One extremely helpful yet underused aspect of social media marketing is the potential for increased search engine exposure. Most people do not realize it, but social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are a secret weapon in developing your organization’s SEO strategy. While it is true that your website and blog must be search engine optimized, good SEO practices applied to social media marketing can increase traffic to your website as well. 

Some little-known facts about social media SEO:

• Twitter and Facebook profiles often appear on page one of Google results for keyword phrases contained within the profile information. 

• YouTube videos with relevant keywords are now included in page one Google search results along with competing websites.

• Facebook users often search for keyword phrases using the Facebook search engine; recent status messages including those keywords appear in the search results.

It is a growing strategy to use these different social media websites to drive more traffic to user profiles and primary websites through SEO optimization of profiles and YouTube video titles. The more connections you make on social media sites, the more traffic you can drive to your official website. Search engine users often click on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube videos related to their searches, even when they were not specifically searching for their information on these sites. Social media connects real people to the ideas they share, and will help connect more internet users to your organization.

Stay tuned for more on developing your social media campaign, and go to http://www.churchmarketing.tv for SEO lessons and resources.

I personally REALLY like the video on the home page- describing the concepts behind it. (Though I kind of hate the process that make churches do in order to try it out. But that's just me.)

So, if you've got a church interested in social media - I think you ought to bite the bullet and try it out while it's still free. 

Learn more here: http://tableproject.org/

Greetings!!

(I'm very excited to start this discussion.:)

Have you been considering starting a business (especially an online company) to help bring in money for your church or ministry?

If so, I'd LOVE to hear from you! Please leave a comment below and post a link to your website and share a little about your vision.

If you don't want to share publicly, just send me an email to churchmarketingtv {at} gmail.com.

If you have not yet started, but are considering this idea, I want to hear from you too. This is my passion! Helping people get started. So you should also shoot me a note in the comments area, and I'll share with you some thoughts and resources.

Two HIGHLY Recommended Resources

Here are two very encouraging and enlightening books to show you the potential of getting an internet based company up and running. This would be for those who don't have any idea of how they could start and business.

The CRUSH IT book is about using pure social media marketing strategy wrapped around your passion and your dna to become a business. 

>>Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion 

The 4-Hour Work Week is about breaking out of traditional thinking, working smarter so you have time NOW to live your passions and dreams and NOT waiting until you're 65+ years old, retired and just tired. I think every Christian should read and apply some of his points.

>>The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated: Expanded and Updated, With Over 100 New Pages of Cutting-Edge Content.

(Note: The above links are affiliate links to Amazon.com. Note 2: They are not Christian books so beware of undignified language.)

Our Video Case Study on a Business that Funds a Ministry 

Lastly, here is a link to our latest video case-study & marketing analysis. We look at a business website that a guy uses to help fund his ministry. 

Don't forget to comment and share your business which funds your ministry below!!

This past December, we began inviting churches and ministries to submit their website for a professional analysis and review.

Those selected would be used in a case study to help others learn ways to improve the effectiveness of their website.

So here comes our first video case study and website analysis. www.SimpleGospelTruth.com

This is an 11 minutes video - covering 3 areas of concern:

(1) Encouraging Sales & Donations
(2) Communicating to New Visitors
(3) Motivating Event / Service Attendance

Follow this link to watch the video.

If you have questions or comments, please leave them below.

If you are interested in having an anaysis in your website - follow this link to sign up.

In our Google Marketing Course - we provide 5 video lessons with 2 bonus lessons cover how a church

can understand how Google works as well as optimize it for search engine rankings on the front page for a

local search.

Recently I found a some additional ideas for improving the rankings of one's Google Local listings.

This information was found on the blog of leveltendesign.com.

Hello everyone. 

I just uploaded a second video regarding prayer request forms. 

I wanted to personally show you some very cool and creative ideas to spice up the way your prayer request form works. 

I really believe that you can really increase the value of your website by engaging the visitors in receive prayer from you ministry. 

Anyway, it's all very valuable if you are just getting started. 

Here is the video. 

Prayer request forms are a super simple way to encourage genuine visitor engagement. Think about it. Most of the time we are constantly trying to get people to GIVE us donations, COME to our meetings, SUPPORT our projects, or BUY our products. It doesn't take long for people to assume that you are not really concerned about them. No, that red blinking donations button (with bold/italicized scriptures for motivation) communicates your real concern.

Now, what if you took a few steps back from the hard sell and instead made it overtly clear that you really wanted to help them?

"How can WE help YOU?"
"Can I pray for you?"
"Would you like prayer support?"
"Do you have any struggles in need of accountability or counseling"
"Are you looking for friends or community?"

Putting up a graphic or a text link like one of the above phrases ( linking to a prayer request form ) would dramatically change the results of your website.

If you are investing time and effort to get visits and hits, friends and followers, subscribers or fans - you need to have a way to get people to really connecting to your ministry.

Prayer request forms are a great way to do this.

For those who are not tech savvy - I created a step-by-step video to help you implement your own form.

No matter what your technical ability; if you can open and operate email, you can create your own prayer request form for any website or blog.

Best of all, this training will cost you absolutely nothing! Just about 10 or 11 minutes.

Here is the page with the video: http://members.churchmarketing.tv/newest-course/19-super-easy-prayer-request-...

Please send feedback or questions to the comments area below!

This video introduces our web conversion and visitor engagement series. Our first full series for the blog.

I hope you enjoy it! Below the video are more details.

Here are some of the web conversion tools we'll be covering. ( Some in more detail than others. )

Donation and Standard Sales - Paypal
Downloadable Product (audio, e-book etc.) Sales - E-Junkie
Contact Forms, Prayer Request Forms, etc. WuFoo
Event Registration & Marketing - Eventbrite
Measuring of Web Stats & Visitor Activity - Google Analytics
Plus other tools...

Stay tuned for the step-by-step lessons.