Christian Blogging Tips For Better Blogging

Christian Blogging Tips are all over the place. Some great, and some not so good.

Whether you have an established or brand new Christian blog, there’s so much more to learn and do than you expect!

As I’m growing and learning, I’ve begun compiling the best Christian blogging tips that actually helped me the most. Sharing it with you is the least I can do to pay forward the blessings I have received!

Better Blogging with these Christian Blogging Tips

With that in mind, we need to do our level best. Learning the backend stuff and solid presentation methods may be tedious but so worthwhile!

Before you get sucked into the vortex of SEO and GDPR and graphics design, and all things Christian blogging tech, you need to set boundaries and goals.

Please note that this post contains affiliate links for your convenience. If you make a purchase through one of the links, I may make a small commission. I only recommend books and resources that I’ve enjoyed personally, or believe that you would like. You can read my full disclosure here. You will also find information on Scripture translations there.

4 Lessons I’ve Learned from Christian Blogging

Looking back over my Christian blogging journey, these 4 lessons stand out the sharpest:

Hold On To Your WHY

1 One thing I have learned since I began blogging is that it’s easy to get lost it a list of to-do and to-learn. If you’re not careful, you can easily forget WHY you are doing this.

Colossians 3:17 NIV — And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

So know your WHY (and WHO your primary audience is). As Christian bloggers, we serve as Ambassadors for Christ, and should seek to honor him in all we do.

Set Boundaries Firmly

2 From there you set your life priorities. Blogging will likely consume every moment you allow, and more besides. So setting up boundaries and choosing how much time (and money) you can spare is important. If you need help with this one, read this post.

Matthew 6:33 NIV – But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

1 Timothy 3:5 NIV – (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?)

Set Priorities Strategically

3 Setting blogging priorities is also a good idea, between learning, creating, and promoting your work, making a plan will help!

James 1:12 NIV – Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.

Persevere!

4 Perseverance then, is necessary in Christian Blogging. Because we want to honor God, we do not want to give up. We want to share God’s love and hope with the world.

Books for Christian Bloggers

I have two books that have shapes my direction and priorities as a Christian blogger:

Christy Wright’s Business Boutique was recommended to me, and wow! I read this when I just had a vague plan and strong desire to blog. My blog, plan, and direction came into 3-D focus in going through this book. It belongs to the Dave Ramsey family of books and I highly recommend it whether you are planning on blogging for profit or pleasure.

By His Grace We Blog by Carmen Brown has awesome, practical guidance. This book is written in short, actionable chapters covering most of the foundations of Christian Blogging.

I say Christian blogging specifically, because of how much Christ needs to be the foundation of what we do. We want to reflect Christ in all we do. And Do our best at what we do. So learning better blogging techniques makes all the difference! And we keep our new Christian blog in the proper place. You know, God, Marriage, Family, Others.

Not specific to blogging, but the this book is another excellent book for setting boundaries and priorities.

Christian Blogger Conferences and Courses

Online Christian Writers Retreat

Sarah Geringer created an online Christian Bloggers Conference after her experience with a Writers Retreat weekend. She saw the need, and transferred the information from her live event into an affordable alternative for growing Christian bloggers faith and fellowship.

Kingdom Bloggers Academy

I can’t say enough about the KBA and The Christian Bloggers Boot Camp. This is an intense 8 weeks, but you learn so much! LeeAnn is dedicated to “Getting More Jesus on Page One” so she teaches you how to do just that.

Take YOUR posts, whatever Jesus has laid on your heart to share, and getting it to page one of search engines!

As you can see from my ‘before and after’ the results are real. If you put in the time and effort, it WILL happen! (obviously I didn’t go fast, but I didn’t really put in the effort until recently)

KBA Free Courses for Better Christian Blogging

Here’s a Free ‘Basics of SEO for Christian bloggers‘ course sampler to see if the full course is something you would benefit from using!

If you want to reach people who are actually interested in what you are writing, you should begin with the (FREE) Define your Avatar course from Kingdom Bloggers Academy.

If you want an interested and engaged audience, you have to be specific in your choices. This course will set you up on the right path for Christian Blogging.

If you want a fresh pair of eyes on your existing Christian blog, this Blog Audit is incredible. LeeAnn is thorough, thoughtful and kind. She gives you extremely useful tips on how to improve your website for both function and SEO. Within a week of making the suggested changes from my audit, I actually started getting organic traffic!

