How to Do All the Things: 7 Strategies for Building an Effective and Fruitful Online Ministry Ep. 6

Are you overwhelmed by managing multiple ministry platforms? Brace yourself, because I'm going to shed light on my time-tested strategies for striking that crucial balance. Imagine one year from now, and you've not only launched a successful ministry, but you're also achieving high results - that's exactly what happened when I ventured into blogging. Let's journey together as I unravel the seven strategies that have been instrumental in my ministry's success, starting with focusing on one thing and planning your ministry in an orderly manner, just as God did in Genesis.

Mastering time management in blogging can be a game changer. We look into setting realistic goals, concentrating on tasks that directly align with these goals, and resisting the shiny object syndrome. Moreover, I'll reveal my top productivity hack: batching out content. Shifting gears, we will put Christian bloggers under the microscope. As we debunk some SEO myths, let's harness the power of the internet to bring people closer to Jesus. So, buckle up for an enlightening conversation on fruitful ministry management. Let's transform the internet into a platform for good!

If you are interested in taking your digital discipleship to the next level through blogging, YouTube, social media, and/or online Bible study groups, be sure to join my private FB group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/kingdombloggers
You can also follow me on YouTube where you will find a variety of helpful tutorials for navigating each of these important platforms: https://www.youtube.com/@KingdomBloggers

Transcript

LeeAnn: 0:02

Welcome to the Kingdom Influencers podcast, where our mission is to get more Jesus online. This podcast will equip and empower ministry leaders as well as regular everyday Christians to take the message of Jesus Christ throughout the digital realm. I'm your host, Leanne Fox, digital Ministry Coach and the creator of the Kingdom Bloggers Ministry, and I am so excited and honored to be a part of this journey with you. Let's get started. Welcome, kingdom Friends. Thank you for joining us for the sixth episode of the Kingdom Influencers podcast. So today we're going to be talking about how to do all the things. One of the questions I get asked like all the time is Leanne, how on earth do you do all the stuff that you're doing? You have three websites, you have a YouTube channel, you have all your courses, your Facebook group. I see you on social media and I have a podcast and I always see you sharing like personal things in your life, such as your garden and your chickens, and how you're not even at work on Tuesday and Wednesdays because you're at your church and all the things. So I figured I would kind of take this opportunity to share with you the strategy that I use to be able to do those things. I do want to start off by saying I am not superwoman and you should not necessarily strive to achieve all that I have been able to achieve at this point, because maybe that's not the plan God has for you. But if you use the strategies I'm going to share with you, you will be able to grow an effective and fruitful ministry, whatever that looks like. Before we dive into the seven things and before I share today's verse with you, I want to mention one thing, and we're actually I'm going to do another episode on this topic, but I want to mention it first, because all the seven things come back to this. There are so many things that you can do as a Christian influencer, so many places that you could fit in in this kind of environment.

LeeAnn: 1:52

Of course, blogging is the most common, and that's how most people actually come to me or how they get started. But blogging is not the only thing. If you're good on video or speaking in front of people, I should say, then maybe YouTube is where you should kind of get started. Maybe you just have this really creative visual arts knack. So in that case, creating digital product, prayer journals and Bible study worksheets and things like that maybe that's your place. Maybe you don't want to be on video, but you're still a good speaker. Well then, podcasting might be your thing. So when you feel this calling into digital discipleship, don't just be like, okay, god, I'm going to go start a blog just because blogging is like the most common thing that we think of. But it's not the only thing. And one thing I've learned over the years of all the students that I've had in my classes you know, fast forward a year or two after they've left I have had several of them who really struggled in the blogging area because that just isn't where God wanted them and they found their groove in, say, podcasting. Or maybe they just really did well with the creating printables and digital product. It's really important that you meditate on this, like talk to God, have him clarify where exactly he wants you to be fruitful. Maybe it's not blog, okay.

LeeAnn: 3:05

So today's verse is actually not a single verse. I like to reference the book of Genesis, the very book one In the beginning God created in the heavens and the earth, and then I'm not going to read through the whole thing because I want to keep this podcast under 30 minutes, right, but we know the story. He created, you know he the heavens and the earth that he created. You know he separated the water from the land and added the plants and vegetation, and then the animals, and you know the humans were last. And so there's a very important thing to take away from that verse, and that is the foundation that my ministry is built upon and that I encourage anyone who is trying to dive into digital discipleship, digital ministry, whatever you want to call it.

