What are you going to write about? Another post about how you think that Rob Bell’s glasses are too flashy? But this time from the angle that he can’t possibly be a real Christian because those black frames are far more distracting than braided hair was to the Corinthians?
One of the first things you need to do when you’re starting a blog is to pick your intended audience. We previously talked about the three main audiences that people in ministry could aim for. One thing that I forgot to say is that any one of these audiences is plenty for a single blog. It’s probably not best to have your target audience and your supporters coming to the same blog (there are exceptions to this rule, but you’ll probably know for sure when those are).
For example, I am on the DC Metro Team (for the US Campus Ministry). We are developing 3 distinct and separate portions of our website:
- DCCru.com – This hosts our basic info, events we’re hosting, contact info, a short gospel presentation and links to our resources. This is the catch-all for all of our students whether they’re believers or not, therefore all the info on this portion is on the proverbial bottom shelf and easy to grasp for everyone.
- blog.DCCru.com – This portion will primarily be for students who are involved with our movements or students who are not believers but are “friends of the movement” (i.e., they hang out with some of our students and they regularly come to our community events) so we’ll add more of the stuff that the staff is reading in our times in the Word, YouTube clips, or even excerpts from books we’re reading. This is intended to encourage growth in our believing students and provide for better conversations with the “friends of the movement.”
- partners.DCCru.com – This is the least developed, it’s the location of updates and prayer requests for our prayer, financial and volunteer partners.
Each of these blogs have very specific categories for what we put on there. There’s not prayer requests on the main site, there’s not blanket prayer requests on the student blog, and there’s not encouraging bits of videos of sermons on the partners site (usually). As our team thinks through the things that we need to promote or let people know about online it filters to what I put where as far as the content of each of our sites.
As you write for your site(s), you have to ask as you write each post, “Who am I writing to and how does this fit with my main message to these people?” If you can’t answer these questions you need to re-think that post idea.
Who are you writing for?
What are you writing about?
