This blogger writes about the difference between joy and happiness, and how we can find joy in any situation. Even when we lack happiness.
Even if you are facing some unhappy moments today, think of the joy we have in the Lord.
via Jenifer Metzger - Sweet Blessings: Rejoice Even in Unhappy Times.
This blogger asks us an important question, are we growing in our faith? There are stages of faith and we need to progress and continue to grow.
Unlike the physical growth, spiritual growth may not come with time. We can be in the same stage for years without actually growing spiritually and the sad part is, we don’t evaluate like we do for professional and physical growth.
This blogger reflects on some nearby ripening mango trees, and how he realized that we need to constantly bear spiritual fruits. As the trees selflessly produce fruit for the enjoyment of others, so we should be bearing fruit for those around us.
A tree that produces juicy, sweet fruit does so not for its own enjoyment. Instead, their fruit is enjoyed by others.
This beautiful post is from a blogger who gently reminds us that we don't have to live our lives frozen in fear.
God’s Word reminds us dozens of times – through command and through the personal experiences of Saints who have come before us – that we don’t need to be afraid. Living in fear of this or that possibly happening is living opposite to the freedom we’ve been given in Christ.
This post is from a blogger who faced a very tough situation which could have ruined her attitude - but it didn't.
She says:
God needed to send me a clear message. Understand that whatever you are going through, these are for you also. God’s got this.
Writing a blog gives you a chance to reach the world with a message. Having a mailing list that your readers can subscribe too is a way to let them ask for more.
We've found there are a shocking number of bloggers who don't, and so we aim to do something about it.
Introducing our first Skill Building Intensive: Start Your Own Mailing List.
We're going to teach you how its done and guide you through it step by step - and we're doing it at a price everyone can afford.
Have you ever found yourself so focused on what your readers might think/want/expect that you freeze up? It's hard to find a blogger who hasn't!
Kathy Strong shared an epiphany all Faithful Bloggers can benefit from.
A brief quote:
"He gently reminded me that all He has asked me to do is write. Not try and impress anyone, get people to like me, or even get more followers. He has told me to write and He will do the rest, what ever that will be!"
Read the whole post here: Pressure, what Pressure?
Our latest Group Writing Project is complete!
Messages About New Growth is available to you today. Download the PDF here.
We thank the following members of our Faithful Bloggers Community for submitting content perfect for the topic:
We encourage all of our contributors and everyone in our community to share this finished project with others - spread the encouragement far and wide!
If you are willing to write something exclusively for Faithful Bloggers and would like to be part of our next Group Writing Project, we'd love to have you join us.
It's an opportunity for you to submit a written essay that will be published as a collection here on the Faithful Bloggers website. Every participant will have permission to gift the collection to their own subscribers and readers as well, so our work will spread far and wide and touch as many lives as possible.
The theme is 'New Growth' in the life of believers.
Have you survived a long cold winter spiritually speaking and now feel like you're coming out of it with important lessons and fresh new fruit in your spiritual life? We'd love to hear your story and advice for those why may still be in a tough spot.
We'll be taking entries between 500 and 1000 words and our deadline is June 2nd. (That gives us just about two weeks - so we hope you'll jump right into it!)
Pop on over here to learn all about our first big Premium Virtual Event for the community!
My friend Kelly McCausey challenged her blog readers to create an infographic. I thought it sounded like fun and created the one below. Click on the image to view a bigger version. I would love to hear your thoughts especially since it was my first time creating one.
Finding good free Christian images for blog posts can be a real pain. You have to be careful browsing “free” stock photo websites. Use the wrong picture and you could end up with a letter from some not-so-nice lawyers…
Fortunately, there are a few places where you can find great images to use for free. Here are some of the best.
Morguefile has been a go to image resource for bloggers for a long time now. All of the images on the site are either in the public domain, or have no known copyright restrictions.
The one downside is that the search is a little clunky. So, instead, use this handy little google trick to find the image you’re looking for...
Go to Google’s image search and type: “site:morguefile.com keyword” (without the quotes).
Replace “keyword” with a word describing the type of image you’re after. I typed in “site:morguefile.com jesus” and found the image above in 20 seconds! You can use the same trick on other stock photo sites, but you have to make sure that all of their images are copyright free. Otherwise you may end up using a copyrighted image.
Prayers for Special Help is a small christian ministry that decided, “hey, we’re spending all this time creating great images, why not let other Christian bloggers use them too?”
They have a growing collection of beautiful bible verse pictures that are free to use. If you do use them, just provide a citation so that more people know where they can go to find more.