LeeAnn: 3:43

There is a certain order that you need to do things so that they work. Now, god is God, so, of course, he could have done them in any order and everything would have still worked out okay, but we're not God, right? He gives us a very good example of creating a process that builds upon the one before it In the story of Genesis. If he had put the humans first, we would have had nothing to eat, right? So he? He put the vegetation there. Well, first he separated the water, so we and that way we have land so that we wouldn't drown. But then he put the food sources in place. He put the vegetation first and then the animals, because some of those animals eat vegetation, and then he put the animals before the humans. So both vegetation and animals were there as well as land before he put us on it.

LeeAnn: 4:26

And if you apply that in your ministry plan, right, you should have a plan. Don't just jump in and be like, oh, what are we doing today? Right, like you should map it out what it's going to look like. But if you do them in the right order, then you will bear fruit. But what happens is we just sort of jump in and start doing this and that, and there are things that we start in the very beginning that aren't meant for that season, right, they're meant for much later on in the blogging journey. And so that's kind of what I'm going to talk to you in these seven strategies today. Okay, so let's get started.

LeeAnn: 4:56

The first thing, like strategy number one, pick one, start with one thing. For me it was my blog, because the blog getting it, you know, getting that organic traffic and not focusing on anything else enabled me to achieve very high traffic within the first year. I think the first year it was like 25,000 monthly sessions, like it was crazy, but I wasn't building an email list, I wasn't worried about social media, I wasn't doing any of the other things, because here's a little secret that apparently I guess it is a secret. Each thing whether it's a blog, whether it's building a subscriber list, you know, really building a following on social media, whatever the whatever the thing is foundation, each one of them needs its own plan and the plan for one doesn't work for others, like they're very distinct and individual platforms that need very distinct and individual plans. So I didn't even start my email list until like year two or three, right, my first year was all about the one blog. Yes, I have three blogs now, but I didn't start those other two until like 2021, like many years into this. I didn't start my YouTube channel until last year, so my ministry got started in 2018. And so this podcast we started this year, right, and so I got one and got it to the point of what I call autopilot, like it's generating traffic, it's doing a thing, and then, and only then, did I move on to the next platform, if you will and again, a platform could be social media, it could be the email list, whatever media medium you have to reach people. So focus on one foundation at a time before moving on to learning something else.

LeeAnn: 6:30

Number two you need to know how much time you have to realistically work on your ministry and all the things. So truth here. I do this full time. I'm retired from the military. I don't have an outside job, if you will. This is my full time job, so I make my own hours. But in the beginning, the very first year, I set very clear hours for myself. I didn't want to be that. You know, leave the nine to five, 40 hour weeks, I could work 80. No, I have stuff I like to do when I'm not working and I like to do those more than I do working. So, but for many of you, you may have daytime jobs, or maybe you have small children, maybe you homeschool them.

LeeAnn: 7:10

Whatever the case, you need to know how much time you realistically have to be effective in working on the things that need to be done. If that is only three hours a week in total, then it's only three hours a week, and so when you're mapping out all the goals and things you're going to accomplish, you have to be mindful of that time constraint. What, what time I have isn't what you have, so you will never be able to do what I'm doing in those same hours, right? Does that make sense? So, before you can plan or anything, know how much time you have so that you can create effective strategies within that time period. Which leads me to number three setting goals and kind of sticking to them. You have to know what your goals are. You can't come in here and just be like, oh, I'm going to do a blog and this and that like what's the end goal, okay.

LeeAnn: 7:54

So for me, my first year, it was traffic. My goal was traffic. I wanted to reach a certain amount of traffic by the end of the first 12 months. That was my goal. So everything I did, every task I worked on, if it didn't bring the return on time investment of traffic to my blog, I didn't do it. Well, in the first few months I had no traffic. Therefore, what was the point of an email list? There's, there's nobody to sign up. So I didn't do the email list. I didn't even do social media. Social media, for the most part, especially when you're new, is not going to drive traffic to your blog. It actually takes time away from you. You know, the more time you spend on social media, the less time you're writing more content the contents, what's bringing people to your site.

