Unlocking Success in Christian Blogging: Balancing Discipline, Education, and Faith for Organic Growth

Are you ready to unlock the secrets to successful Christian blogging? This episode is a no-holds-barred discussion on the hard truths that many Christian bloggers face. We chat about the trials and tribulations of putting in time, effort, and money into a blog, only to feel like you're spinning your wheels. But don't despair! Remember, success isn't measured in dollars and cents but in the lives you touch and influence through your God-given gifts.

Did you know that focus and discipline are your secret weapons in the blogging world? We dive into the essential elements of understanding your audience and crafting a strategic plan that works within your constraints. The lure of quick, easy traffic from social media can be tempting, but it's a sugary snack, not a hearty meal. We're not here just to boost traffic numbers; we want organic growth. 

But what's the recipe for genuine growth? Discipline and a little bit of education! Getting to grips with SEO can turbocharge your blog's reach, and setting realistic goals will keep you on track. Whether you're a blogging veteran or a fresh-faced newbie, we're here to help you use your voice to share the gospel online and reach more souls. It's not about fame or fortune; it's about using the tools God has given us to touch lives. So, tune in and let's get to work!

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, LeeAnn 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 everyone, leanne here from Kingdom Bloggers. So today I want to share with you three very hard truths to the Christian Blogger community, the reason I'm going to share this. You know I've been doing this for many years now and you know I see the success of many of those in our community, but more often, unfortunately, I see the lack of success. Now I do want to state that when I say success, I am not referring to earning income, although that could be a form of success for some. But to me, success is when you learn how to write content, you learn how to share the gift God has given you for writing and you know kind of embark upon the calling that he's put on your life as a Christian Blogger. When you use that and you start actually reaching people, reaching people in an organic way, meaning they go searching for you on Google or some search engine and they find your content. To me, that is the definition of success as a Christian Blogger, and so I just want to put that out there. It's not about money, although the financial blessings can come with that if that is something that you have as part of your goal, and there's nothing wrong with that but in and of itself, when I say success, as I'm in this video today, I'm talking about the ability to reach people, go into the nations and share the gospel right In a way that people hear it Like you can go in your closet and share it, but you're sharing it to the wall, you're sharing it to your clothes, hanging on the rack above your head. Nobody is receiving that word and, as Christian Bloggers, that is our calling. It is to use the tool of the internet, this worldly tool, and use it to take our gift that God has given us in sharing the gospel and putting it out there. That's kind of how all this work. God has called you to use the gift he's given you of writing or maybe understanding the Bible Like. My gift is not teaching the Bible. My gift is teaching those who do teach the Bible. So we all have different gifts in this realm and so, but learning how to use that gift and harness the power of the internet to reach more souls, for the kingdom of heaven, to pour into people, to provide biblical encouragement, to help people better understand the Bible, whatever it is, that is success as a Christian blogger.

LeeAnn Fox: 2:39

And so, unfortunately, what I see more often and I see more often, like the majority of what I see is not that it's the lack of success. What I see is women mostly. There are quite a few men in our community, but it's mostly women. So I'm kind of talking to you, spending time, spending money, getting gray hair, getting overwhelmed, getting burnt out, because you're going and going and going and you're not seeing any results. But, yeah, you keep going and sometimes you just quit altogether, which is even worse, because quitting on a journey to use a gift God's given you, god's given you, that's just not cool, that's not what he wants.

LeeAnn Fox: 3:17

And so I'm going to share some truths today, and they may be a little hard to hear, and I do say this with love, because my calling, my passion, is to help us dominate the internet for Jesus, for God's glory, to put more biblical content on the internet in a way that people can find it, so that we can pour into them from the computer screen, from our phone screen. That's the goal and that is my passion. Let's just kind of dive in, and again this I debated on even making this video honestly, because you know, many of you don't know me personally, like I have the women who've been through my boot camp or maybe that are in my, my blogging group or as part of my membership team, and they know me really well, and so they know when I say things that might seem harsh, I'm saying it with love, because being nice, you know, critical is important. It's important to be critically honest if you want to achieve results. Right, and I have a joke about, like you know, ask someone you trust to give you an honest feedback of something like, say, the layout of your site or whatever, and the good Christian thing to say would be oh, it looks nice, oh it looks nice. Never helped anybody, right, if there's something wrong with it, say there's something wrong with it so they can fix it, so that it will be more fruitful. Because ultimately that's the goal we are to be fruitful with what we are doing, and so I just want to say that up front. I'm not saying this from a place of I know what I'm talking about and you guys don't like, it's totally not that but God has blessed me with the knowledge of how this internet stuff works, and as evident in not only the three sites that I manage of course that's not my written content, so I take no credit for that but also through the many women and men who have taken some of the advice, the instructional training and actually put it to work, and now they are seeing the fruits of their labor.

