A nearly indispensable communication tool for you ’support raisers’ out there is the blog. Don’t know what a blog is yet (hint… you’re reading one)? Read what is a blog?. You can set up your own blog for free on Blogger or Word Press (among others). This is a great way to supplement your email communication and have your thoughts and ideas posted for anyone to be referred to. Plus, you can ‘publish’ it to an RSS feed and encourage your supporters to subscribe to the feed. It’s like having an electronic newspaper delivered to their homepage/blog-reader whenever you publish new content.
The free blogs will provide you with your own web address within their own domain (i.e. ‘thisismynewblog.wordpress.com’), but you can also purchase your own domain name and use their interface to create and post all of your content. Now your address can be www.thisismynewblog.com (as long as your desired domain name is available for purchase). A word to the wise: it is a good idea to separate your new church website, intended to be viewed by indigenous people in your area, from your blog, which is intended for people you are asking for money or to pray for personal issues about you and your family. I hope the reason is obvious.
A great personal spin on this medium is the video blog. Now you can record a short message from yourself to your supporters and they will get to see and hear you. They won’t have to guess about the tone of voice you’re trying to use in a typed blog (especially useful to you snarky wise-crackers out there), and they get the benefit of your non-verbal communication: body language.
Just like the email newsletter, you need to be disciplined about doing this on a routine basis; once a week should be about right. If you don’t post a new blog for more than a month, you will have lost your audience and an opportunity to easily communicate with them.
One last thought: I know you’re thinking, “You want me to send a weekly email and write a weekly post? How am I going to fit that into my already jam-packed schedule?” One way to maximize your time is to write the blog first with content that you would have sent in the email newsletter. Then compose the email using the first 2 or 3 sentences of the blog as a hook, adding a ‘read more’ link back to your blog. Voila, a 2-fer! And you thought it couldn’t be done…
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