At the time of writing this it’s the end of July 2020; difficult to believe that it was March that we last posted a tech corner, and I was encouraging people to use the website. Enter COVID stage left… In five months our usage of the website has gone from a weekly average of 210 hits a week in Feb to four times that, at an average of 820hits per week in May / June. This is now dropping as we go into the summer holidays. I would encourage you to continue using the Website as it currently forms a major part of our church’s outreach.
There are, in essence, two groups of people that use the website, the church attendees and the visitors. We try to use the website to communicate information to those that stumble across us, either because they were Googling Lossie, or looking for a church in the area. This can be information about service times, where we meet, etc. or in more depth, it could be about what we believe, or our vision for the church in Lossiemouth. Since Covid-19 we are also getting a handful of visitors from far places. In all cases we hope that the website would attract individuals, and give the impression that LBC is a place where they would be welcome and find friendship. In order for this to happen, they need to be able to find us in the first instance.
The second group are our own attendees. There are two objectives to consider here. Getting resources like the sermons, etc. out to individuals and making the site more accessible to the above visitors. The way the search engines work is a closely guarded secret, but there are some known parameters. Broadly speaking, the more a page is used and the more connections/links it has, the more it will rise up the search engine’s rankings. Our aim is to have it on the front page; top ten… Consequently, if we have a good site that the congregation use regularly, then we will be and remain on the front page of the search engines, making us accessible to the visiting public.
So…. Have a look at our Facebook / Vimeo / Youtube pages –subscribe and like them so you are sent updates and above all share them with your friends and workmates.
The lossiebaptist.org web page has a wide range of features (190 pages) many of which may be of interest to you. Please consider helping with the website by doing some or all of the following.
- If you haven’t had a look yet? please do.
- Use the features on a regular basis (daily bible readings, bible study pages, weather forecast, tide times, services, church diary).
- Use the links on each page to make recommendations (and hence links) on your own social media pages. Tweet to hashtag #lossiebc, ‘like’ on Facebook, or just send email recommendations to friends.
- Encourage visitors to the church to sign our visitors book online.
If you are an organisational leader – please check your page and give me updates at least every 6 months or so – let’s not get stale! If you are a member of a group that is part of the fellowship – have you read your page?- Finally, give me suggestions about what you would like on the site…
Neil & the team…
Very good post.