Use code “LIBRARY” to get 15% off Kingdom Bloggers Acadamy Courses!!

Pinterest Ninja Course

The other most helpful course I’ve discovered is Pinterest Ninja. while everyone was complaining last summer about their Pinterest traffic tanking, mine was going UP!!!

The instructions are complete, simple, and they work. if you’ve never used Pinterest, or are struggling with getting clicks, re-pins, or actual traffic from Pinterest over to your blog, I would recommend Pinterest Ninja for sure. And, you get free updates for life. as tech and algorithms change, the course is updated.

Best Christian Bloggers to Follow for Better Blogging

These ladies are by far the best Christian bloggers to follow, if you’re thinking about starting a new Christian blog or even just want to do better blogging in general.

• Carmen Brown (wrote By His Grace We Blog)
• LeeAnn Fox (backend and presentation, how to)
• Christa Hutchins (research, tips, coaching)
• Jessie Synan (social media)

Christian Blogging Link-ups

Link parties or Link-ups for Christian bloggers are a fantastic way to share your posts. You can get traffic, comments and people who are more likely to stick around for a while!

Christian Blogging Linkup basic rules for participating are simple, though they vary between hosts:

• Share 1-2 of your posts.
• Comment on and share the host’s post.
• Comment on and share 1-2 other linked posts, for each one of your own. The key here is to consistently be generous with leaving quality comments and sharing. Beyond being common courtesy, it honors God.
• Add a link back to the host from your website.
• Social media follows are a nice bonus.

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More Great Christian Blogging Linkups

• Inspire Me Monday
• #GraceFullTuesday
• Destination Inspiration
• Dance with Jesus
• Weekly Linkup Library

Christian Blogging Tips: Facebook Groups

These Facebook groups full of Christian bloggers will become like family. They’re the ones you turn to for encouragement, help, and advice. When you get a weird comment on something you posted, ask. If you need to know which tool is worth spending that little bit of money you can spare, ask. And when you feel like giving up on Christian blogging, these ladies will talk you through to the other side.

There’s a bunch of Christian Blogging groups out there. You can be in several. Together, you will share each other’s posts across the internet.

Christian Blogging Tips:

• Focus on sharing others’ work generously. Add your own links, but focus on others!
• Follow and support the Group Leaders! They’re investing time and energy, sharing knowledge, etc!

Great Christian Blogging Groups

• By His Grace Bloggers
• Blessing Bloggers
• Christian Bloggers Mastermind
• Faith Influencers: Social Media
• Kingdom Bloggers
• Salt & Light

Best Tools for Christian Bloggers

Free Tools for Christian Bloggers

The best thing I did was to get a free Trello account. It can be accessed from mobile or desktop, and organizes all of your Christian blogging details.

Due dates, to do lists, ideas, graphics, links, etc. I use this to organize my on personal and Christian blogging worlds. Everything in one place, cross-referenced, labeled, accessible everywhere.

Here’s a Free Trello Board Template for you. It has sample cards that I’ve found most useful in the 3 years I’ve been blogging. Just make a copy (the 3 dots in the corner brings up the menu), and edit to your needs!

I write my posts in Evernote. OneNote or Google Docs are also good options. They are accessible from any device, so if something happens to your phone or computer, you don’t lose everything! Plus, while you are waiting at the doctor or school, you can write!!

And Desygner is my preferred graphic design software. It’s simple, but has a lot of capabilities! You can create templates, upload logos, create preset colors and fonts… I save a lot of time here! It also has a fully-featured mobile app, in addition to the website. Canva is another free graphic design software that’s very popular with Christian bloggers.

Capturing a vision for your blog is an important part of the process. This Christian Blog Planner helps do just that. It covers everything from your blog layout to affiliate marketing plans and freebies, to a 12-month post plan, making sure you’re serving your target audience in the best way possible. These steps are important to go over at the beginning of your blogging journey, but also periodically along the way. (Not free, but well worth the cost if you want to make an income through Christian blogging efforts!)

Building a Platform: Hosting and Themes

It was explained to me this way. Hosting provides the real estate for your blog. There are several free options, but you don’t own them, so you’re more limited in what you can do. I began with Bluehost, and haven’t had any problems. The live chat with tech support is a bit slow, but I have gotten any bugs worked out fairly quickly just the same.

