Organic Growth Strategies for Your Christian Blog: Lessons from Luke 8, 6-8, Ep. 7

Are you tired of pushing out blog content only to see minimal engagement? Ever wondered why promoting your blog isn't yielding the desired results? Join me, your host LeeAnn Fox, as I share insights on how to drive traffic to your Christian blog using a more organic approach, that's right, no promotions. Together, we'll explore the importance of planting the right seeds, curating content that aligns with your audience's search habits, and how focusing more on content creation can yield more fruitful results. 

The journey of blogging can be likened to gardening. Just like seeds, your blog content needs the right conditions to thrive. This episode draws parallels between biblical teachings from Luke 8, 6 through 8 and the process of growing your blog. Let's delve into the lessons hidden in these verses as we talk about the importance of building a solid foundation for your blog, conducting adequate research, and focusing solely on content creation. This episode promises to leave you with actionable steps and a fresh perspective on growing your blog as a ministry.

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

Speaker 1: 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, to our seventh episode of the Kingdom Influencers podcast. So today we're going to be talking about building traffic to your Christian blog. This is the number one question I get asked all the time is how do I get people to read my blog? I keep pushing out content, I promote it everywhere, but still I fall short of actually getting people to read it. So today we're going to talk about three very specific things that I'm going to encourage you with that will help you really start seeing the fruits of your labor and actually bringing the right people to your website so that you can pour into them with whatever it is that God has put on your heart to share in your ministry. But first, as always, we're going to start with a verse that's going to sort of kind of sum up everything we're going to talk about today, and that verse is Luke 8, 6 through 8. And of course, this is from the NIV translation. Some fell on rocky ground and when it came up to plants withered because they had no moisture. The seed fell among thorns which grew up with it and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, yielded a crop 100 times more than was sown. So we will come back to that in just a minute. But to sum up what I'm going to talk about today, it all comes back to planting the right seeds. All right, so let's dive right in. So the first thing I'm going to tell you again I mentioned earlier is people tell me they promote and promote and promote, and they spend a lot of time doing that. And I'm going to tell you stop promoting your blog. Really, what Don't promote it? How will I get people there? Well, that's what we're going to talk about here in just a minute. But promoting your blog is more of a forced way to get it out there. We see that in advertising. When companies are trying to sell us a product, they promote it. They pay for ads More in our kind of language, without spending money. It's about constantly sharing the link to it on Facebook or whatever social media platform. You're on spending countless hours creating more and more pins to put in Pinterest and it's just an endless cycle that does not give us a return on the time investment that we actually put into it. So stop promoting. But what you want to do is number two build a solid foundation. Now, we talked about this in last week's episode, about building a solid foundation, kind of the elements of how I was able to grow this ministry to all the many pieces that it is right now, and that solid foundation is the biggest part of seeing a fruitful ministry.

Speaker 1: 2:55

This is where those seeds, like you, have to research. So I'm a gardener. If y'all didn't know, those who followed me for a while before the podcast know I'm all into gardening. It's all over my Facebook page. And one thing about gardening it's very you learn a lot in that. It's very biblical.

Speaker 1: 3:09

But when it comes to planting seeds, you can't just throw seeds. You can't just go to the store and buy some seeds and just be like, ok, I'm just going to throw them here and I'm going to get a big harvest. No, you actually have to research a lot of things. You have to know the who, the what and the how. So I guess a seed is not a who but a what. So you're basically researching. Depending on where you live, you know the climate, what kind of soil you have, the temperature Is it hot, is it cold, all these things. Some seeds are seasonal. Some will grow year round. So you have to do your research before you just go out there throwing seeds around.

Speaker 1: 3:42

And what happens with most bloggers when they get started? Whatever it is that's put on their heart to share, they're just throwing those seeds out there with no mindful intention. They have no like plan for whether those seeds are even going to work. They're throwing it out there without actually doing the research to figure out when and where and how those seeds are going to be fruitful. So, from a blogging perspective, you have to do your research. You have to know who you're trying to reach. You have to research what is it they're looking for online? What are their online search habits? As it applies to what your ministry is wanting or trying to accomplish, are you trying to teach them Bible content? Are you trying to help minister them spiritually overcoming something like addiction?

