There’s a well-known phrase in the marketing world, “Content is King”. A Duck Duck Go or Google search for content is king will result in 3 TRILLION results. It’s a big idea that has been accepted and embraced in part due to Google and all other search sites valuing content as a key indicator of legitimacy of a site and how helpful a site is to a searcher. “Content is king,” rests upon the idea that content is a top priority for any successful business. It leads to the concept of centering messaging on good content, a welcome and well-documented shift from how people learn, and decide on products, places, and expertise to follow. The church can and should take note of this trend and learn how to use and create content to stay visible online. After all, content is king because content is what runs SEO and SEO is how you are found online. 

Here are the 15 content ideas you can use for your church:

1. Lists – People love simple content and informative content, so lists can be helpful and easy to consume (and write). This piece of content you are reading is a list. Lists can be sermon topics, listing scripture around a topic, making a theology case with a list of reasons or a list of events you plan to have for the year. There are many ways a church could utilize or format content in a list.
   
2. Personal Videos – Videos are a newer kind of content that is king. It’s highly popular on social media and is being boosted by all the current popular platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, YouTube).  You can “go live” on social media and post the video later, you can introduce sermon summaries Sunday night or Monday morning, you could have a devotion day or time monthly, and/or you could cover any new event or change in your church by posting a video announcement. Use video to your advantage.
   
3. Stories – Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube are all going towards boosting and pushing harder on stories. But stories on this list can be both video or image “stories” on the platforms as well as a process of writing or general posting blogs or images with text to tell stories. People listen to and love stories (story structure – intro, rise/conflict, climax or peak of conflict, return or fall, and revelation or resolution), and they are more memorable than just a scripture or single image.
   
4. How-to or Tutorials – Create or use content that helps your congregation or visitors to learn something or how to do something. You can walk them through an idea with a video or write a step-by-step article on becoming a member or getting the most out of church experiences. Things like that draw attention quickly.
   
5. Announcements or News – Create livestreams, write articles about, or push a video announcement letting your audience know the latest news, this should be more factual, think breaking news. Say the church needs to shut down for say a virus or major natural disaster, you’ll want to get the word out immediately and this is a great way to do that and help you be seen.
   
6. Case Study or Testimonial – This content type is a way to share how you have helped a client in the business world, what problem you solved that they had and why or how. In church, we’re trying to solve the problem of being lost to being found, being dead to sin and being alive in Christ so the case study is really a testimonial in the church setting. Using those video or audio testimonials that you may be able to get will be enormously helpful.
   
7. Event Recap –  If you’ve just had an event you can recap it and give some insight and perspective for those who weren’t able to attend. Use video, write a summary, and post on social media.
   
8. Interviews – Maybe you know someone else who has a good story or is an expert in something relevant. Interview them and create a blog post, video interview or add to a podcast. We can help with this if you aren’t sure how to get started.
   
9. FAQs – Get asked the same questions over and over again? Answer them in blog format. This is like the combination of a list and an article. Search engines love these because they help people find the answers they are looking for, it also helps when you use organic searches to help draft some of the FAQs you provide. You can do this by seeing what others are doing or using a tool like SEMRush or Google Analytics to see what common searches your site gets.
   
10. Survey or Poll – Use this as an opportunity to ask people their opinion or gather some information. Just surround it with some “Why” and it can be an article or blog post. Turn it into a podcast episode where you address the answers or ask more questions and answer them on the podcast.
    
11. Roundup – Ask several people the same question and see how they respond. Then add some commentary about the subject and you have a post.
    
12. Ministry Spotlight – Spotlight another ministry that you think people need to be aware of. This is a great way to connect the body of Christ, to create content, and to share valuable ministry connections for them and for you the church. An interview can be made out of this as well.
    
13. Statistics – People love information. Humans can only consume so much information at one time but numbers stick out to many people. If you’ve found an interesting statistic, talk about it and it’s implications or the lack thereof. Stats can start off a blog post, become a social media awareness post, and more. Example, only 30% of professing Christians attend church regularly. Stats can wake people up and also divide people so use them gracefully and weigh them appropriately.
    
14. Personal Success or Failure – We all have ups and downs. Write about both to be vulnerable and transparent with authenticity to help build trust. Use humility, grace, and humor to share your successes and failures in ministry. People love it when you can help them avoid a “pitfall”, which is a highly popular marketing term that always gets clicks because people love cautionary tales. Who wouldn’t want to be warned before they step into a hole?
    
15. Sermons – Publish sermon videos, write summaries, post sermons as blogs and podcasts. You can even add sermon media to blog posts or collect sermons and create topical posts to highlight what you talk about and what’s important to the church ministry. 

There are millions of content ideas for churches out there. Church is, after all, a content hub! When we think about content being king, we want to remember that it doesn’t need to be hard to create content, you do it all the time for church! Spread each piece of content as far as possible by adapting and reusing it to all the platforms and modes available. All the content ideas we just listed can be turned into blog posts, interviews, topical posts, podcasts, videos, social media highlights, stories, and many other variations of content. There are a variety of ways you can spread the gospel, engage audiences (new and familiar), and be seen more frequently and more easily online. Work smarter, not harder.

If you need help coming up with more content ideas or need help with your website highlighting your content let us know. You can always sign up for a free 20-minute consultation for help on any ideas for your church online strategy.