Weekly Sermon Trailer Video

When people consider inviting a friend to church, the biggest questions on their mind is, "Who is giving the sermon this weekend and what are they going to talk about?"

Inviting a friend, co-worker, or neighbor to church is a big step outside of many people's comfort zone. What if that person finally sets foot in a church only to find out that this week is the "money talk" or a sermon by a guest pastor who doesn't nail the message like your normal pastor does?

As a church planting pastor, a great strategy that you can adopt to take some of that fear out of bringing new people to church is to create a 1-minute weekly video to tell people what you are teaching this Sunday.

In fact, creating a quick weekly sermon trailer can help you in a variety of ways:

1. Members of your church are more confident inviting new people to church.
2. If someone finds your church online and is considering a visit, they know exactly what they are going to get. (This is a very good thing)
3. It is a great connection point for people who have only attended 2 or 3 services and are still in the process of evaluating your church.
4. It builds great content to share across your different social networks. (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube)
5. Builds authority for your church on Google, thereby increasing your odds of showing up in the search results.

So, let's talk about some of the strategies and mechanics to get this up and running for your church plant!

What Should I Say in the Sermon Trailer Video?

First and foremost, don't say too much!  These videos should be about 1-minute in length.

I recommend these key talking points every week:

1. Start with a question - "Have you ever wondered why...",  "What would happen if....", "Has there been a time in your life..."
2. What you're teaching on Sunday - "This week at ABC church in CITYNAME, we are going to look at what the bible has to say about..."
3. What will they get out of it? - "My hope is that you'll walk away with a better understanding of how God can..."
4. Invitation - "We invite you to join us this Sunday at ABC church as we dive into this important topic."

Did you notice what was not included here?  I very intentionally left out any weekly church announcements from this video.  The main purpose of this video is to create a 30-60 second connection point with people outside of your church. Keep a single focus and tell them what they're going to learn on Sunday.

Filming Your Weekly Sermon Trailer Video

I recommend filming your weekly sermon trailer using your phone or the camera built into your laptop. There isn't need for exotic locations, a production crew or video editing... just have a basic script ready in your head and talk for 30-60 seconds. The only quality needed is to make that your audio comes through loud and clear (don't film yourself outside on a windy day or next to the highway and you're good to go!).

Remember who you are! A small local church plant is a wonderful thing and is an important part of what draws people to you.  A video where you trip up in the middle or the camera shakes a bit or your kids run across the background is AUTHENTIC. An authentic pastor is someone church shoppers can connect with.

Your produced video should be uploaded to YouTube. There are other great services out there like Vimeo, but YouTube is owned by Google and is the second largest search engine in the world so it doesn't make much sense to post your church videos anywhere else.

Marketing Plan to Share Your Sermon Trailer Video

Now we get to the fun part! In this section I'm going to outline a weekly marketing plan that you should delegate out to a volunteer in your church.  This plan will help you reach all three of your target audiences (church shoppers, current members, Google) in under 30 minutes a week.

First, the crazy church marketing graphic!

Every piece of content that your church creates should have a solid marketing plan to back it up.  Why spend timing producing videos or writing blogs if nobody will ever see it?  Let's walk through the steps listed in this graphic.

Church YouTube Channel

As mentioned before, Google owns YouTube.  When you host your video on YouTube you are leveraging that massive search network to get your content and your church discovered online.

To do this right you need to understand the basics of Search Engine Optimization.  The rules change all the time on SEO, but in general you just need to remember two things:

1. Can a robot (Google) understand what my content is about? Does that same robot know that I am a CHURCH in CITY/STATE?
1. Is my content any good? Do people watch it, like it, share it, etc.

In order for Google to understand what your content is about, you should think in terms of keywords.  Both in what you say and what you write. The most important SEO keywords for a church are "church" and your geographic location. Keep SEO simple.

When you load your video to YouTube, the title should not be:
Sermon Trailer on Jonah

The title of your video should be something like:
Sermon Trailer on Jonah - Imprint Church in Woodinville WA

Don't worry if it sounds clunky. When you share the video through social media you can manipulate the title so it says whatever you want. Your main job right now is to convince Google that your tiny church plant is a real place that deserves to be ranked in their search engine.

In the description of your video, the same rules about keyword apply. Be sure to include both the name of your church and your specific geographic location.