When I started, I chose the basic plan, and paid for 3 years of hosting upfront. They were having a sale, so I paid less than $100. I felt like that gave me both the margin to learn, and a limit if it wasn’t working out. (and, you renew at the regular rate, so I wanted to lock in at my discount for the maximum amount of time!)

When it was time for me to renew, There was a sale going on over at SiteGround. This is a hosting company with a very good reputation with many top Christian bloggers, so I jumped on it, and have been very happy so far!

Themes are the custom home to go on your real estate. There are several free options that can be customized to your site. I decided to purchase an inexpensive theme, called X Theme. It is incredibly flexible and customizable. Whatever theme you choose, Make Sure it is “Responsive” or “Mobile Friendly” and test your changes on phone, tablet and computer! Christian Bloggers sites can AND SHOULD look just as professional as any other site.

Readability & SEO for Christian Bloggers

There’s Keyword Surfer, a powerful tool for SEO. Using this free browser extension, every Google search tells you how often that phrase is searched for monthly (and how much competition there is). It even offers a list of related keywords!

Just remember that you want a long-tail keyword. A keyword phrase that’s at least 3-4 words, so you have a chance to make it to page 1 on search results! For example the long-tail keyword phrase “Christian blogging tips” might be what you used to find this page. If I had used “blogging” as my keyword, you never would have found me.

Ubbersuggest and Keywords Everywhere are also very good for finding quality keywords.

Coschedule has a free Headline Analyzer. It helps you structure your headline, to get people interested. Everything from length to word choice. It’s a handy tool for sure!

For proofing and editing, there’s 2 must-have tools for better blogging: Grammarly and HemmingwayApp. Grammarly can be used on desktop, or as a keyboard app on mobile. It serves as far more than spell-check. Grammar, word choice, improper commas, and extra spaces… You name it. While HemmingwayApp will grade your writing by what grade level could read and understand it. And flag sentences that are hard to understand.

Email Programs for Christian Blogging Communications

There’s several solid email programs out there, and a few have free levels for smaller lists. I’ve heard good things about Mailchimp. I think they’re free for a certain amount of subscribers. ConvertKit is the Cadillac program, from what I can tell, but since I have not been focused on building a list, it’s too expensive for me. (though you can get a few weeks free, I believe)

I chose Mailerlite. It’s easy to use, is free for the first 1,000 subscribers, and has great features. You can tag, segment, automate, make landing pages, email courses, and all the fancy things you want. Or just send out a monthly email, if you’d rather.

MailerLite has decent tutorials, but I was privileged to get advance access to the E-Course MailerLite Demystified. It explains a lot of cool capabilities of MailerLite, email marketing in general, and some very useful tips on making your content upgrades that people actually want to subscribe and receive. Sosha even added a lesson based on my question regarding the difference between groups and segments!!

Helpful Plugins for Christian Bloggers

Akismet anti-spam {and Wordfence} are your basic security Plugins. This is supposed to your site protected from hackers. This is really a problem, and you don’t want to ignore it!

Broken Link Checker is another useful tool. It scans your site regularly, and notifies you if a link stops working. (important if you are linking to any other sites, affiliate marketing or not)

Rank Math is the plugin that helps you take what you write, and everything you discovered under ‘Readability and SEO’ and format your post well. It also simplifies connecting your Pinterest account to your blog.

Shareaholic is the plugin I like best for those sharing buttons. It will do sharing and follow buttons for a crazy amount of social media platforms. And its very customizable!

Tasty Pins is the only plugin I pay for. It allows you to add your pinterest text to the right spot, so that you can use the Alt Text field as it was intended. To provide alternate text when a) the image doesn’t load, and b) for screen readers. Tasty Pins also allows you to disable pinning on select images (think family photos, step by step project images…)!

Updraft Plus for backing up your data! You don’t want to lose all your hard work, so having a backup plugin is essential. And setting this one up is simple.

Christian Blogging Is Worth The Work!

If you’re willing to put in the work, and keep your focus on God, Christian blogging is 1000% worth it. I’ve laughed more, felt better about myself and questioned my sanity more than I any other time in my life, and I wouldn’t change a thing. Except not falling for a few sales pitches that messed me up in the beginning of my journey.

I hope you found value in these Christian Blogging tips, and would consider sharing this with your friends!

Until Next Time, Love God, Love Books, Shine The Light!!