One of the most common complaints I often hear among newer Christian bloggers is that they can't seem to get traffic to their blog. When I take a look at their content, it becomes apparently clear as to why. They aren't providing a “help” through their content.
When people search the internet (type something into the Google search box) they are looking for some sort of answer. Your blog content needs to provide an answer to something they are searching for.
While it is totally OK to have a personal blog where you journal pieces of your life, this is not the type of blog that will produce organic traffic. A personal blog is really only meant for sharing life stuff with family and friends and you must continually provide them the link to your newest post (or via your email list).
The general public (and I mean this in the nicest way possible) doesn't really care about your general daily life.
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Knowing Your Target Audience
When you write a blog post, you must write it in a way that provides some sort of answer or solves a problem. And you need to ensure you are writing it based on the keywords that people are actually searching for (search queries).
What were the last things you typed into that search box? A dinner recipe? Help or resources for living with a chronic illness? A Bible study? Why do husbands cheat? Bible Verses to Pray about something?
Do you have a target audience for your Christian blog? If not, you really should sit down and decide on the very specific person you want to help through your content. Writing to “all Christians” isn't really helpful.
When you have a very specific person in mind, you will know exactly what he/she needs and can write content around that. Your blog content should fill in the Who, What, How.
- Who are you writing to?
- What are you helping them with?
- How are you helping them with it?
If you aren't able to clearly answer these questions yet with your content, you probably haven't yet really defined your target audience.
Who is Your Audience
The first step to define your audience is to define your actual niche. Even within the Christian blogging niche, you need to further define it into more of a “sub” niche.
For example (these are just a few examples):
- Bible Study Niche
- Spiritual Growth for Christian Women
- Homeschool
- Christian Parenting
The more focused your niche, the better you are able to serve a particular need and stay focused on serving that need.
Related: 17 Profitable Christian Blog Niches
What Are You Helping Them With
Once you define your “who” you must decide on your “what” as far as the help your blog will offer.
When writing a blog post, think of the topic you are planning to write about. If someone were looking for this topic, what might they be asking or wanting to know about it? Whatever you are writing about needs to add value to someone's life in the way of an answer, encouragement, support, or literally “how to” do something.
- As a Bible Study blogger, for example, your help can range from offering various tips and resources to help with Bible study time. It can also be actual Bible Studies.
- A Spiritual Growth blog can offer a variety of things such as simple Bible study tips/resources along with practical tips to help women grow in their walk with Christ.
- A Homeschool blog offers various resources and tips to help homeschool parents.
- A Christian Parenting blog can offer encouragement to moms along with basic parenting tips, resources, and hacks.
Always keep your target audience in mind when thinking of how to offer that help. Write about it in a way that speaks directly to them and not just in a general nature.
How Are You Helping Them With It
The “how” is where you really have your work cut out for you! The “how” comes down to doing SEO research to find the exact things your target audience is actually going to the internet for help with.
- As a Bible study blogger, it might be something as simple as “How to Do a SOAP Study” or “Free Bible Study Printables.”
- For a Christian Parenting blog audience, it might be something like “how to teach kids to love Jesus.”
It is important that you understand how to do keyword research and learn how to satisfy the search query.
How Are They Searching For What You Are Offering?
Now that you've determined what you want to offer your audience, it is imperative that you find out HOW they are searching for it (or if they are actually searching for it). At the end of the day, there are a lot of things we know people need but if they aren't physically going to Google and searching for it, they will never find you.
Things people are absolutely NOT searching for in their queries:
- personal testimonies
- personal journey stories
Things people ARE searching for:
- How to do something (tutorials)
- Tips/Ideas for doing something
- Resources for something (prayer journal templates, bible study printables, bible study resources, etc)
- What the Bible says about something
- Actual Bible study/devotionals
PLEASE WATCH THIS VIDEO to better understand how to find out what they are searching for.
What is Your Help?
Being a Christian blogger is such a wonderful and exciting way to connect with more people and show them all about God's love. In order to reach (and keep) them, however, you must write in a way that answers their many questions on a given topic.
Write in a way that offers help to the new mom. Encouragement and tips for someone living with chronic illness. How to stay close to God as a young person today. Actionable steps on how to apply the Word of God to the daily struggles of life today.
I highly recommend that you take the Defining Your Ministry Avatar (free) course. This will help you really define it as well as do the necessary research for finding out what they need.
Once you've really narrowed and focused down your target audience, you'll be able to write for them much easier. Before drafting a new post, always ask yourself “Is anyone looking for this?” If the answer is “no” then you probably shouldn't write it!
As Christian bloggers, we truly have the power to bring more people to knowing Christ. But in order to do that (through our content), it is imperative that we understand how all this online stuff works!
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