Debunking Misconceptions: The Purpose of Christian Blogging Ep. 8

Ever wondered where the personal diary ends and the Christian blog begins? Get ready to debunk the myths and misconceptions as we shine a light on the true purpose of Christian blogging: to provide valuable, search query-driven content that addresses our readers' struggles and questions. No fluff, no personal ruminations - just pure, purposeful, and most importantly, helpful content. 

Hang on, there's more! Ever felt lost in the internet wilderness, unsure of who your ministry is truly serving? We've all been there! But worry no more! This episode will guide you through the process of defining your target audience and understanding what they're looking for online. Let's harness the power of the internet to spread Jesus' message more effectively and bring souls closer to Him. Because if we don't use the web for good, the enemy certainly will for the opposite. So, sit back, tune in, get empowered, and let's bring more Jesus online together!

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 Fox: 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. Hey there. So welcome to the Kingdom Blogger onboarding series. So my name is LeeAnn and I am sort of the mind behind the Kingdom Bloggers Ministry, our website, the training courses and just the amazing, you know ministry of men and women mostly women around the world that are coming together to fill the internet with more biblical, jesus Christ-filled content, because we know the world needs more of Jesus. So I decided to. For those of you who are brand new to this blogging thing or maybe you've been doing it for a while and you just really haven't seen any success from it I created this what I call onboarding series. The purpose of it is to really kind of give you a layout of the blogging world, how it works and some very important things that you want to know and understand as you get started on this journey if you want to be successful at it. And so I've compiled, you know, a lot of questions that I've been asked, problems that people have had, myths and misunderstandings that people have presented to me over the years and kind of came up with some very important topics.

LeeAnn Fox: 1:34

So this particular video we are going to talk about literally what is a Christian blog? You know, when people come into this blogging thing, I think many have a very big misconception about what blogging actually is, and that's whether you're a Christian blogger or you know, just like other stuff parenting, finance, whatever. What is a blog? So, in simple terms, a blog for our purposes, and I will explain that in just a minute. But a blog for our purposes is basically a content driven website. Someone goes to Google or another search engine like Yahoo, we're being, or whatever, and they enter a query into that search box and when they hit enter, a page of results come up and they, of course, kind of scroll through and click on the ones that they find most interesting, that they feel will answer or provide, you know, whatever it is they were searching for. So we call that answering the search query. A blog for our purposes is where you write content to answer those search queries and at the end of the day, if nobody is literally Googling and I'm going to use Googling, google and Googling as an overarching, but I mean any search engine we don't really say Yahoo, Bing or Duck Duck Go right, but Googling is the basic explanation of going to the internet and searching for something. So just know that I'm talking about all certain. If we're not writing content that is satisfying their search queries, our content will never be found.

LeeAnn Fox: 3:01

The misunderstanding that many new bloggers have when they come into this journey is that they can start a Christian blog or any type of blog with the mindset of I am going to write about whatever, right, maybe I want to help with women, grow stronger in their faith. I want to help, like Christian coaching, I want to coach women to this and that and the other. The problem with that is the approach we take to writing. The content tends to be from an I, from a me perspective in what I think the reader needs. But more often than not people aren't Googling what they need. In that sense, we Google very specific things and that thing could literally be a recipe for dinner. It could be things we literally need an answer to it could be an actual question. You know what does the Bible say about something? Or it can be looking for types of resources like Bible studies and so forth, and then there's a whole I'm not going to go into very like deep detail about the different kinds of searches. At the end of the day, it's very important that you understand and know how to do the research on what your audience, who you're trying to reach, what kind of things are they Googling?

LeeAnn Fox: 4:09

So again, this is the number one biggest misconception that I have seen over the years in how people start their blogs and do it for many, many years, and then, of course, they don't see any success with it, and by success I don't necessarily mean monetarily Success, meaning getting traffic to your site right, like naturally getting traffic to your site. If you're not seeing that, it's because you're not writing what people are looking for. So, to put it bluntly and I say this with love, but I'm here to be tough love, blogging, tough love. That's what I'm here to be, here for you. But in a nutshell, nobody cares what you did last summer, nobody cares about your feelings on a particular topic, nobody cares on how you think something should be or go or do or whatever. Nobody cares about you in that sense. And so what I mean by that is if you are creating a blog to share just your journey or your thoughts on things, or again, what you think people need, if you write it from a perspective of personal, like strictly personal, you're just kind of talking. That is not a blog for our purposes. That is more like a personal diary blog. So I should have said this at the beginning.

LeeAnn Fox: 5:19

There's two types of blogs. There is a personal blog and then there is a blog for the internet, and I think we get really misunderstand that concept because a lot of celebrities and magazines and other websites have a blog on top of what they do. But a personal blog really works for celebrities because people already know them and they literally follow the blog just to see what they're doing next in their life, because we're so obsessed with celebrities. Truth is, we're not celebrities. Nobody really cares to follow us around and know what we're doing, what we're eating and all these things, but what they want from us is help. They want help for particular struggles, pain points that they have in their lives, whether that be like with Bible study literally Bible study whether it be with being a Christian parent, whether it be with, you know, in a financial capacity, like how to budget for your family or something like that. Whatever it is, if you want it to be successful, a personal blog will not work because nobody's looking for what you think. They're looking for definitive answer, solutions, support, you know, things like that but again, that is tied to the very specific queries that they are putting in that search box.

LeeAnn Fox: 6:24

So I'm going to have another video in this series talking about SEO and answering search queries and over that to give you an overview of kind of what that looks like. But this first video was really really important because before you pay for host, before you start spending money on the things that you're going to need to build your website, start devoting the time and, you know, start getting the gray hair from all the time and stress right. It's just important that you understand what you're walking into and that you understand how this works so that you can start doing it correctly, because there's nothing worse than doing something for three or four years to realize I've been doing it wrong all this time. If that is you, you are not alone. I promise you.

LeeAnn Fox: 7:01

This is, like I said in the beginning, the most common issue misunderstanding myth, whatever you want to call it that I have seen and again, not just with Christian bloggers, with all bloggers. They think I'm just going to start a blog and share with the world what I want to share, and that's just simply not how it works. So I hope this was helpful. It's just really important that you understand what is a Christian blog, so you know what you need to prepare yourself for on this journey.

LeeAnn Fox: 7:26

In the next video in our onboarding series, we're going to talk a bit about defining your avatar, that is, your target audience, why it is so important, and kind of some tips on how to get started figuring out exactly what that person wants. Okay, so that's it for today. Thank you for joining us. Be sure to come back for our next episode, where we're going to really take a deep dive into learning how to define your target audience, figure out who your ministry is meant for and what they are searching for online. As always, just remember if you're not using the internet to share Jesus and bring people closer to him, the enemy is going to use it to take them away. All right, guys, talk to you soon. Have a blessed week, bye, bye.