you credibility. Additionally, it increases the link count to your site which is a factor in Search Engine Ranking.

Submitting your site to DMOZ.org. DMOZ is a directory site that just keeps track of links, it is a foundational piece of a lot going on the Internet. So… in a nutshell this is how it works.

1. You submit our site to DMOZ
2. DMOZ approves it.
3. DMOZ lists it in their feeds
4. Other sites wanting content and search will pull the DMOZ listings ( Yahoo, AOL, Google )
5. Links start showing up all over the Internet to your site
6. Your organic search ranking goes up.

Keeping Content active and relevant

You want to make sure that your site has portions that are dynamic, this has an impact on Search Engine Optimization Rankings.

Repeating keywords

A friend of mine, decided that he wanted to own the phrase, “The best web designer in the world“, (Free link Nathan) and if you google that phrase or permutations of that phrase you will see Nathan’s blog entry. It worked! So figuring out what you want to be found as and promoting that in the content of the site. So for example the church website we are trying to position Port Townsend Church and Church in Port Townsend within the content so that search engine will associate our church with that phrase and ultimately increase its organic page ranking.

Size and position matter

The search engines have the ability to determine where in the page the content is residing, so if you were to link to make your Title stand out by increasing the size and position. Words that are in those place score higher than words in the rest of the page. It probably isn’t fair, but that is how it works. So…

1. Consider the words of the title
2. Instead of listing links at the end of the content, consider putting them at the beginning.
3. Consider using Heading tags
4. Make sure you list the search terms that you want in those places.

Positing to Social Networks

I keep track of when people come to the site, mostly so that I can know what is working and what is not. I decided that I would embrace this facebook thing, and so I was disciplined, spent 10 minutes a day adding friends, until I had reached a number of about 300.  Then I posted my first link to one of the blog entries and I had 23 people come that day. That was an 700% increase over normal traffic days. That is 23 people are more aware of what we are doing, that is 23 more people who are now at the top of the funnel.

Scheduled Posts

My friend Greg, is a marketer and does a lot of work with sports franchises ( http://www.guestmvp.com ) and he mentioned that he send his emails out at between 11 and 2 on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, because that is when his people are most active. If you are using a tool like Ema or Constant Contact you will know when your people are online.  I wrote a tool for Facebook that does just that, tells me the times when my contacts are most online called CrossReference. ( http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=41805038939&ref=mf )

I realize the name is stupid, but my goal was to create something that could blend in with everything else on the internet. Once you know when your friend network is online, post at those times.  When I scheduled my post I got 31 clicks, that is now in the realm of 1000-1200% increase over organic traffic.

Catchy titles

I have been having long conversations with my friend Matt on this issue, he says that when he uses a catchy title, he says that when he is creative in his titles/subjects, more people read it. So for example Sex Drugs and Rock n Roll ( http://krachunis.blogspot.com/2009/02/sex-drugs-rock-n-roll.html )  was the most active his blog has ever been. Now that said, we are having ethical discussions, good ones that address the importance of integrity in those titles. The point is the title/subject matters. People choose to read your stuff based on the title. So, you if your title is: “Fall Newsletter”, you will get the diehards, but if your title is based on the content you will draw readers in.   The most recent email/blog post that I sent out had the subject “Wrestling with Barack Obama”

Cross posting on other sites

This may be a little bit on the over-done-it side of things, but there are sites that love to host content. That is what they do. They host content. One of the sites the Power of Connecting ( http://www.powerofconnecting.org ) just hosts content that is related to Christian organizations working together. Good stuff. If you have content that is relevant to their needs, I know that they would be interested, I also know that they are not the only organizations on the Internet that function as a part as a content aggregator.  The point is, YOU CAN DRIVE TRAFFIC TO YOUR SITE THROUGH OTHER SITES.  For example, I wrote this content for myself and my peers in Young Life, but I hope that it gets picked up as an RSS feed for other sites to use.

Blog subscribers

This is the least understood piece  of what we are talking about, but there are people that enjoy reading blogs so much that they want to be subscribers. Meaning, they want to be updated when you post content. I put this in the same category as Auto-Bill pay with the bank. It is really nice to know that you have readers. So encouraging the people that you know to subscribe to the blog only increases the community of your readership.

Webvertising

Emotional Barriers -This is one of those areas that every ministry is afraid of, but probably evey ministry needs to be partaking of.  We had an online discussion on Facebook about how the advertisers know so much about us. One friend disclosed she was getting nother but offers about Laser hair removal,  where I get ads about stupid t-shirts. Advertisers know about us, and at first this can discouraging personally. That said, from a promotional perspective, this is a huge advantage. Meaning, we can target specific things about people in who sees our webvertising. Faith, geographic location, interests, profressions.

Purpose – Do you believe in your message enough that you are willing to advertise it? That is kind of a rough gut check. Is your message compelling enough that people will want to know more. Have you shared your passion about your mission in a way that others will be drawn to it?  Is your website just a list of events, or have your invested the energy into making sure someone the furthest out will understand your community and why they should be a part of it.

Cost – The cost of online advertisers is reasonable considering we can target who we want to receive our ads. Experience Mission ( http://www.experiencemission.org/ )  has paid for Facebook Webvertising, they indicated that they put a huge cap on the amount that could be spent on advertisements and that there was an early click through rate, but that it normalized and they currently spending in the neighborhood of $20-$40 USD/month and that they were seeing traffic driven to their site through the advertising.

Conversion – So now you are getting traffic to the site, what is your goal in getting them there and how are you metering them? Google Analytics is a great traffic metric, but traffic may not be your ultimate outcome. Determine the the metrics that you have personally for success.  Personally, I use the sales metaphor of a funnel, and I am want my web efforts to move people one step closer down the funnel.

Once you establish your metrics for success, evaluate… “Is my Webvertising campaign accomplish the goals that I established in its origin?” If the answer is “No” either adjust the campaign or ditch it all together.