Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 If your church is like most, you spend a lot of time getting ready for Christmas. You decorate your facilities and you write a great message for your Christmas Eve service. But most churches skip out when it comes to getting their website ready for Christmas. In this episode, we'll talk about how your church can make your church website Christmas ready. We hope this conversation helps you reach more people and grow. This is the reach right podcast. You're listening to the read-write podcast. The show dedicated to helping pastors and church leaders reach people the right way, hosted by me, Thomas Costello. And with me as always is my cohost Ian Hyatt. We're here to help your church see more visitors and grow
Speaker 0 00:01:02 Hey guys, welcome to the retried podcast. Episode number 75. I am your host Thomas Costello. And with me as always is my cohost
Speaker 3 00:01:11 Ian Hyatt. What's up Thomas.
Speaker 0 00:01:12 Hey, not too much. He excited to chat today in the Christmas season here. We're in December now. And, uh, it doesn't feel very Christmasy here in Hawaii. It never really does, but we have
Speaker 3 00:01:24 In Austin, Texas, too. We were still, uh, kinda like 80 degrees, I think today.
Speaker 0 00:01:28 Yeah, but that's okay. We can still, uh, uh, Jesus is the reason for the season. So we're excited to get going with that where you're talking about six things that you need to do to get your church website ready for Christmas. Um, I think this is something that will be a good conversation. I think that, you know, I I've pastored in churches, multiple churches in different parts of the country. And there is lots of things to be done around the Christmas season from preparing your Christmas Eve service, to doing a staff Christmas picture card, to all this stuff that we do around, you know, decorating the whole facility, all this stuff we do. I have found that a lot of churches don't make any real changes to their online presence during the Christmas season at all. Uh, and, uh, you know, we've been in the web industry long enough to know that. I don't know if you remember back when we first started doing this, that it was a popular thing to do to like, do like a Christmas, like theme on your website. Like you just kind of like we did, we used to have one thing where snow would fall or something like that on a site.
Speaker 3 00:02:31 No. And then wrapping paper around the borders. And we have, like, we had like a graphic skin selector that we offered and, uh, yeah, we laugh about that.
Speaker 0 00:02:42 It's funny. Cause it's, it's just, you know, we, we started doing this in the mid two thousands, 2006 seven, you know, that timeframe and man websites have changed so much in that time there, but this has been something that we've, uh, we've encouraged churches to do for a while. I don't know that putting a wrapping paper border around your website is going to get, you know, people will be added to the kingdom of God because of that probably. But I think that there are some things that you can and probably should be doing. And I, I think that it's, it's something where we are really starting to take our digital expression of ministry. It we've realized that it is just as important as physical ministry. It's actual ministry that's happening and now you and I are both believers and in-person gatherings. We absolutely believe in that, but we are also big believers in the value of doing things right digitally. And we put so much effort into getting ready for Christmas in the physical. Let's talk a little bit today about what we can do to get things ready in the digital world, uh, to kind of get ready for the holiday season here. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:03:45 It helps you actually, uh, convert people to the physical service. So yeah,
Speaker 0 00:03:50 Absolutely. Yep. No, that's exactly right. So we have six of them, right. I don't know if you want to go ahead. I'm sorry. Do you wanna kick us off?
Speaker 3 00:03:57 Well, I will excited to do so. First one is build a landing page and actually, I'm glad we're kind of starting with this point because, you know, I think everyone thinks of like promoting it on the home page of your website, um, which you should, uh, you know, certainly should, uh, I mean, you know, there's usually some sort of an events thing you don't want to wear and, and joking about what we were just talking about with like putting a wrapping paper around the border and all of that. You don't want to like change your brand and your strategy totally on your homepage. But you know, obviously a landing page is a good thing though, because this would be a page. You even have its own URL, like your church's website slash Christmas Eve. Um, you know, and, and it will have specific content that is going to not only inform people of when the service is, but that's going to be invitational and there's just a lot you can do with landing pages and, and, you know, traffic goes to landing pages. That's the way things happen with Google now. And, uh, so it's not just about a homepage and a few other basic pages, landing pages are a key thing. So you want to build one for your Christmas Eve service, for sure.
Speaker 0 00:05:03 Maybe a new term to some of our audience here. I know we talk about it from time to time on our podcasts, but, um, it is important, I think, to be thinking about your web presence in terms of landing pages, which is a landing page is just basically a starting off page for people when they get onto your website. So what is that place that they go to or a place that they can find on the website? And so it really has become a strategy. I think that before people would try to drive all traffic to their homepage. So you would link on if you, if there was social media at the time, you'd link to your homepage, you would send your homepage and an email. And now we've kind of become more sophisticated where we realized that search engines, social media posts, those are all probably it's better.