LeeAnn Fox: 5:05

As far as reaching people in their moment of need, I just got an email from one of my members. She was just like I can't believe. I got this email from someone from a post, or it was actually a comment on a blog post, and this person was just in the worst time of I don't remember the exact moment of life they were in, it was just a really bad place and they went searching for information on whatever this was. They found her content and then they replied to her in a comment on the blog post about how they found her content when they need it at most. That is the fruitfulness we're talking about reaching people when they need it, where they are seeking it, and that is that little Google box. Okay, let's dive in. And again, this might be painful for some of you, but again, sometimes we need it to be uncomfortable and painful in order for us to grow and learn and then go on to be fruitful and do the things God has called us to do.

LeeAnn Fox: 6:00

So the first one, then one reason that most Christian bloggers will never see the success that they are hoping for. Again, success meaning just simply reaching people organically is lack focus. I mean, honestly, I talk to so many bloggers. They reach out to me via email or I do the blog audits with them and even just in my Facebook groups, and I'll kind of talk to them, give them some direction, like here's what I think you should do, and then they go on their way and then they come back around. You know, maybe six months, a year later, or sometimes a couple of years later. Honestly, I've actually had a few recently reached out to me that I'm like didn't I that was like several years ago, that you were active in the group, and so forth.

LeeAnn Fox: 6:42

Focus is often the most common reason they are struggling. They have none. It's like, well, I'm just blogging, I have no focus in really who I'm blogging to or what I'm blogging about. I'm just sharing Jesus. Well, that's nice, you know, we should be sharing Jesus.

LeeAnn Fox: 6:55

You have to have focus. You have to have a specific audience that you're trying to reach and then you have to research that audience. You can't just say, well, I want to reach Christian women and this is what I think they need, so I'm going to just write about what I think they need. It just doesn't work that way. You have to figure out what are they physically searching for online as it pertains to biblical content or, you know, spiritual growth or whatever it is. But you have to take the time to do the research, okay, and then stay focused on that.

LeeAnn Fox: 7:22

But focus isn't always just about, like the content itself, like writing the right content. It is so hard to stay focused in the blogging world. Why? Because I know you've all signed up for every blogger, blogging blogger, like I'm a blogging blogger and all these other ones not Christian, but just regular blogging bloggers and so your inbox every day is flooded with it. It's best thing to help you reach more people and get more traffic and boost your Instagram and all these things and show you're like focus over here and now you're chasing these rabbit trails of things that are simply not going to be fruitful in the current season that you're in. If you've followed me for any amount of time, I talk about seasons of blogging. You know and I revert back to Genesis like in the beginning got created and over those six days, certain things were done in a very specific order because the thing after it depended on the thing before it. And for us as bloggers, the most important thing is traffic, organic traffic, because everything else stems from that. Instagram, facebook, twitter all those things are great, but those are not initial season. Those are not like day one genesis kind of things. Social media is not a search engine, right, and social media it's here and it's gone, and so if you're fending ornate amount of times making the social media gods happy, you're not building a foundation that's going to prove by success from your ministry, your blog.

LeeAnn Fox: 8:44

Having the focus, having a goal and staying focused on what that goal is is very, very important, and most bloggers simply do not have that. They just wake up Monday morning and it's like what am I going to write about today? And then you just go on writing about it and you just keep pumping out more irrelevant content every single week, and when I say irrelevant, it might be beautifully written and heartfelt. Irrelevant as it pertains to Google, as it pertains to people searching for what you just wrote, and so that's what I mean by irrelevant. Not that your content's not good. I've read most of y'all's content and it's beautiful, but it's not relevant from an SEO perspective.

