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Being Confident Of This

Grace for the work-in-progress woman

Practical Help for Christian Bloggers

July 21, 2015 by jstults 32 Comments

As a Christian bloggers, we want to do our best to honor God and His Word in all that we write, say, and do. Yes?

Yet there is this tension in faith blogging between worrying about pleasing God rather than man and becoming a successful blogger.

If you are a Christian blogger, I’m sure you’ve felt it.

You don’t want to be a sell-out.

You’re not in it for the money but for the message.

Thus, your definition of “success” varies greatly from the typical blogger who is mostly concerned with building a blog that is successful according to the world’s means.

Are you a Christian Blogger who needs help growing your reach in a Christ-honoring manner? Look no further! Christian Bloggers Bootcamp offers practical strategies that are unique to the Christian blogging niche. Join now during open registration!

 

At the same, we cannot reach others with the message unless we learn how to make the best use of our blogs and social media outlets.

How can you best set your light on the lampstand so that it can shine before men without letting pride take over?

How can you use best blogging practices for His glory without becoming consumed by numbers and your own small fame?

“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” Mt. 5:14-16 (NASB)

It’s not an easy balance to achieve, is it?

We want to do our best to get the message out there, yet we know that numbers and dollars are not our best measure of success, not as Christian Bloggers.

It reminds me of that whole be in the world but not of the world dynamic that applies to so much of Christian life.

Well, today I offer you some practical help and hope for achieving this balance, friends!  I know some of you are waiting anxiously for the re-opening of Christian Bloggers Bootcamp by missionary and author Arabah Joy because you’ve heard about it from other like-minded bloggers.

 

Why recommend this course above all others?

Because I know Arabah Joy personally.

She has become a mentor to me, not just in my writing, but also in my spiritual life. Her faith is real, folks, and that’s what I admire most about her.

Because I know her heart for God’s message and her desire to spread the influence of other Christian bloggers, I have learned that I can trust her advice!

“We live in a dark world. As a follower of Christ, I consider it not only a joy but a duty to invest in other Christian bloggers whose effectiveness would dramatically increase by learning the key things I have learned.”  ~ Arabah Joy

Working together with Arabah and a close group of other Christian bloggers has helped me to increase page views by 40 percent so far.

Thus far I have only implemented part of Arabah’s Pinterest strategy for Christian bloggers and some of her Facebook wisdom, and already I’m seeing significant growth, not only in pageviews, but also in followers on both platforms and this blog.

I’m excited to see the snowball effect that implementing just a few key strategies for Christian bloggers has already created, and I can’t begin to imagine what the full effect will be once I work through the modules.

Now I want to learn more! 🙂

So, I highly recommend to you Arabah Joy’s Christian Bloggers Bootcamp, which is now open for registration!

 

Arabah understands the balance required by faith-blogging and she also understands that many typical blogging tips just don’t fit our unique niche.

Christian Bloggers need strategies that fit the nature of our subject!

What Christian Bloggers Bootcamp offers:

6 Foundational Modules

  1. Clarifying your why
  2. Finding and creating your best content
  3. Being savory in a world of instant gratification
  4. Image creation and visuals
  5. Leveraging Pinterest
  6. Winning on Facebook

14 practical assignments for Christian Bloggers

 

Are you a Christian Blogger who needs help growing your reach in a Christ-honoring manner? Look no further! Christian Bloggers Bootcamp offers practical strategies that are unique to the Christian blogging niche. Join now during open registration!

Lifetime access to the material in Christian Bloggers Bootcamp!

~ start right away or wait until you have a good chunk of time

~ work at your own pace if needed

~ refresh your memory whenever necessary

Access to the Christian Bloggers Bootcamp facebook group

The CBB facebook group allows you to ask questions of Arabah Joy and other seasoned bloggers.  Join in share threads, pinning projects, and other mutually beneficial promotions, too.  In case you don’t realize, the value in this community alone is exponential!

UPDATE**  I have to tell you all that I failed to realize the value of this facebook group at first. Aside from the excellent content within the course itself, the Christian Bloggers Bootcamp facebook page is my favorite feature. I know anytime I have a question, whether practical or ethical in nature, I can come to this group of ladies and know that they are approaching blogging as a ministry in the same way I am. That means I can more readily trust their advice to lead me in ways that are God-honoring rather than self-promoting. Additionally, because of their faith, they are eager to share tried and true techniques and eager to help one another. This group alone makes the course worth the financial investment, in my opinion!

What are you waiting for?

Oh, yes, maybe you’d like a discount? 🙂

I’m happy to be able to offer an affiliate discount code for 10 percent off – just use code JKS10 when you register.