Speaker 1: 4:27

Whatever it is, you still got to do the research. That way you know what they're looking for, so that you can write content that actually gets found on Google when they're looking for it. Right, and that is like that's the whole thing in blogging and I think that's a big misunderstanding with new bloggers coming into it is you can't just write about whatever you want to write. I mean, you can, but that's not going to be fruitful. That's what we call chaos gardening, right, it rarely works. So, knowing what keywords they're typing into Google, like what queries I don't like the word keyword, y'all will find that out about me but what queries are they actively searching for online, and whether it's Google or Yahoo or whatever search engine, but it's the physical thing they're typing into that search box.

Speaker 1: 5:07

You have to write content that satisfies that, and so all of that is how you build that solid foundation. And so that leads into number three focus on just writing content. Forget all the other things, forget the social media, forget the email list. Definitely don't be paying for ads. Just write content that you know is good, content, that you know is satisfying content because it's going to serve the audience that you are trying to serve. Then you don't have to promote when you publish that content, google indexes it. It gets kind of in the system, so to speak, in the database of all the content on the internet. And so when someone goes to that Google search box and they type in something, your content is likely to be found in those search results. That is the key, y'all. That is the key to building traffic to your ministry. And once you are able to master that process, or at least figure it out on a little bit of a level, you never have to promote your blog again.

Speaker 1: 6:06

For anyone who has found my ministry in any way, like honestly, I just this year started really getting active on social media and I talked about this last week, so I'm not going to recap everything. You can go back and listen to episode six that I talked about how I did everything in a certain order, but that first year it was all about the content. When you build a solid foundation and you focus on content to solidify that foundation, that is how you build that organic traffic. And then all the other fruit that you're hoping to harvest from this, the seeds you're planting, the fruit that comes from that, of course, is the people, the people that you were going to impact with your content, the people that need your content, whose lives are going to be changed because of and through your content. But other seeds are going to be planted that bring subscribers to your email list. Eventually, those seeds are going to lead to products being sold, to affiliate links, converting to sales. So the monetization side of thing Anyone who comes into my ministry knows right away that I do not push how to make money as a Christian blogger, like.

Speaker 1: 7:15

That is the last thing that I'm like focused on. And so if your focus in the beginning is just how to make money, then you're going to really struggle on building that organic traffic because your mind is in the right place. You're planting the wrong seed. You're planting those seeds on rocky ground. Right, they're going to wither away because they have no moisture. They're not going to gain momentum because they simply weren't planted in the right soil. That soil is your blog.

Speaker 1: 7:39

So I am actually going to keep this episode short today because I don't want to just drag it out. I mean, I'm basically going to say the same thing over and over. But again, if you are brand new to this, or maybe you've been doing this blogging thing for a while and you're just not seeing any effort or any fruit from your efforts, it's because you're doing it wrong. I'll just say that right out the door. Stop focusing on the promotion of your blog. The time that it takes you to create all those social graphics, to say, go read my blog post, to do all the things, the time that you're spending on doing those things could actually be spent writing more content or better. Yet if you haven't actually done your research, then stop doing everything. Go back to the drawing board and figure out like create a solid plan for what you envision your ministry to be, because without plans, everything fails.

Speaker 1: 8:31

We know that I should have used that verse for today, right? But again, plant your seeds on good, fertile soil and you will reap the fruit. You will see the fruits of your labor. You will reach the people that God needs you to reach. And it's not about you, right? It's not about oh, I wish I had more traffic to my Christian blog, the me and the my and all that. No, but that traffic coming to your ministry, that traffic that is people being impacted, that is possibly people who are learning about Jesus for the first time, that is people that may have shied away from their faith and whatever they read from your ministry something you say in your writing maybe that's what gets them to come back to Jesus. So, while we like to think like, oh, I have a lot of traffic, yes, the numbers are great, but the numbers go beyond what it means to you as an individual, the meaning is more powerful in how it is actually impacting the kingdom as a whole. So, anyway, I hope this was helpful. Like I said, this was the number one question I get asked more than anything else is how do I get more traffic, how do we get people to read my blog? And so I hope this kind of helped you maybe take a step back and kind of view all of this blocking stuff from a little bit different perspective, so that you can start doing it right, so you can start doing the things that really are going to have an impact towards your goal.

Speaker 1: 9:55

All right, friends, be sure to follow us here on the podcast If you're not already doing that. Don't forget to have a Facebook group. So if you're trying to build your blog, your ministry, hop over there. Those link is in the show notes. Share this with a friend. Any fellow Christian bloggers that you think might could use this information and remember we're going to close, as we always do that If you aren't using the internet to influence others towards Jesus, the enemy will use it to influence them away from him. All right, guys, god bless and have a great week, bye, bye.