Important! If someone finds your video on YouTube, the most important thing you need to do is get them off of YouTube and on to your website! To do this, always include a link to your church near the top of your video description. If you type in the full url to your church website including http://www YouTube will automatically convert it to a link after you click save. Give people a reason to click, such as, "Find our service times at..." or "Learn more about us at..."

Church Website

It is a good idea to keep a "Sermons" page on your website with archives of past sermon recordings and a look forward to what you are teaching next. You'll probably find that as a church plant this is one of the most viewed pages on your website.

The Sermons page on your website is a great place to embed that YouTube video along with a 1-2 sentence synopsis on what people will learn this Sunday.  This takes some discipline and commitment to keep the page current, so only use this strategy if you have a reliable volunteer.

Don't have a website yet? Read my post on What to Include on a Church Plant Website.

Facebook Page

You can either share a link to your YouTube video or upload your video directly into Facebook... either way is fine. I prefer sending all of our traffic through YouTube because of the Google connection. Include a short introduction on what the video is about to entice them to watch it.

I have an entire article on Should My Church Have a Facebook Fan Page if you need other ideas on what to share through Facebook.

Twitter

Post a single Tweet with a link to your video along with some a teaser on what on what they are going to learn this Sunday.  Be sure to use the hashtags #church and #yourcity (type in your city or regional nickname) so you can register in local searches on Twitter. This can be posted from your church account, the pastors account, or both.

Google+

I understand that Google+ isn't much in the way of a social network, but it is still owned by Google and you've got to keep building up your credibility in their eyes.  Utilizing the right keywords and connecting your content through YouTube and Google+ just adds some more SEO breadcrumbs out there for your church plant.

Post the YouTube video publicly to your church's Google+ Page and include the hashtag #cityname (same as above, put your real location there).

Weekly Email

Make your sermon trailer video the central focus in the weekly email you send out to your the folks on your email list. Keep giving them a reason to come back to see you and give them pointers on how they can get mentally prepared for church this Sunday.

These emails are a very easy piece of content for a member of your church to pass along to a friend or co-worker, so keep an "invitation mindset" as you write these up.

I would recommend sending this weekly email out on Friday afternoons, right as people are starting to map out their weekend plans.

Summarizing the Weekly Sermon Trailer Video

To wrap all of this up, let's walk through those key points again:

1. Be consistent and create this video every week.
2. The video should last 30-60 seconds.
3. Visual quality is not important, audio quality is important
4. Have a written marketing plan like the one I shared here that you follow like clockwork every week
5. Post your content to a variety of channels to make sure you reach your members, church shoppers, and the search engines.

Have fun with these weekly sermon trailer videos and be sure to let your personality come out!

Should My Church Have a Facebook Fan Page?

Have you ever wondered if it is worth the time to build and manage a page for your church plant on Facebook? The answer is YES. 

In this article on Church Plant Marketing, I am going to walk through why you need a fan page, how to build up followers, and very specific ideas that you can use to find church shoppers out in your communities.

Let's start with a basic primer on the different types of accounts you can create on Facebook:

Facebook Personal Account - Your personal account is about you (the pastor) and only you.  This is how you connect personally with people through social media and talk about your joys, struggles, passions, mistakes, and adventures. It is pictures of the wife and kids, other content you enjoy, and a way to let others know that you are thinking about them. Don't create a personal account for your church.

Facebook Page (aka Fan Page, Business Page, etc) - This is page that is built for a business, organization, or common collection of people.  This blog post is all about building a Facebook Page for your church.

Facebook Groups - These are forums where people can gather and discuss topics of interest in a more collaborative manner.

Why a Church Needs a Facebook Page

Here are the reasons that I recommend that every church starts up a Fan Page.

1. This is an important communication channel. Building a Facebook Page is just like managing an email list, a Twitter account, and a YouTube page... it opens up a new line of communication between you and your attendees. 70% of your members will ignore the weekly email you send out, a Facebook Page is a way to reach some of those people.
2. Your Facebook Page is an invitation engine that provides a very tactful way for your current members to invite their friends, family, co-workers, and neighbors to church. Churches love printing out postcards for Easter service that are supposed to be handed out to neighbors. Your Facebook Page is that concept on steroids.
3. Church shoppers can see what your church is really like. A church website is a brochure and frankly isn't all that trustworthy when you're looking for a new church.  A Facebook Page will let people get a true view of what your church is all about and can close the deal on getting them to visit you on a Sunday.

What a Facebook Page will NOT do for your church.