Use coupon code JKS10 for 10% off

All for His glory!

Jen 🙂

* This post makes use of affiliate links. Jen is an affiliate for the Christian Bloggers Bootcamp and will receive compensation for any registration made through the affliliate links on this blog.  Thank you for supporting the ministry costs of Being Confident of This!

Sharing with: Grace and Truth, Mama Moments Monday, Making Your Home Sing Monday, A Little R and R, Think Tank Thursdays

Filed Under: Blogging, Christianity Tagged With: Blogging, blogging tips, Chrisitan Bloggers Bootcamp, Christian bloggers, Christian blogs, faith blogs, honoring Christ with your words, Writing, writing tips

Best Blogging Tips

November 3, 2014 by stultsmamaof4 4 Comments

Faithful readers, I promised you a post earlier this week and life just got in the way.  However, I do have some great tips to pass along to those of you who are bloggers, so even though I’m very late with this post, I want to be sure it gets to you.  Better late than never, right? 🙂

When I first began blogging, I really had no idea what a huge industry the blogosphere is. I never “followed” any blogs before that time. I had no idea bloggers could earn income from their posts. I hardly even knew what a blog was.  So, why create a blog?

It was purely out of obedience to the Lord, honestly. No, He did not speak in a loud clear voice saying, “Jen, I want you to create a blog.”  However, He did use the Holy Spirit to convict me of neglecting one of the gifts He had given to me.  I was too overwhelmed to imagine writing a book or for any other sort of publication right away since I had not “practiced” writing in such a long time.  Thus, from what little I knew about blogs, creating one of my own seemed a simple, inexpensive, and the least terrifying way to walk forward in obedience.

To read more about my blogging journey thus far (a year and a half in!), check out the “For the Writers” tab on my sidebar or click here.  I would suggest starting with My Monday Morning Confession as it was my first post ever!  You might also read A Blogger’s Prayer to see what I have learned so far from this faith walk online.

I think I’ve been most surprised that rather than using the material the Lord gives me to encourage others (which is what I first expected), He so often uses the writing to encourage me!  Although others might find the words here encouraging, as is my deepest desire, even if no one else read them, this journey would be well worth it solely for the lessons I’ve learned along the way.

As a “seasoned” blogger of a year and a half (ha!), I do have some more practical blogging tips to pass along to you:

Pinterest – once I learned the value of creating a somewhat “pinnable” image, I began to receive most of my traffic from pinterest. In fact, this past month, I received close to a thousand views daily from a single post (The Pumpkin Gospel) that is doing well on pinterest simply because of Halloween.  I rarely reach that number even on a good day, normally. That’s the power of pinterest, my friends!

What I know about creating “pinnable” images:

The better the lighting, the more attractive they are to the eye, as far as Pinterest goes. Lighter images tend to work more effectively than darker ones.  Also, collage-type images (several pictures together) are more eye-catching. A good description also helps the reader to click through to the actual blog post.  I recently started using hash-tags, as well.

I’m no pro at creating pinnable images, but what little I can do has helped tremendously.  Therefore, I try to always include a photo of some sort in each post for easy sharing on pinterest. Sometimes when I don’t have an image that goes along with the theme of the post, I just include something beautiful from nature.  I keep my camera in my purse to capture scenery along the way; this allows me to avoid the issue of photo rights altogether, which is just easier for me.  Lately, I’ve really enjoyed adding verses to beautiful photos using either picmonkey.com or ribbet.com (photo editing websites).  Someday I would love to learn photoshop! 🙂

Pinterest works well for me because I liked it  and used it even before I started blogging.  Twitter, on the other hand, is another story altogether…

Key-words and phrases – recently I’ve been learning more about how search engines work and am working on including more key-word phrases, especially earlier on in my blog posts.  This helps anyone who is searching for information on a specific topic to find your blog post.  I have one post in particular that does well from searches, and that is How to Love When You Feel Unloved.  I usually receive several hits daily from that post ever since I updated it with a pinnable image and some bolding on key words and phrases.

This is another area in which I have plenty of room to grow, as I’m still learning and probably always will be. 🙂

I just learned this past week NOT to include a picture before the words in your blog post.  If you’ve followed Being Confident of This for very long, you know I’ve been guilty of this, so I have many past posts to make changes to.  Apparently, google and other analytic programs scan the first words of a blog post, and when you include a picture first, they end up reading a bunch of html code rather than the topic of your post.  I read about that here.