Speaker 0 00:05:47 If we try to push that traffic to a specific page that deals with the information that people are looking for, right? Instead of if I want to introduce my Christmas Eve service to I'm better off sending them directly to my church.com/christmas, that I am sending them to the home page, having a big banner that says, Hey, join us this Christmas click here to learn more information and then having them go there. So just from a, uh, from an outreach perspective, you'll get more traffic and you'll introduce what's happening during the Christmas season at your church. They'll do a better job giving that information if you build it into a landing page there. So yeah, I think you're exactly right. As far as content though, I think that's right to get the right domain name for it. You definitely want to highlight your Christmas Eve service, some of those kinds of things, but there's some other stuff that you can make sure to, to include in there.
Speaker 0 00:06:38 And we'll talk some more about those in the rest of this conversation here, but let me go ahead and hit the next one. Yeah, it is in order to get your website ready for Christmas, make sure you're using the right key words, especially on this landing page. Right? So here's one of the mistakes I see people make is maybe they have a, they figured out that their Christmas Eve service they're going to preach a message, uh, called Mary. Did you know, let's say that that's what they decide their, their, uh, their Christmas Eve message will be about. And, uh, there's some debate on whether she knew or not. I, I intend that some people do contend that she did know because the angel came and told her. But I think if you really listening to the words of the song, I don't think she knew the extent of what Jesus would do. So that's sure I'm in the camp of Mary did not know that
Speaker 3 00:07:22 Another, uh, I'm with you, but that'd be a whole nother, we can do a whole nother podcast on,
Speaker 0 00:07:26 Oh, that'll be our next episode of did Mary know that's right. So anyway, that may be your theme, right? Or maybe that's your, uh, your, your sermon title, uh, for your Christmas Eve service. There are not a lot of people out there searching for the term Mary did, you know, and if they are searching for that, they're almost certainly not looking to find your Christmas, uh, landing page at your church. They're looking for lyrics to the song for that song. They're looking to see who wrote it and who sang it and when it was written on Wikipedia and all those kinds of things. And so it's important that you really think through some of those key words. So some of the ones to make sure you hit are a Christmas Eve service, Christmas service, a church, Christmas schedule, some of those kinds of things, those are things that people are going to be searching for in this Christmas season. And you want to make sure that those keywords are in your site there.
Speaker 3 00:08:17 Yeah, absolutely. That's, what's going to make your event found. And, uh, and that's something that I think a lot of churches miss, they just think of the basic contact information or our service time information and, and just titling it and, and inviting someone. But that's, uh, that's huge. So I'm glad you covered that. Now. I'll get the next one. Next one is put the service online. Uh, I would think that this should be a no brainer by now, but it's still something that we see often missed on church websites. But, um, even before the pandemic that was important to do, even if someone came and watched it, grandma, maybe didn't get to come and you thought would really be blessed by the message. So you'd want to be able to have her go online or share it online with a, with her. But, but I think now, you know, looking at where we're at because of the panic, there's still people that are not comfortable coming and there's still people that, and even if they weren't comfortable coming, they're just more comfortable watching it online from home, maybe on Christmas Eve. So I think that, uh, that should be something that you, every church wants to make sure they do a good job of on their site.
Speaker 0 00:09:23 Yeah. I think, you know, we said this already, but you and I are definitely in the camp that if I had a choice between someone watching online and someone being there in the middle of the congregation, uh, during Christmas Eve, I would definitely take the latter. I would want people to be there with us. Uh, but the reality is that there's a, that's not really the option that we're giving people, right? It's not saying they're, they're basically deciding are they going to come or not? If you don't put your services online. And so there's a few different camps of people that I think we have to be aware of. So yeah, there's the, the COVID people, uh, that are not ready to come back to a service there. And you can say what you will about them. I know some of our audience, they probably think those are really smart people.
Speaker 0 00:10:04 Some people in our audience think those people are fools. You know, that's not our position to, I recommend you don't get into those waters at your church. There. That's not what we're about either. But I think the reality is there are people that want to connect with a church or connect with the service or hear the gospel of Jesus. And they, they are willing to watch online, but they're not willing to walk into your doors and sit down at a service there right now. So they're an important target to reach in that. I think that there's so many people that are traveling. Um, I don't know if you guys are headed down to see family around Christmas or anything, or maybe families coming to you. I know in Hawaii, we don't do as much traveling, but we have, we have my wife's folks. They come and spend the week with us here.