1. It won't create interaction among your members.  The days are long-gone of people meeting and interacting through a Fan Page.  This is a broadcast channel, not a walkie talkie.
2. It isn't a sharing platform. If your members post content to your channel, it will probably never see the light of day. Only posts made by the page admin(s) will rise to the top.

It is important to keep in mind that Facebook is a moving target that changes the rules all the time. At any point they can flip a switch that renders everything you know useless, so be sure to always stay current with how the platform works and to watch your analytics.

Building Your Church Fan Page on Facebook

The most important bit of advice I can give you when it comes to building that Facebook Fan Page is this: people are never coming back!  Once a person Likes your Page, all of your communications are going show up in their news feed. This is completely normal, but you need to understand this so you don't spend obsessive amounts of time (or even worse pay an outside consultant) to build up a beautiful Fan Page for your church. Building your Church Fan Page should take less than 30 minutes.

That being said, you still want to have a decent looking page for the church shoppers that visit and to ensure that people don't think you've gone out of business.  Here are a few key areas where I would recommend you spend some time when setting up.

Cover Photo - This is the big rectangular picture across the top of the page. I strongly recommend that you make this a picture of people worshiping in your church on Sunday morning. As a church shopper, I want to know if I'm going to be in my comfort zone when I visit you.

About - You can include both a short and a long description of your church.  The odds that a human being will read this are ridiculously low, but this description can make your page easier to find for the search engines and when people are searching on Facebook.

Tabs - Use the tabs area as a way to connect people to your other communication channels and to your top content on Facebook. The four tabs that I recommend are:

1. Photos
2. Events
3. A link to your YouTube channel
4. Subscribe to email

 

How To Get "Likes" On Your Church's Facebook Fan Page

How do you actually get people to like your page so this communication channel is worth using? If nobody Likes your page, all of the communications you send out through this channel are a complete waste of time.

The first thing you need to do is be very specific with your regular church attendees and tell them repeatedly to like you on Facebook.  Do this with ease and consistency by plugging your Facebook Page on these communication channels in the church.

• A prominent link on every page of your Church Website
• A sentence and Facebook logo in every printed weekly bulletin
• Projected on the wall (or TV Screens) both before and after your church service
• Include a link in the weekly email. Build this into your email template so you don't have to remember every week.
• Include a link from your YouTube channel

Next, include Facebook as part of the conversation as individual opportunities arise. When members like and share your content you've just opened your church up to their local connections.

• Tell them you'll share the link to the video clip or other media you used in a sermon
• To RSVP for upcoming events (more on this below)
• Announce that pictures from church events will be posted to your page
• Post discussion questions and the recording from this today's sermon

Finally, it's perfectly alright to just outright ask people to Like your Fan Page.  Mention it occasionally during the announcements time of your service and don't be shy about sending out a special email every few months or so to let people know all of the ways they can connect with your church.

Be honest with your members... tell them that one of the main goals of having your church on Facebook is to invite more people from the community to attend. Every time they like or share your content, they are sending an invitation to people they know. 

What Kind of Posts Should a Church Plant Write on Facebook?

You've now got your church Fan Page built... gold star! In order to build a following and get your posts ranking higher on Facebook (Facebook serves up the content that they think each individual person will engage with the most) you are going to need to deliver compelling content on a consistent basis.  This is a commitment and you are going to need somebody in your church to step up and take this on!

I would recommend posting a comment to Facebook several times per week, but never more than once a day. There are two general types of posts outlined below: business and pleasure.

Your "business" posts are going to be a bit less interesting and probably won't get much engagement, but they are still very important to make.  Here are ideas on what to post:

• Video preview of what you are going to talk about in this Sunday's sermon.
• This week's sermon notes, discussion questions, and recording.
• What music did you play in church this week, link to one song by the professional artist on YouTube. (Hint: Music is a major deciding factor for church shoppers)

Your "pleasure" posts are all about the church community. These are what the church shoppers see that makes them understand what your church is all about, that you are normal people, and that they can feel comfortable visiting you.

• Photos from events, small group meeting, volunteer activities, potlucks, Sunday service, people working at the church, etc.  If you learn nothing else from this article, be sure you post a ton of pictures and tag as many people in the photos as possible.
• Show people what kind of volunteer work the church is involved in and invite them to attend.
• Provide sneak peeks into small groups, community groups, fun trips, and other "not on Sunday" activities.
• Tell people about upcoming events where they can get plugged in.
• Share milestones and other small victories, these are what make being part of a church plant so cool!
• Thank your individual members who are making an impact in your church. Post a picture of them brewing coffee or a video of them directing traffic in the parking lot.