LeeAnn Fox: 9:19

And in this digital discipleship realm, seo is how we do what we need to do. It is the key to reaching the people, and so it's just very, very important that you get focus. Figure out what your focus is, which you know. Spoiler alert it should be traffic. It should be organic traffic, reaching people who are seeking what you write. That is like your number one goal that you should be focusing on. Okay, number two this can't be any one of these three that I'm going to talk about is any more important than the other, because they're kind of all equally important. But number two is discipline.

LeeAnn Fox: 9:50

Discipline is often the most difficult thing for people to get a hold of to stay disciplined even when things are not going the way they should Like. We just had this big Google update and I've seen so many Christian bloggers, in our different Facebook groups and other groups too, just freaking out and they're like it's been what? Two weeks now, I think that it finished rolling out and they're still spending like all day in these groups trying to figure stuff out. You took your eye off the ball right, so for two weeks you've been doing like this unproductive thing of worrying about what Google does. Google does what Google does, and this is always going to be a part of this game. But to have discipline, to keep going forward with your content plan that you should have to stay focused on the goal right. Either two go together, but discipline is so hard. You know. I can relate it to like weight loss. The number one reason people don't lose weight when they go on these.

LeeAnn Fox: 10:41

I'm going to start exercising, I'm going to start doing these things is because they like discipline. So like, if I think about it, I'll do it, but I don't get up with a. This is what I'm going to do today and I will not go to bed until I've accomplished it. Now I know many of you have small children, babies, jobs outside the home, all these different things, and those are not excuses, and what I mean by that is your goals and what you have planned. As far as you know your ministry, you should be creating your plan according to the available time you have, in other words, like I do this, full time. So my plan would look significantly different than, say, a young mother that just had a new baby or someone who has two kids and they work outside the home. The amount of hours you have per week are not the same as mine, but nevertheless you should still have a plan and stay disciplined to what your plan is, even if it means staying up past the kids bedtime, getting up an hour early, and I related it to kind of weight loss.

LeeAnn Fox: 11:35

Or you know, in January everyone joins the gym, but by March the gym memberships start tapering down, or even just people who have memberships go and they're still paying for it because they just like discipline, get up every morning, get up before the family, drive yourself to the gym and get your workout on right. But most people just don't lack, they lack the discipline to do that, and I just use the gym and weight loss as an example because I think that's one, as women two, but mostly women that we can relate to. Blogging is no different. You have to stay disciplined to what your goals are if you want to see them accomplish. For me and I'm not saying this and be like, oh yeah, she's so awesome, machines got such discipline you know, I was in the military so I do have that going for me I had to learn discipline whether I wanted to or not, but it has helped me be as successful as not me be successful, but it helped my ministry be as successful as it has been because I have been very disciplined to say this is what I'm going to accomplish. And I do what I have to do, sometimes at the expense of fun, because, again, I put God first in this ministry first. Now I'm not saying like, don't make dinner for your family and don't forget about your kids and all that. That's not what I'm saying. But for me in my season, you know like I could go out, I could do different things, I could go, but I set those as I can't do that until this is done or I will set pockets of time to say during, this time is when I'm going to get these things done and if not, I don't get to go to bed until whatever.

LeeAnn Fox: 13:00

Honestly, in my first couple of years of blogging. This might sound kind of silly, but I mean, do it whatever works for you. My advice, my thing that I love to do is to get pedicures. I don't really do my nails because I garden, I have chickens and so it would be a waste, but I love to get pedicures. I'm in South Texas, so flip-flops are a 12 month out of the year clothing right, like we literally wear flip-flops every day of the year, and so that's my thing, like that's my selfish indulgence indulgence, if you will and so I would set goals, like when it come about time and I'm like feet are looking kind of nappy, need to go get a pedicure and I would see what like tasks I had set for the week or the month or whatever. I could not go get my pedicure until those things were done. And there were a few times when, by the time I got there, like actually went to the salon, like there was hardly any of the last nail stuff on my nails because it had taken me so long to do that.

