Expand Your Ministry Reach to the Ends of the Earth

For nearly 2000 years of church history, if a ministry wanted to have global impact, it had to build up to it, create international connections, and spend a lot of money.  But today, with the Internet, any ministry can have a world wide reach very quickly and for virtually no cost.  Does your ministry have a global vision?

The Internet has spread throughout the world.  In fact there are areas in third-world nations that do not have electricity running to their homes, but they do have Internet access through smart phones and Internet centers in their towns and villages run off of solar power.  This gives ministries an unprecedented ability to reach out globally without having to have a physical presence in those global regions and, thus, making international ministry possible for nearly any church or ministry.

Search marketing provides a way for ministries to reach out globally.

Create a website (or section of your website) that is optimized for keywords with your target geographical region.  So, if you want to reach out to people in Bangladesh, optimize for keywords that include “Bangladesh” or one of Bangladesh’s cities, like Dhaka.  You can also create content that is optimized for a specific culture or language.  Foreign search engines and the foreign versions of Google and Bing usually have much less competition.  So, you have a very good chance of ranking well for targeted keywords with a little optimization.

When you create the content for your global audience, there are a few things you need to consider:

1. Language. If you want to reach people in a place where they speak another language, be sure to create the content in their language.  Also, there are a lot of places where people speak English, but it is not their native language.  You may run into communication problems by using English in these situations.  Keep in mind that some words have very different meanings in different countries.  Also, people tend to want to pray and worship in their own language.  So, if you are including prayer and worship in your outreach, it’s best to use their native language.

2. Customs. Not everyone acts the same as Americans…in fact most don’t.  So, be sure you understand the customs and culture of the people you are reaching out to before your create your content or you may inadvertently offend the people.  I’m reminded of a friend of mine who traveled to South America and got delayed in customs.  They saw their contact across the room and wanted to signal them that everything was fine; so, they gave the “ok” hand signal only to find out later that in the country they were visiting that was the equivalent of us using our middle finger.

3. Internet Connection Speed. Some parts of the world have very fast Internet.  For them you can create audio and video and lots of graphics.  Many other parts of the world; however, are still dealing with the old AOL dial-up speeds.  For them, presenting them with a video would be completely useless.

4. Be Careful. When global ministry is done in person, you can judge if people are legitimate or if someone is trying to con you.  You can visit places and see what’s going on.  And even then some ministries are still conned.  When doing global ministry online, it’s even harder to determine what is legit.  So, be careful, especially with requests for money.

The search engines provide amazing opportunities to reach people across the globe, but always remember that in the end relationships are still key to any ministry.  So, use the search engines as a starting point and then be sure to provide ways to connect with the people and form relationships.

Photos by uncultured and darrentunnicliff

Has your ministry used search marketing to reach other parts of the world?

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