For more practical blogging tips, I suggest pinterest as a wealth of information.  I have a board just for Blogging that contains even more information than I have shared here. Some of it I haven’t even had time to look at or use. Some of it is easy to incorporate once you know how. I’m sure some of the other hosts have similar boards, as well. 🙂

 My Best Blogging Tip

My best blogging tip, however, has nothing to do with pinterest or even with the mechanics of blogging. My best tip is to avoid getting caught up in blogging perfectionism. As I mentioned above, I knew so very little about blogging when I first began. My only desire was to have a space to write that wasn’t too intimidating, in obedience to the Lord.

However, once I learned about linky parties and began reading other blogs, I began to realize I knew literally nothing.  And after a month or so, the desire to be “successful” started to creep in. I became concerned about things that I never even knew to be concerned about before.  Blogging became a lot less about glorifying Christ and more about glorifying my own meager abilities.

Don’t get me wrong, learning how to blog well or write well isn’t wrong in and of itself, but I think it can quickly become an “idol” in our lives if we allow it to.

 

best blogging tips, tips for bloggers

 

So my best blogging tip is simply this – fix your eyes on Jesus.

If you have time and the inclination to learn some of the rest of it along the way, great.  But don’t lose the vision He’s given you to the trappings of blogging perfectionism. Write in faith instead.

Trust Him to guide you to the “right” content, my sisters in Christ. Trust Him to bring you the “right” audience.

Fix your eyes on Jesus.

Jen 🙂

Filed Under: Blogging, Christianity, Uncategorized, Women of Faith Tagged With: #TheLoft, best tips for bloggers, Blog, blogging tips, Faith, Writing

It’s a Blogger’s World ~ TheLoft

October 27, 2014 by stultsmamaof4 2 Comments

It’s that time of week again! Meet you in the link-up?
Jen 🙂

The Loft is open, come on up!

 

The Loft: A weekly Hangout and Link Up for Christian bloggers
Graphic by Kerry Messer

 

This Week’s Topic: “Blogging” I hope you guys have a lot to say! Some ideas are: Tell us why you started blogging, your blogging goals, needs, how we can help you. Share your favorite blogging tips and tricks, the floor’s open!

Get a running start on Next Week’s Topic: “Intimacy with Jesus” (What does that look like for you? How do you abide in the vine? What barriers do you face or victories you’ve discovered in maintaining intimacy with Jesus? Let’s encourage each other!)

 

About #TheLoft

 

The Loft is the place for conversation, community, networking, and Christian growth.

Each week we provide a topic to start the conversation.

 

PLEASE NOTE: We want to foster community and transparent conversation with one another, just like we’d do if we were meeting in real life. So we ask that your link stick to the weekly topic and that you mention The Loft in your post. Thank you so much!


Monday night, at 9pm Eastern, the linky goes live and all week you can link up your post on that week’s topic.

We’ll have fun topics, serious topics, practical, soul-ful, holiday, and so, so much more…we can’t wait to get started! This is not only a great way to connect with others, it’s also a fun and easy way to establish a writing habit. If you aren’t a blogger, you are welcome to join in by leaving your comments in the comment section.

So grab your coffee mug and come on up! Hang out for a bit. We betcha you’ll be glad you did.

 

To Participate:

 

1. Be creative. Feel free to use words, photos, video, audio, your family pet, whatever, to communicate on the weekly topic. But please stick to the weekly topic 🙂

2. Listen twice as much as you talk. If you leave one link, visit two. Trust us on this one~wink.

3. Be a community. Include #TheLoft graphic and/or link back in your post so we can find each other. Also, share the great stuff you find when you visit around…we’ll be doing the same.

 

The Loft Link Up

 

When you link up at The Loft, your link will appear on 4 blogs! We’d love for you to visit The Loft co-hosts and know who we are: Jen, Rebekah, Leah, Arabah

 

 

Now it’s time to link up!

 

 

Add Your Link Here:

Filed Under: Christianity, Uncategorized, Women of Faith Tagged With: #TheLoft, bloggers, Blogging, blogging tips, Writer, Writing

Hi, I'm Jen: a work in progress. I'm imperfect - a mom of four, pastor's wife, discipler, and sinner saved only by grace. I like to sing, read, write, teach, and smile. I have a heart for encouraging women everywhere to understand God's limitless love for them and what His grace means for everyday living. Welcome! :) Read More…

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New devotional release from Jen Stults - Being Confident of This: 30 Days to Discovering Your Identity in Christ. This book is for every Christian woman who wants to walk in confident faith instead of struggling with doubt, fear, and insecurity! self-esteem | self-confidence | self-help | motivational | personal growth | spiritual growth | how to be more confident | Christian women | devotional | Bible study | identity in Christ | superwoman myth | being like Mary

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