LeeAnn: 8:35

So you have to have very clear, smart goals. Y'all we all know about smart goals. Write them down, make sure they are attainable and actionable. But any task you do so this is number four. Focus on goal oriented tasks. So you got to know your goals. Then, when you set about, you know, like laying out what am I going to do in those few hours, like you know how much time you have, right, number two so in that time that I have, what tasks am I going to do? That will directly impact my goal, bring me closer to my goal.

LeeAnn: 9:06

I, like I said, I have ADHD, so I easily get distracted on rabbit trails and things like that, and you know it was a struggle at first. I'm not going to lie, but I eventually got more mindful and had more discipline to like create my weekly to-do list. If you will have, like the things I'm going to get done this week, those to-do lists need to be specific. Or say I'm going to write a blog post, okay, no, I'm going to write a blog post. Get the SEO. Do like be very specific, but focus on tasks that matter. You know what didn't matter to me Sending out emails to like random subscribers, because I wouldn't even you know they're not even clicking the links back to my site if I was doing that and it didn't happen to me because I didn't have the email list. But I've had other bloggers who've told me like yeah, I have like 12 people on my list and so I spent about an hour mapping off the email that I'm going to send to them, but I only get about a 10% open rate. Like that's just not a good ROI.

LeeAnn: 9:55

Okay, so you have to look at the tasks that you're doing. Make sure that the return on the time that you're spending is actually meeting your goal. So of course, you got to know what your goal is. Avoiding the shiny things is one of the biggest struggles in blogging. You know many of the blogging bloggers. If you will, if you follow them and I'm not saying don't follow them, because I follow them too, but you have to follow them, like with discipline. Discipline to not get distracted by all the cool new tools and software that they're telling you is going to help you reach thousands of people over and saying, like those are the distractions, those are the enemy, using these things to keep us from creating more content which is going to bring more people to our sites or platform, whatever platform it is I say blog, but whether it's your YouTube channel or podcast or whatever, all right.

LeeAnn: 10:39

So number five batch, batch, batch as your ministry grows. Learn to batch out content, even if you're just in the beginning getting a blog post out. So of course, you should know how to write blog posts correctly. You should understand SEO and all that stuff, but that's not what we're talking about today. But if you can master the process of batching out your outline, get all your outlines for the month done in one sitting. Then maybe batch out the blog content if you can right, like, once you've understand how to write blog content properly, you shouldn't be spending hours and hours and hours on a single blog post. Like. If you're doing that, by the way, you're doing it wrong. Okay, and you might wanna check out one of my free courses about SEO. But the graphics, the graphics, they go in your site, things like that. Now, once you grow and start adding, like, say, social media or the emails. So for me I have all the things now.

LeeAnn: 11:28

So what that looks like for me at this level, I do podcast episodes. I record them on Monday. I might record two or three in one Monday morning. It depends for me on what time my adult son he works night, what time he comes down, because once he's down it's too noisy. So but I do them all on Monday and then I'll edit them later. But they're recorded, right, because I know I only have that little pocket of time.

LeeAnn: 11:50

I edit the blog content, so I little truth here I don't write my own content. I have a team of writers, but I still have to edit it, and so my editing days are actually either Tuesday mornings before I head out, because I go, I start at my church on Tuesday, so in the mornings I might edit one or two posts, but usually it's on Thursday mornings because I have a Zoom call for my mastermind at 12 on Thursday. So Thursday morning is usually when I'm editing content. Now I also have YouTube videos and so whatever videos I'm gonna create for the month, there's been days, y'all, when I knock out five videos in a single morning. Right, because I know what I'm gonna say. I do them, get them recorded. I don't necessarily get them edited in that time, but at least get them recorded so that the editing I can do.

LeeAnn: 12:30

You know later on, but batching is what enables me to do that. I batch all my emails, y'all. I will sit down in one sitting at the end of the month and I will create all the emails for next month and schedule them out so they're done. Like I'm not. Like oh my gosh, it's Monday morning, I need to get my email out. Nope, it's already on autopilot. So I should say batching and automation. Batch out your work and put it on some sort of autopilot.

LeeAnn: 12:53

Number six when you are able hire help. Remember, you know I told you Gifts and talents are a big thing to me, like I know what my gift is, but I also know what my gifts are not, and so instead of me trying to spend time learning and doing something, I would rather find somebody else who has that gift and pay them to do it, so that I can focus on what I'm called to do. Now, I totally understand in the very beginning. You don't have that extra money, and that's fine. I'm not saying to do it from day one, but if you can, yes.