Speaker 0 00:10:46 So they're not around at their church for Christmas. Uh, and so there's people that are always traveling. It's a great chance to keep them connected with the life of the church and those things there. So, yeah, I think those are the two primary categories of people that, and then I guess there's also that other people that, you know, they, they have this connection to your church, but they have so many family traditions that happen. This is a chance for you to give them an opportunity to connect with your church, even while those traditions are happening, if they're doing something with parents or something to that effect. So yeah, I think making sure you get it online is really important. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:11:19 We covered a lot of bases with that one. So just a lot of good reasons.
Speaker 0 00:11:23 Cool. I'm up next? Uh, it's create Christmas themed content, create Christmas themed content. So here's what this is about. This is a, this is something that I think is a really big opportunity. Probably one of the biggest that very few churches take advantage of is now I said that you want to be careful with your main content. If you're, if you're serving is called Mary, did you know you don't want to just use that as your primary key word on your landing page, but I am a huge proponent of creating content, specifically blog posts, if you can pull off videos, those things that's great too, but specifically blog posts. It's one of the easiest around Christmas themed idea. So what if your church, uh, you made it a point that, um, you created the list in your city of the best Christmas lights to go and see, you know, the best neighborhoods and the best streets to go check out for Christmas lights.
Speaker 0 00:12:18 Because how, I mean, I don't know, that's something that I've searched before. Like where are the best Christmas lights in Honolulu? I don't know if you know where they are in your area in Austin. Like what street do people go to? Or every town has that street where they have all the Christmas lights and those kinds of things. So I think this would be a great idea for a post and that way people are getting onto your church website and they're connecting with content that they're actually looking for. They're making a connection with you, even if it's just in passing, they see your name, they see your brand and you become a church that they're aware of. And when it comes time for them to come and visit a church, that you'll be one of the first ones that they think of. This is the way that we need to be thinking, like for instance, here at ReadWrite, we write a lot of blog posts and content that isn't necessarily about, uh, how to build great websites or, uh, how to do local search engine optimization on Google.
Speaker 0 00:13:09 And, you know, the things that we offer to churches, we write content other than that. So our best performing post on our blog, it's called 18 scriptures to share before your next offering time at church. Now we're not in the business of helping churches do offerings or anything like that, but we wrote that content. It gets tons of traffic. Yeah. And it's a way for us to connect with people that are actually, they could possibly use our services in the future. The same thing goes for you. I think maybe Christmas recipes, if you have a great recipe for apple cider or something like that, that you could use, those are all really good ideas. But think about that. What are things that you search for related to Christmas? What's the
Speaker 3 00:13:49 Yes. Christmas tree lot. What's the best Christmas tree. And cause there's been a shortage of them around here too. So if you know of one that doesn't have a shortage and has good deals, that's something good
Speaker 0 00:14:01 About you guys, real Christmas tree people, are you
Speaker 3 00:14:03 Fake? We finally became fake. We've been real for, and then we finally just got tired of being real and became fake too, and found a good deal on a big tall fake one. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:14:13 Here in Hawaii. They're like, I mean, they are a fortune because they all have to be shipped in and they have to get here kind of quickly. We, we did some real ones on the mainland when we were, uh, we, we had a Christmas tree farm. We did that whole cut it down kind of a thing back then, but yeah, for us, it's you go fake here. That's what you do. Yep.
Speaker 3 00:14:32 That's good. But I think just in closing on that point, I think it also, it just shows that it you're making it about them, uh, about, you know, and, and not just come to our surface. Of course we want them to come to our Christmas Eve service, but it's just showing that you care about things that, that people are interested in. And I think that that's, that's a good thing to do, you know, it's, uh, I think we always, we're always about, you know, delivering the gospel to people and, and, and our mission envisioned for people, but forget that we just gotta be people sometimes. Right?
Speaker 0 00:15:02 Yeah. Let me, yeah. Let me add one more thing. I think that that is you're exactly right. And I think sometimes churches have a hard time getting over the hump of making sure that they feel like this obligation to make everything on their church website spiritual. Right. And we know that, I mean, you know, you can make some kind of a case as to why the best Christmas tree farms in my area can be spiritual because God loves Christmas tree farmers. And I get all that, but I'm saying that it's not, you don't have to preach a sermon in every blog post, right. It can actually just be family oriented content. It can be about recipes and Christmas trees and Christmas lights and all those things that are wholesome. Uh, but you know, it's still, it's healthy to do that. And again, it's a great way for you to connect with your community with no strings attached. I think that's exactly it.