LeeAnn Fox: 13:55

But I discipline myself to say I can't do this until I do this. And so discipline, I would say, might be the hardest thing for most bloggers to do. And let me put this in perspective. So you know, like I said, people reach out to me all the time. I have continuous conversations with people in my Facebook groups, the, I would say, the women in my group, my masterminds. Those women are pretty disciplined and, as a result, they are seeing huge successes and fruitfulness. But just people that reach out and ask for blog audits or strategy sessions and things like that over the years and then they come back around. You know I keep notes on what I talk to them about every time. So if they do come back, I can be like okay, what did we talk about last time here? So I told you to do, or recommended you to do, and they're like well, yeah, but you know, I just really, you know, I just didn't.

LeeAnn Fox: 14:36

Oftentimes they don't even have a reason like a legitimate reason. Like a legitimate reason COVID happened and maybe you or spouse or a kid or somebody like COVID and was like really sick. Okay, that's a legitimate reason. That doesn't fall into the lack of discipline, that's like a legitimate reason. Or maybe you had to go back to work because someone lost a job or something. So there's legitimate reason.

LeeAnn Fox: 14:59

But truthfully, y'all so many times when I'm like, well, why didn't you, you know, do this or did you do that? And they're like, well, no, I mean like I just I don't know. Like it's literally the end. That is lack of discipline. Like when you know what you're supposed to do and you've been given, like here's, especially when you paid for that, because my blog audits aren't free Like it's like 25 bucks or 50 bucks an hour, depending, and then you pay for the advice but then you don't take it, but you can't provide a legitimate like reason for why Like you're, like I don't know, I just, you know, got sidetracked or whatever. That is a lack of discipline and that is probably the number one reason that you're not being successful, that most Christian bloggers honestly are not seeing the success or the fruits of their labor. If that's you get ahold of it. Whatever you have to do set timer, set little alerts on your phone, get serious so that you can start seeing the results. Like this is kind of motivational. Speaking one-on-one in any you know, like Christian count, christian success count. You know those kind of coaches right, like that's the number one thing.

LeeAnn Fox: 16:00

Set a goal and discipline yourself to what it's gonna take you to get to those goals but unfortunately and this is not just in blogging or this is not just Christian bloggers I mentioned New Year's resolutions. Everybody's all gung-ho in January, but by March, and then definitely into April, it's like eh well, I didn't start, so why now? Right? And they're like I'll start again in January. That is not discipline. Like once you recognize that you haven't been making progress, don't put it off. You're like okay, starting today, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna get serious, because when you get serious, that's when you're gonna see results. Okay, all right.

LeeAnn Fox: 16:34

So we talked about focus and we talked about discipline, and the last thing would be education. Honestly, and just to clarify, this is not to like sell my courses. I have plenty of bloggers who have followed me and exclusively like just engorged themselves in my free content because I have tutorials on YouTube, I have tutorials on the blog, I answer questions in the Facebook group. I have a few students or not students, few bloggers, who are seeing success because they discipline themselves to do what needed to be done, even without taking formal courses. So, again, this is not like you need to go by my course. This is not a promotional video, okay, but SEO is important.

LeeAnn Fox: 17:13

If you don't grasp and fully understand SEO. Spoiler alert SEO is not about a keyword. I still hear people like well, my keyword is fake, that's not a keyword. Keyword sprinkling, putting your keyword all over the blog post that's keyword stuffing. Google doesn't like that.

LeeAnn Fox: 17:30

But understanding SEO like the whole part of SEO, it's not just one specific thing and I promise it's really not hard to understand once you take the time to learn it. But SEO is the literally the thing that will help you get that. The gift God has given you. The calling is put on your life with that gift. That is the thing you need to get it out there, and so if you don't take the time to truly learn it, it's just gonna be spinning your circles, spinning your wheels right, going in circles, doing the same thing over and over again. I see it in all the groups that, well, I've been blogging for five years and I'm doing this. I'm doing that, making more pens for Pinterest. I'm scheduling stuff out on social media. This week I spent five hours scheduling out making stuff for social media. I'm just like why that is wheel spinning right there. That is completely unproductive and unfruitful as it pertains to trying to get people to your blog.

