Would it be strange to still say, “Happy New Year”? I can’t believe the month of January is virtually gone and this is our first post of 2010. We’ve been busy over at our other small business marketing site, but we’ve neglected adding any content here.
I came across this post about the importance of capturing your sermons into a podcast. While many churches reading our blog have likely been at this for a while, it should be mentioned anyway. To summarize, the author mentions 6 reasons to make your sermons available via podcast:
- For those who missed the service, they can still listen to the sermon. Perfect for shut-ins or people who are simply sick or out of town one week.
- Having a podcast affords you promotional content – your members can link to it in emails to their friends, tweet about it on Twitter or pass on their link to their huge network of friends on Facebook.
- Easy distribution eliminates (or cuts down) the effort and cost of making CDs and having to mail those out – some folks will still want the traditional method, but you can significantly cut down on costs by moving toward digital delivery.
- A second-time around is best – perhaps your message is so profound someone wants to listen to it again. Or a small group may want to listen to a segment to enhance their discussion during the following week.
- While we know there is alot to our congregations besides the preacher, many visitors count the weekly message as a significant factor in their online search. Making your sermon available in full (or better, an abbreviated snippet), you give visitors a touch point and open the door for their visit.
- Historical archiving establishes a reservoir of content that can be repurposed by members of the church for group study, promotion, or even the preacher himself to use in his blog (you are blogging, aren’t you?)
Although I spent 10 years doing church-planting missionary work in French-speaking, Benin, West Africa, I don’t have a sermon podcast – but you can subscribe to our podcast about ministry marketing and church communication.
-Randy
image source: podcastmysermons.com