Speaker 3 00:15:48 Yeah. Good. Well, I'll handle the next one, which is, we always mentioned this, right. And it's to choose a primary call to action. We're always big on calls to action and, and in everything that we do, and it is a good thing to do, uh, on your church website, have a good call to action. You know, if you're meeting in person, obviously, which most churches are now, I think that call to action is to plan a visit, uh, you know, to, to let people know that, uh, you're coming, uh, on, on the, to the Christmas Eve service, maybe it is to watch live if that's what you prefer. And if that's where you're trying to drive traffic, or if you're not meeting in person yet. Um, so, but have one primary one don't give too many, I think that's the key thing is they're already there. People are already impatient, uh, on your site. And so make it simple. What does that next step for them? Uh, for Christmas?
Speaker 0 00:16:39 I think you're exactly right. I think, um, you know, we are always big proponents of getting a call to action, but also having them give information to respond to it. So if you can do that at your church in good conscience and it makes sense, you know, it's hard to just people won't give you their information if you don't ask for it. So it's, and you have to have a reason that they're giving it to you. So you can't just say, Hey, fill out your name here and we'll, you know, just fill out your name and let's, let's see what happens. It has to be a reason. So usually with Christmas Eve, it's kind of, especially in this COVID season, it's a great time to say, Hey, we'll reserve space for you for you and your family at, I dunno, a lot of churches do multiple services and sure they have, they can run out of space at whatever that most popular time is.
Speaker 0 00:17:26 And then the late one or the early one doesn't get as much traffic at it. So you can reserve space that makes people give their information. But again, this is so valuable for you to pull forward. Some of that follow up process and say, Hey, if you're a smaller church and you can pull this off, Hey, I'm so looking forward to seeing you at the Christmas Eve service, uh, I I'd love to meet you and shake your hand. I'll be the guy with the, you know, the reindeer sweatshirt on or something like that. Whatever you can, you can start to have those conversations ahead of time and again, make your visitors much stickier that way. So, yeah. Call to action. Call to action, call to action. Every single page on your website needs to have one. This one's no different, but it's really important. I think at Christmas time here.
Speaker 3 00:18:05 Absolutely.
Speaker 0 00:18:06 Absolutely. I'll wrap it up here with this one. And this is obvious, but you need to start making changes now. Uh, so, uh, this is your, uh, if you're listening to this or watching this, uh, and it is the second week of December, so you're watching it right around the time that it, uh, it came out, uh, it's probably time today to start making some of these changes here. Uh, you know, think about these things. Ideally you want to roll them out right after Thanksgiving, right? Again, that's the rule at my house for when we are allowed to put Christmas decorations up. I don't know.
Speaker 3 00:18:37 Oh yeah, no, we, we do. We're the same way, but my gosh, people live in, in, uh, uh, October around here. We're getting ready for Christmas. So that's a sin,
Speaker 0 00:18:46 Man. You can't, I know Uber is wrong
Speaker 3 00:18:49 That yes. Decorating well before Thanksgiving. So
Speaker 0 00:18:54 Yeah, so I think Thanksgiving is the right time to roll these things out. If possible, you're not too late. If you're listening to this right. When it comes out here the second week of December, but it is time to start making some of those changes, get your landing page built, start to create some content around it. Uh, I think that you have, uh, the longer these things are up, the more time search engines have to start archiving in and making sure it understands what the content is, start delivering it. So you want this early, I will say this too. One of the great things about it is that the content you create for this this year, let's say you make a list of the best Christmas tree farms in Georgetown, something like that or near Georgetown. Well, the Christmas tree farms will probably be about the same best farms next year as they are this year. So your content is still going to have value. You can re-promote it. And put that out there. And I think each year you'll start to get more and more traffic on these kinds of posts. But the idea is to start early and make sure you're ready to go.
Speaker 3 00:19:51 That's absolutely right. And I think to it, it made me think of, we've worked with a lot of like church plants, uh, and startups that, you know, they'll call us two weeks before, uh, launching. And they're like, Hey, we need a website right away. And I'm like, you needed to do this. Like, you know, a year ago, six months ago. Now, again, this is a little different for their Christmas Eve event. Like we said, after Thanksgiving is a good time, but it's just, don't procrastinate. It'll help you reach more visitors the sooner you do it too. So,
Speaker 0 00:20:18 So today's the day hop on it, guys. It's a good chance to do that. So we want to thank you guys so much for being part of our retried family. Uh, if this, uh, if this podcast, this episode or any of them are helpful to you, uh, it means a lot to us. If you rate and review, subscribe, hit that like button. Uh, thank you guys so much for being part of our retried family, a Merry Christmas, and we hope to catch you next week.
Speaker 3 00:20:41 All righty,
Speaker 0 00:20:44 Thanks for listening to the reach right podcast. We hope this episode will help you reach people the right way, looking for more resources for your church. Check us out online at reach, right studios.com. If this episode has been helpful to you, it would mean the world to us. If you would rate, review and subscribe on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening. And we'll see you next week.