LeeAnn Fox: 18:24

Understanding SEO. You understand that traffic is the foundation for everything else and you have to learn to put your time. What little bit you do have. Again, if you only have a few hours a week, you need to use those few hours with intention. But you also need to know how all of the tasks that you spend your week doing like what's the return on that investment. Social media is a time suck. You should spend very little time there. More time should be spent either researching or writing new content on your blog. Stop guest posting for all these other blogs. Like, if you don't already have organic traffic to your own site, why are you writing for other people? You know those are the things understanding about SEO, and that's why we're keeping this in the education part, but I guess all that stuff could fall into the focus and discipline too. You have to understand how it all works, the bigger picture of SEO and digital content writing, so that you know what tasks are actually fruitful in this season.

LeeAnn Fox: 19:19

Not to say you should never be on social media. Obviously, I'm sort of on social media, so that actually that brings up a good point. If you have followed Kingdom Blogs for any amount of time, you've probably rarely seen me publish a blog post on Facebook, like I have a Facebook page for Kingdom Bloggers, but I don't share my new blog posts there. Every now and then I'll get in the mood to be on Instagram where I make silly videos and stuff, but then I'm gone. I'm just like whatever. Social media is just like whatever, because I have other things to do that are actually going to bring a return on that time investment, meaning traffic to my site For all of you creating product, selling them from your blog and we're not talking about creating an Etsy store.

LeeAnn Fox: 19:58

If you have an Etsy store, make sure you do your research before you just randomly start putting products there. If you're creating products simply to sell from your blog, but you have no traffic on your blog, why are you creating product? There's no audience, so you get frustrated because nobody's buying your products, but there's nobody coming in the store. You need that traffic first. Traffic is the foundation for everything else that you want, and so the educational part is learning SEO, learning about blog structure, and again, all of this information is freely available on my YouTube channel as well as on the blog.

LeeAnn Fox: 20:30

So, anyway, again I know this was a little harsh and again I say it with love, but it hurts me, it pains me when you know people, especially if I've spoken to you in the past and given you advice and say here's what I would do, here's what I recommend, and then you just totally don't take any of that advice. And not that you disregard my advice, like I'm not hurt by that, I'm like whatever. It's not that you don't take the advice, it's that you continue doing what you're doing, knowing that what you're doing is not working, like I'm pretty sure that's the definition of insanity. And so if you truly want to make good on the calling God has put on your life, on the gift of writing and you know biblical understanding, whatever it is if you want to make good on that and be fruitful, which is what he wants, then it's time to get serious.

LeeAnn Fox: 21:19

Y'all people are hurting. You know there's so many things going on in the world today. That's my dog sneezing, by the way, in the background. I don't know if y'all could hear that, but people need what we have to offer. People need your gift. God's given you these gifts for such a time as this. Okay, the online space is where everyone is. There's so much hatred there. There's so much evil in just everything, and it's our content that is in that space. It's going to be the light for those who need it most.

LeeAnn Fox: 21:44

But if you don't take the time to learn what you need to learn and discipline and focus get focus and discipline yourself to do what you need to do, you are wasting the gift that God has given you. You're just wasting it, and that's, I think, the harsh truth, that I'll end with that, the harsh truth. Again. I say this with love. I see so much amazing talent that is being wasted in the sense that nobody's receiving it. When you're doing those share threads and you're just the link-ups and things like that, you're literally just sharing it with your coworkers.

LeeAnn Fox: 22:15

I'm in all the groups, I see who's in them and it's not to spy on people, it's just so when you come to me and ask for advice, I can give you honest advice. Then I can also see when you disregard the advice and then I can tell you like well, this is why you're spending all this time spending your real right. So stop spending your real, get serious, because the internet needs your content, the internet needs your gift and God's calling on your life. Like I said I mean like you say it again, it's for such a time as this. It is because the internet needs more light. It needs more Christian writers to just flood the internet waves with the message of Jesus, the hope, the encouragement and everything. So, anyway, I'll stop talking now. I hope this message resonates with someone today.

LeeAnn Fox: 22:57

Again, I thought a while I should have been thinking about it for a couple of days whether to even make this video, because I don't want it to seem like I'm this just self-righteous teacher, and I just know it's not about that. I mean, I make mistakes too, but I discipline myself to be able to recognize and fit the mistake like you know, reverse it or whatever you want to call it. It's important for us as disciples, as digital disciples, right, internet warriors, whatever you want to call it that we understand how this game works so that we can win it right. And we can't do that without focus, without discipline and without education. Honestly, like you got to know how to do these things and then you have to stay focused and disciplined to do them.