Need some high quality, high res images for your blog redesign? Unsplash is the place to go.
Though not strictly Christian themed, the photos on this site are some of the highest quality, high resolution copyright free images on the internet.
When I hear the word “clipart”, I think 90s church bulletins.
Well, I’m not going to lie, the images on this site are pretty dated. But, there are some great gems as well. I would just spend an hour combing through it, and download all the images you might want to use.
If you need images of historic places or people, the place to find them is Wikimedia Commons.
You may or may not know this, but all the content on Wikipedia is available to use under the creative commons license.
Finding images here is a real headache though. So, use the same google trick from earlier. Go to Google’s image search and type: “site:https://creativecommons.org/ keyword” to find the image you need.
Where do you find images to use on your blog? Let me know in the comments.
Find out More about Prayers for Special Help here: http://www.facebook.com/
Love is in the air! The one thing I love about Valentine’s Day is that it’s not only a day to celebrate your love with your significant other, children, and family, but it’s a day you can celebrate Jesus’ love as well!
Valentine’s Day is a popular holiday and bloggers usually take advantage of that for extra traffic to their blogs. However so many of the Valentine’s Day posts you will find are about what gifts to give that special someone or crafts. While those posts are great fun not a subject all bloggers can write about those types of posts.
Here are 5 unique ways you can celebrate Valentine’s Day on your blog:
However you end up celebrating Valentine’s Day on your blog, make it fun, enjoyable, and full of love.
What are you planning for your blog on Valentine’s Day?
I have been reading a lot of goal setting and keeping track of said goals. I discovered there isn't one fits all solution and goal setting and tracking is different for everyone. What works for one person might not work for another. One thing I did find in common though, and this something I have been saying along, is to write down your goals. Make them visual and put them somewhere you will actually see them on a daily basis.
While there are a lot of apps out there to help with goal tracking, I think I'm just going to stick with my pen and paper for now.
Below are some of my favorite blog posts about goals.
In this podcast Andy and I talk about ways you can help make your blog succeed in 2014! That's something we all want right? Success is different for everyone but these tips will help regardless of how you measure success.
Listen Now:
5 Tips To Help Your Blog Succeed in 2014
Pray - As Christians we know the importance prayer plays in our personal lives. It should play just as an important role in our blogging and business life.
Set a clear mission statement for your blog (aka core values) - If you don't have one, create one. If you do, review it and make sure you are keeping to it.
Keep your goals visible at all times - If a task doesn’t get you closer to your goal, don’t do it.
Connect with your readers - Learn how your readers use your website and where they hang out. If they are on Facebook, be very active on Facebook. If they are somewhere else, be there. If you don't have an email list you need to start one! Our email
Test out new ideas - Don’t be afraid to experiment
Links Mentioned in Podcast:
2014 is Coming. Is Your Blog Ready?
How to Plan A Christian Youth Camp: Organizing A Camp Team
What Worked in 2013
When planning for the New Year it’s important to see what worked last year. Checking your analytics and seeing which blog posts got the most traffic is one way to determine what worked.
According to Google Analytics the 10 most trafficked posts on Faithful Bloggers were:
Based on analytics I can tell people are interested in information about writing devotions, book reviews, sharing your testimony online, plugins, and blog security. I can now plan content in 2014 around these topics and interlink them. It gives readers the information they want and helps with SEO by interlinking.
Of course, site analytics, isn’t the only way to tell what worked for your blog. You can also check out your social media analytics and insights. Check your mailing list responses and open and click rates.
The important thing is to find out what worked last year and what didn’t. You don’t want to waste time focusing on content or ideas that were not successful last year this year. Focus on what’s working and continue to do it!
I’ve been hearing a lot about choosing one word for the New Year. It is suppose to be a word you can focus on and to help keep you on track all year long. I’ve never chosen a word for a year before and one Saturday night I read this post byNicole Dean. It really made me think – what would my word for 2014 be? The next day at church I had my answer.
My pastor was teaching out of Philippians 3:13-14 during Sunday school.
“Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
The word reach would not leave my mind. Even after we got home, ate lunch, and put the babies down for their naps, reach was still in the forefront of my mind. I knew the Lord was telling me – this is your word for 2014. Reach.
Have you chosen a word for 2014? Let me know in the comments!
In today's podcast Andy and I discuss the importance of including a photo in every single blog post and the difference ways you can create those photos.
Some of the topics we discuss include:
Links Mentioned:
Homework: Add a photo to your very next blog post and tweet us the link. @andymcclung and @courtneyspeaks
Have questions? Call and leave us a message with your question at our Ask a Question page.