More Ways to Grow Your Church with a Facebook Fan Page

Here are a few more ideas that we've seen success with to help let the community know that your church is a place they should visit.

Events - These have been a big hit for us so far.  Facebook allows you to create an event, invite people you know, and collect RSVPs.  Even more importantly:

• When a person does RSVP for an event, it shows up on the timeline of their own Facebook friends. You just invited their sphere.
• It is easy for a member to invite a group of friends using the event page.
• You can use paid advertising through Facebook to broadcast your event even further .

Events on Facebook are a powerful tool, but you need to only use them for your major events like holiday services, all-church gatherings, etc. Don't use these to promote your weekly Sunday gathering, people will get sick of them and stop listening.

Checking In - Similar to Foursquare and Yelp, Facebook allows people to check in at locations with a registered Fan Page. As people are waiting for worship to begin or if you have meet/greet time in the middle of service, put a little reminder up on the screen for people to check in on Facebook. This is instant marketing for your church and a way for your members to publicly announce that they are proud to be a part of your church.

 Reviews - The search engines love websites with reviews.  Google prefers to serve up Yelp and Google reviews in the search results, but positive reviews on Facebook are a good way to affirm the decision by a church shopper to visit you this Sunday. Positive reviews on your Fan Page can be a good indicator for Facebook to serve up more of your content and open even more opportunities down the road.

All of the Facebook reviews we have received so far have been unsolicited.

Should My Church Purchase Advertising from Facebook?

Paid advertising through the social networks and the search engines is a good way to market your church plant, but it needs to be approached with a lot of caution.  I'm going to save this topic for another blog post, but when it comes to paid advertising on Facebook I would give these tips:

• Facebook advertising is great if you want to reach out to a specific demographic in your community.
• When a person likes your Fan Page it allows you to send marketing directly to them and/or their Facebook friends.  You probably just cringed when I said that! Follow your gut on what is appropriate and not appropriate in this respect.
• Events are my favorite thing to promote and have given us the best results.
• Sponsored posts have not given us a good return on the investment. I would not recommend them.
• I also don't recommend long-term ad campaigns on Facebook. Do your marketing in short bursts or your budget might rapidly disappear.

Like I said... this is another topic for another day!

Summarizing What You've Learned

Your church plant needs a Facebook Fan Page. It is one of the best free marketing tools you'll find out there and it allows you to establish trust-based marketing directly through the members of your church.

Don't obsess on what the Fan Page looks like, people will probably never come back.

Facebook is not your website, your website is not Facebook.  Your church website is a nice brochure for general information, whereas Facebook is a reflection of what day-to-day life is really like in your church plant.

Your Fan Page is all about finding church shoppers in your community and proving to them that you are a great group of people to live life with. Your Fan Page is not going to do much in the way of community-building for your existing church members.


Was this information useful? If so, please share this blog post with other church planting pastors.

Church Plant Pre-Launch Communication and Marketing Plan

Is it possible to have an internet presence for your church plant before the Sunday services even start?

In this blog post, I am going to walk through a marketing plan that will help a church plant start connecting within their local community and to build up their marketing channel momentum prior to launch. A church does not need to wait until their doors are open before they start building up their online presence.


I am going to refer to this graphic throughout the blog as your road map for pre-launch church plant marketing. Don't be scared... it will all make sense in just a few minutes!

Start With One Blog and One Video Per Month

People are going to want to know how things are coming with your church plant. At least once per month, I want you to write a blog post to provide your family, friends, and potential attendees with an update on what's happened in your church plant over the past month.

Planting a church is a fascinating story and an important way for you to start planting seeds in your local community.  This update can include things like:

• What's new?
• Where are you struggling?
• Where do you need help?
• Where are there opportunities to connect right now?

Be authentic. This is not a sales pitch for your church, this is more like a journal entry that you allow other people to read. As you accumulate these month by month they'll also create a very interesting historical look back to your church's origins.

So, let's talk about the technical delivery on this one.

Blog Post
Your blog should be posted on your church website.  If your church doesn't have a website yet, it's time to very seriously start thinking about building one. Your new church website can be as simple these three pages just to get off the ground initially:

1. Home page - Big fat picture of your logo
2. About page - Share your vision for the church, give your contact information, share your social media channels, and let them subscribe for email updates.
3. Blog page - Let them see how things are coming along.

