Here are 8 tips for writing for your next church website.
You're working on a new website for your church! Or, it's time to refresh some content on your existing webpages.
You're ready to write. You're praying for inspiration. You want to share compelling content that will engage with users and guide them to meaningful next steps in their faith journey.
However, are you wondering how to get started with your web writing? Ever struggle with writer's block? Out of time and need to write as efficiently as possible?
We've all been there and we want to encourage you. You can do this!
Here are eight great website writing tips. These are proven tips from real-life Fishhook church clients who have had great success getting new content written for their websites.
- Get specific about what needs to be written. Organize the webpages where content is needed by listing them in a Google doc, spreadsheet, project management tool, etc.
- Identify the person and/or people on your team who can make this web writing happen. Who is talented and motivated as a writer? Who understands your mission, culture and the story you want to tell through your website? Who has the time?
- Assign one person the ultimate responsibility for the web content. This one person doesn't need to do all the writing, but they will do quite a bit of it. Then, he or she will be responsible for overseeing the full writing project, getting others involved, making sure the deadlines are being met and other related details.
- Begin working on the content right away. Don't delay! It's encouraging to get content down on paper (or the computer screen). Jump in to start writing swiftly - even if you're questioning or doubting how the words are flowing. You can always come back and edit or refine at a later time. Just get started.
- It's about budgeting hours to make the new website a priority! With one of our clients, one person was overseeing some 90 pages of content creation. And, they got it done quickly! How?! This church budgeted a certain number of hours for this person to do this work in a certain span of time. Then, those hours were worked. There was margin and time given for this person to make this project a priority.
- It's about earlier deadlines. This same team set a deadline for the content to be written earlier than when Fishhook needed it from them to continue building their new website. They worked to an early deadline, then still had a few extra days to fine tune and tweak the content.
- Get creative with your time and team as you do this writing. We had a church client recently schedule a one-day session with their team to work on their content in a room together until it was done. They were highly motivated to do this work as a group. They were done in about four hours.
- Remember, less is more when it comes to web content. Writing clearly and concisely should be the priority. Look at your list of webpages and consider what is NOT needed. And delete them. Or with any chunk of writing you plan to do for an individual section or page for your website, see if you can cut that writing in half. Less is more since most web users want to quickly scan headlines, key words and simple sentences.
Click here to download this Website Content Template and get an outline for writing and organizing all your content.
We wish you the very best in your web writing!
