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Is marketing inherently manipulative, superficial, annoying, worldly and even… evil?  Or can Christian churches and ministries do marketing in an honest way to communicate the opportunities they provide to connect with God and grow spiritually?

We took a deeper look at that question on our Church Marketing Online blog.

Check out Is Marketing Evil?

What do you think?  Is marketing evil?  Does your church or ministry do marketing?

If you’re not sure, you’re not alone.  Pastors and church leaders need to know that just because their church has a website doesn’t mean it will be displayed in the search engine results when people in their community search for a church online.

As we near Internet Evangelism Day (April 27), if you pastor a church or administer a church website one of the best things you can do for IED is facilitate a meeting to discuss how to better use your church website to connect with people in your community.  A key part of that is assessing your church website’s visibility in search engines and developing a plan to improve it.

You may be saying to yourself, “Uhhh, that sounds like a good idea, but I don’t really understand search engines, I don’t know how to assess my church website’s visibility in search engines, and I wouldn’t even know where to start to improve it.�

Well you’re in luck.  This article will provide an overview, which you can use to lead that meeting and develop a great plan so your church can reach more people in your community.

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If you are one of those people whose head is spinning with all the new Internet terms like blog, podcast, folksonomy, or netiquette, here’s one more: webinar.  In this article, I’ll explain in plain English what a webinar is, how it works, why you should consider participating in one or even hosting one.  Plus I’ll include examples from a previous webinar and provide details on how you can participate in an informative webinar tomorrow on the NE1 Web Page Editor at no cost.

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On June 22, the movie Evan Almighty opens in theaters across the U.S. It’s the latest movie to be heavily marketed to Christians. In conjunction with the movie a new website has been launched called Ark Almighty, which bills itself as a way to help churches live out Jesus’ call to love one another by facilitating the posting and fulfilling of needs within the church. Is this really a generous effort to help others or just a slick movie marketing campaign?
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My family recently went through one of those seemingly endless cycles of sickness.  If you’re a parent you know what I’m talking about.  My daughter, Ainsley, came home from kindergarten one afternoon with a fever and missed the next few days of school.  Then the following week we got a call from my son, Aidyn’s, preschool saying he had a runny nose and needed to be picked up early, and he missed a couple days of school.  I was next with a 24-hour bug, and then it was my wife, Jennifer’s, turn before Ainsley went down with her second bout.  (Miraculously my 3 month old daughter, Aryn, escaped illness entirely.)  Moreover, almost all of our friends and family with school-age children seemed to also go through same thing where pretty much someone was sick for several weeks.  

So, which virus do you want to catch?  The one with the fever?  The runny nose?  The 24-hour flu? (Hint: it’s not biological)
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I hope everyone in America had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  I’m sure you spent a great deal of time discussing Search Engine Marketing over Turkey and pie.  At night you dreamed of great search rankings, when you were able to sleep at all.  Well let me put your mind and ease as I finish up my two-part article on Search Engine Marketing looking at Link Building and Pay-Per-Click search engine advertising. (more…)

Over the past couple of weeks Mark has been writing about e-commerce, who should have it and what is involved.  E-commerce can be a great tool for your website and business, but having a simple, convenient shopping cart on your website doesn’t do you much good if nobody ever sees it.  I could decide to sell my car for two dollars (it’s worth at least $5), but it wouldn’t sell if nobody knew it was for sale.  So how do you get visitors?  Marketing. (more…)

Seriously.  Sly and I talked about his upcoming movie.  OK, so it was really just Sly doing the talking… and it was a conference call with who knows how many hundreds or thousands of other people on the line, but it was interesting never the less for several reasons.  (more…)

Last week I wrote about the 12 things every band website needs.  Since, undoubtedly, you have already made sure every one of those 12 things are now a part of your website, it’s now time to promote your band and your fabulous new website.  You can have a phenomenal band and the most amazing band website, but if no one knows about or can’t find it, it doesn’t do any good.  So here are 12 things you can do to promote your band and your band’s website. (more…)

Search engines are very important for websites these days with over 50% of website visitors coming from search engines. In fact, according to a recent report, search is the second most popular activity on the web, just behind email.  “Ok, so being listed in the major search engines like Google and Yahoo is important, but what’s the deal with these Christian search engines?” you say, “Are they important?”  I’m so glad you asked.  First, in case the name didn’t give it away, Christian search engines are search engines and directories which list only Christian websites.  Of course, one example would be the OurChurch.Com Christian Search engine.  Are Christian search engines important for your website?

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