Your blog post should be written in your own voice and include pictures to help make everything a reality for your readers. From an SEO perspective, be sure to include the name of your city, state, and church name as appropriate within the post.

YouTube Video
Now it's time to do a little bit of recycling.  Shoot a video of yourself that basically recites what you just wrote in your blog post.  Take the video using your cell phone and don't worry too much about production quality. The goal is to let people see your face, hear your voice, and connect with you as a human being.

If you haven't created a YouTube channel for your church, now is the time to do it.  Setup is simple and free, and this is going to be one of the cornerstones in your church marketing plan down the road.  

Upload this video to your church YouTube channel. Make sure the title and description includes the name of your church and the city/state... start leaving those breadcrumbs for Google to increase your odds in the search engines in the coming months.

Tie the Video and Blog Post Together
 And now the important part... just like it shows in the graphic, your blog post and update and video update need to co-exist.

1. Embed the video in your blog post.  Don't worry if you are duplicating information between the two, just include them both. Most blogging platforms make dropping a YouTube video in your blog post vvery easy.
2. Link to your blog post from the YouTube video. Any time you post content to YouTube it should ALWAYS link back to your website.  You can add a hyperlink in the video description by typing http://www.yourwebsite.com. in the description. YouTube will automatically create the hyperlink even though you won't immediately see it while you are typing.

Does that make sense? It's the same strategy I used in this blog if you look at the video up above and look at the description on the YouTube video page.

Sharing Your Pre-Launch Blog and Video Content

This is important... writing the blog and filming a video is not enough.  In my day job I've dubbed the term "post and pray marketing", which means you should just pray to the powers that be at Google that your content will magically show up in the search engines.  Any content that you develop should be distributed using a marketing plan similar to what we describe below.

As a future church plant, you need to be thinking about your communication channels. These channels are all of the ways that you will be able to reach out to people attending or interested in your church.  Email is not enough. Facebook is not enough. The printed weekly bulletin is not enough. Every person consumes information differently, or more specifically, is going to ignore just about every piece of marketing you throw at them.

Here is what I recommend to market your monthly church plant update. 

Email Marketing
It is essential to start building up your email distribution list because this is one of the most effective ways to reach people.

Your email can be short and sweet. Just provide a couple of sentences explaining what they're going to see in your blog post and use this as a chance to get them to follow your church on Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook Personal Account
Your friends, family, neighbors, and other contacts are all going to be interested in hearing this update.  While you never want to use your personal Facebook account to repeatedly thump people in the head with a bible, posting a monthly update on this major journey you are taking is completely appropriate and highly recommended.

Facebook Church Page
Here is another one of those building blocks you're going to need.  If you haven't already done so, head to https://www.facebook.com/pages/create/ and create a page for your church plant.

Now I'll be honest... at the time I'm writing this post Facebook is starting to be a pretty lousy tool for businesses to use to engage with their customers. However, if you can start getting people to follow your Facebook page, it opens one more communication channel. Facebook can work wonders to promote events, purchase local advertising, and to reach out to friends of friends of your "followers".

Learn how to build a church Facebook Fan Page

Twitter Personal Account
Again, share the journey with people you are connected to through Twitter.  If you aren't comfortable with Twitter or just don't like it, skip this step.  Twitter is a time commitment and requires ongoing engagement, so don't tweet as a person if you aren't going to go all in.

Twitter Church Account
Having a Twitter account for your church is another one of those building blocks you should get in place. You can get away with a little less engagement on your church account, just be sure to include hashtags of #church and #{your city} so your content is discoverable.

Google Plus
Google Plus is not a social network and shouldn't be viewed that way.  When you post your content on Google Plus, you are doing so for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  Sharing your content here is a just a good way to start building up your internet presence.

These posts will be made from your personal Google+ account.  Until you have a physical location for your church, it is pretty difficult to set up a business account.

I would recommend setting up an alternating month strategy... in even months you share the link to your blog post, in odd months you share the link to your YouTube video.  You're just flirting with Google at this point.

Summary

I hope that church planting pastors will find be able to build from this model as a way to build up their internet presence with a local community several months ahead of when their new church launches.

Feel free to leave me a comment below if there are any concepts that I can do a better job of describing or if there are other questions that I can help your church to answer.

What To Include on a Church Plant Website

Your church website has one question to answer... is it safe for me to come and visit this Sunday?