LeeAnn: 13:21

I actually have some past students from my boot camp who were like I am serious about this, I have a mission, I'm going to grow my ministry, and they set aside a budget to pay for a certain amount of blog posts every month. Also get guest posting. That's a good way as well. You have to be kind of careful with the guest posting and have very great guidelines and processes for that. But as my ministry grew to where I have all these other things, I pay for all of my blog content. Now I pay for printables to be created. Um, even though I love creating them, I get I love it too much, and so I'll get lost in Canva and never come out, and so I know this about myself and I discipline, so I will pay other people to create the printables that I will use for one of my website. Um, there's a copyright and just there's other things that I actually pay for, because that takes time off of my calendar so that I can focus on the things that I need to do, but it also enables me to get more done. So when you are able to do that, definitely start budgeting that into your, your budget plan for the year.

LeeAnn: 14:20

Okay, so number seven and this is one that I think definitely most people do not do, but it has been very important for me to take a pause at the end of each year and reevaluate Like I'm doing all this, oh, and also once I start feeling like, oh my gosh, I'm behind. I had to work an extra day this week. Oh my goodness, I had to work five days instead of four days. Um, but again, I value my free time. I value that I have Tuesdays and Wednesdays to go. Uh, I serve at my church. Uh, we have like a mission pantry and stuff. I love going there for that part.

LeeAnn: 14:54

But also the fellowship you know when you work alone, when you're an entrepreneur that works from home, it can be lonely, and so not only am I getting spiritually filled through serving it's about serving, yes, but I need that fellowship with other people because I'm alone when I'm in my house, I mean, I have my chickens and my dogs, but I need other people, and so that is a kind of a what do you call it? Like, um, there's no compromise on that. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are for me to be not at my desk, and so if I start feeling like, oh, maybe I just won't go Tuesdays so I can catch up on it, then that's telling me I have too much going on and so I need to take a pause, kind of look at all the things that I'm spending my actual time on and look at my ROI, for those things. Go into Google analytics, go into whatever, and look in this like, well, I've spending like a whole, you know, one of my three hours. I'm doing this, but I'm really not getting anything from it. Okay, why am I doing it? And so I will reevaluate where I'm spending my time and make sure that I'm only spending it in places that are bringing back a return.

LeeAnn: 15:52

And so you know, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over and expecting different results. So if you are stressed and overwhelmed and you're just like, huh, you're not doing it right, like blogging should be fun, or digital ministry I keep saying blogging because that's like the most common way but whatever area you're in, if it's not fun, you're doing it wrong. This should be fun. We should wake up every day and be joyful in the fact that we get to do whatever it is we're doing to share Jesus. And for those of you who build it to the point of a ministry that can sustain you income, wise, like that's just an amazing thing to do, and I don't ever want to feel stressed over it. And so reevaluation on a regular basis, whether that's quarterly, semi-annually, at the end of the year, whatever it is that is very, very important for remaining fruitful.

LeeAnn: 16:40

All right, so let's recap. The first thing was choosing one foundation knowing how much time you have to work on your ministry. Identify and understand what your goals are. Focus on only goal-oriented tasks, avoiding all those shiny things. Batch out your work and automate it when possible. Hire, help, pay others to do some of the work so that it can lighten your specific workload, and then, of course, regularly reevaluate your processes. Make sure that what you are spending time on is bringing a good return on the time investment that you're spending. So okay, guys, I hope this was super helpful. I hope it encourages someone or maybe give you an aha moment, like, oh my gosh, that makes so much sense, because that's what I like to do.

LeeAnn: 17:26

Be sure to join us. Next week we're going to dive into, specifically for you, christian bloggers. We're going to do a series on things related to growing your Christian blog. So next week, we're going to actually talk about keywords like SEO. I'll be understanding it and also just spell some myths about it. Be sure to share this podcast if you found it helpful. Leave us a good review If you want on iTunes and, of course, make sure you're following us and remember. I like to end every episode like this If you are not using the internet to bring people closer to Jesus, the enemy is going to use the internet to take people away from Jesus. So take that with you as you go out there and I will see you guys all around. All right, god bless, have a great week. Bye, bye.