Next week’s topic - Planning for 2014. Be sure to join us and start planning for next year!
Darren Rouse from ProBlogger recently discussed a topic that Andy and I have been talking about on the podcast - paying attention to old posts. I especially like this point he makes:
"In the same way that the web has changed over the last 3 years, so too have my own blogging goals and monetisation model. As a result, I take a critical look at old posts and what 'calls to action' I’m giving to readers."
Darren give you a pretty list of things to look for and what needs to be updated. A lot of the information provided is the same that Andy and I covered in the last two episodes of the Faithful Bloggers Podcast. Be sure to go give Darren's post a read, listen to the podcast, and start paying attention to your old posts!
Today I'm honored to have a guest post from Amy Green of Bethany House Publishers.
There’s just something about the word “free” that immediately gets people’s attention.
See? Didn’t you just get excited?
As the fiction publicist at Bethany House Publishers, I oversee our blogger review program. That means that I give away free books, both physical copies and ebooks, to bloggers who agree to help me spread the word about our new titles. (If you’re not a member yet, you should check it out here.)
The problem is, a lot of people see “FREE BOOKS!” and, in a fit of literary excitement, stampede forward to get copies of new releases…and then don’t actually review the book. Or write the bare minimum word requirement in a quick post and move on to the next thing.
What they’re missing is a golden opportunity to grow the audience of their blog. Most discussions of blogger review programs focus on the benefits for authors—starting up the “buzz” for their novel. But what marketing people should talk about more are the benefits for you, the reviewer. Even if reviews aren’t the main focus of your blog, you can use them to drive traffic your way. Here’s how.
Cover the basics. Although I promise that wasn’t intended to be a pun, one of the main must-haves in a review is an image of the cover. (You can download it from the publisher’s website.) Here are a few other basics:
All of these things only take a minute or two, but you’d be surprised how many people leave them out.
Be unique. Find a format and tone that will make people want to read your review. Maybe that means starting with a brief excerpt. Maybe you’ll choose to list your “favorites”: favorite character, favorite scene, favorite line of dialogue, etc. Maybe you have a unique rating system with different categories. Maybe you’d like to find pictures of celebrities who you would cast as the main characters if the novel was made into a movie. Just find something fresh and interesting and do that thing consistently. Visual creativity—finding or even creating pictures that go with the review—always gets gold-star status for reviewers around here.
Don’t give away the ending. Enough said.
Take notes. As you read, jot down a description that brought a vivid picture to your mind, a line of dialogue that made you laugh, a paragraph where you felt like the author’s writing style really came through. Quote that bit in your review—people love getting a feel for the author’s voice.
Be constructive. Didn’t like the novel? That’s all right—no one’s going to love every single book. But remember: often, authors will read these reviews (in our program, we collect them and pass them to the author every few months). Also, other readers will read these reviews, and they don’t want to listen to a rant. They’d rather hear why the book didn’t appeal to you so they can decide if they should pass on it as well. Here are some pointers for writing a negative review:
Post, post, post! Go to Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Christianbook.com, Shelfari, anywhere you can think of and post the review. (Usually just the opinion portion is fine—viewers can read the plot description elsewhere.) But don’t stop there! Find Facebook fan pages that might be interested in your review and post it there. Join groups of readers on Facebook dedicated to a certain genre or style of books and let them know when you have a new review up. Contact your local paper and see if they have a book review section, online or in print. It all adds up to more exposure for both your blog and the book you’re reviewing.
Become a fan. If there was a book that you just loved, consider putting extra time into the review. Pack it with all the “extras” you can find (see if there’s a Pinterest board, book trailer, Q&A with the author on the publisher’s site, etc.). Then contact the author through Facebook or the email contact information on his or her blog/website. Send a simple note of appreciation for the book along with a link to the blog post. The author may choose to post the review to their social media and send all of their fans over to your blog.
Anyone can have an opinion on a book. Only a few choose to join the ranks of gold-star reviewers. I hope that you’ll soon be among them…and thanks for being a reader and reviewer. We here at Bethany House know that we couldn’t promote our books without you!
About:
Amy Green is the fiction publicist at Bethany House Publishers, which means she’s getting paid to be enthusiastic about writers and their novels. She’s also the moderator of the new bethanyfiction.com blog. Connect with her on Twitter and Facebook. (https://www.facebook.com/bhp.noelle, https://twitter.com/BethanyHouseAmy)
Connecting and Equipping Christian Bloggers and Business Owners to reach the World with their message. We also provide resources, courses and writing opportunities for Christian bloggers.