As I mentioned before, I have had the "mixed blessing" of being a long-term church shopper following moves to different cities with my wife and boys.  We are talking about reading hundreds of church websites and setting foot in at least 50 different churches. Finding a church has always been a source of angst for me.  It feel like a series of really bad dates!  In this blog post, I want to let you in on the kind of information that a church shopper is looking for when they go to your church website.

Your website is the qualifier. The person needs to be able to get the right information to decide if they would be comfortable visiting a live service.  Three things can happen once they get to your website:

1. They make an informed decision that perhaps your church just isn't right for them.  This is completely okay!
2. They decide that you are worth a Sunday morning visit to learn more.
3. Your website is so bad they think your church is out of business or lacks the right information so they decide it isn't safe to come see you.

Here's the thing.. most churches say the exact same thing on their websites. They teach from the Bible, all are welcome, and then there is a long mission statement that nobody has ever read except for the pastor.  

So what information do you REALLY need to have on your church plant website? Read on!

Every Church Website Should Include

Here is your checklist as you build that new church website. This is the information that made my decision to visit a church much easier when I was trying to find my new home church. There are no right answers to the questions below, you are just letting people know what to expect.

• Service times. Front and center.
• How long is the service?
• What is the format? (Worship time vs sermon time vs hanging out time)
• How big or small is your church?
• How long has your church been around?
• What does the music sound like? Give some me some links to songs on YouTube that I might hear on Sunday.
• How do people worship? Hands in the pockets vs clapping vs hands in the air vs dancing in the aisles?
• What is the denomination, affiliation, etc?
• Are the sermons any good? Can I hear one before coming?
• If I visit this weekend, is the lead pastor talking? About what?
• Do you have a kid's ministry program during the service?
• Do you have a program for my teenage kids?
• How do people connect Monday through Saturday? Do you have small groups, men's or women's ministry, sports teams, etc?
• Who is the pastor? Give me a written bio and a quick introduction video. "I started this church because..."
• Where is the church? Directions and parking.
• What is the church doing to help our community and the world?
• Is there coffee? (maybe this just a Seattle thing!)
• Show them some pictures so they can connect with your different demographics, see what people are wearing, know what it looks like inside the church, etc.

Most Church Websites Are Clones!

By providing the specific information listed above, you put it in the church shoppers hands to make an intelligent decision on their own.  As a church shopper, what I really want to know is will I be comfortable in your service and does your church meet my individual needs.  There is nothing more discouraging for church shoppers than visiting a church for the first time only to discover in the first 10 minutes that there is no way in heck that you'll ever come back.  You've just wasted one more Sunday in your quest for a home church.

Church Planters... Don't Pretend to be Big

Don't think that just because the mega church down the road has hired a big name media firm to build their website that you need to follow suit.  Funny enough, too much polish on a church website can actually scare people away.  Be exactly who you are... a church plant. A small community. Risk takers who want to advance God's word. A place where everyone matters. A church where you can't be anonymous. A place where people have "skin in the game" when it comes to building this dream.

Above All, Be Yourself

Choosing a church is an extremely personal and intimate decision that you will NOT make for that person. This isn't a sales pitch, this is a matter of providing them with the information they need. Be 100% honest and fairly specific about who you are and what makes your church tick. If you try to put on a generic facade most people won't connect with the experience and might not take the chance to visit you this Sunday.

What I Know About Church Plant Marketing

Hello and welcome to my blog! This is a project I am starting to share what I know about marketing with people who are brave enough to step out there and plant a new Christian Church.

There have been a lot of events over the past ten years that I feel make me a good candidate to teach on this topic:

• I have been a professional marketer since 2001. It is my full-time job and it is something I am wildly passionate about!
• I currently work for a company that teaches real estate agents how to market their business online. We focus on free and inexpensive ways to get found using online marketing.
• I have moved several times in recent year so I truly understand the "church shopping" experience. It can be quite unpleasant, but it doesn't have to be.
• I joined a church plant called +Imprint Church of Woodinville, WA  in the fall of 2012 and have been their volunteer marketing person since their launch.

Lately, it feels like I am starting to get more questions about some of the tricks and tactics we are using to help get our own church discovered in the search engines and through social media, so this blog is a place where I am going to reveal what works, what fails, and everything in between!

My intent is to teach church planting pastors and pastors of small churches the basics of marketing for free. I don't have any plans to build a business, this is just stuff I know and love that I want to share.

I truly hope that the ideas you read in my blog help your small church thrive and introduce you people who are looking for a church to call home.  They need you and you need them.... let's do this together!