By Brad Aldrich – One Flesh Marriage
As we discussed in, “Marriage Blogging a Ministry or a Journal?” jumping in to the world of blogging or podcasting is more then sharing your own life story. Your life is obviously a big part of what led you to consider starting a marriage ministry, but there is so much more!
As you get ready to post your first edition, one of the most important decisions to make is, “What is the mission?” A mission will help you focus your material, target an audience, and make crucial decisions about many aspects of your website.
Mission Critical
A mission helps you define what you are doing, and for whom. It includes important elements of purpose, content, and audience. When CMBA was only a dream in the minds of several bloggers one of the first questions we asked ourselves is, “What would be our mission?” It was out of those conversations that we designed CMBA and wrote the CMBA Mission.
3 Questions to find Your Blogs Mission
What Topics will you Write About?
Marriage. Obviously, but don’t just leave it at that. Some blogs like Journey to Surrender, successfully blog about all aspects of marriage. Others defined their mission as focusing on one specific aspects of marriage. Intimacy in Marriage, for example, writes only about sex and intimacy and only to women.
Others choose even larger topics, To Love Honor and Vacuum is a good example of a blog that tackles a variety of subjects including marriage, parenting, homemaking, and more.
Defining your topics will help you in your writing, and will help your readers know what to expect.
Who’s You Audience?
Many marriage bloggers define themselves by writing to only one gender. Mission: Husband and Alabaster Jar are good examples of these. Others write specifically for a different niche based on age or experiences.
One important consideration is will you write primarily for an audience who is already Christian, or for those who are “seeking”. This is important to consider as it will impact everything about setting up your blog, even your name. The name “A Stupendous Marriage” will work will with either audience, but “Marriage by Divine Design” or “Mystery 32” will attract or repel some readers.
What’s Your Style?
Your style plays an important role in defining what your blog or podcast is going to do. I’m not referring to style as a look, but more in terms of format. Your blog’s style is the structure, voice and methods that you are going to use in order to get your message across.
The Generous Wife is a popular blog with the focus on encouraging wives to be generous to their husbands. This blog has a unique style in that while it is published daily each post is typically less than 100 words. These short tips of encouragement have helped this blog grow a large following.
The blog I run with my wife, One Flesh Marriage, has a call and response style, where one post is from the wife’s perspective and the next is about the same issue from the husband’s.
Hot Holy Humorous is another blog with a great unique style. J, the anonymous author of HHH, uses humor to discuss some topics many others wouldn’t touch with a 10 foot poll, leading great conversations on some very important issues of sexual intimacy in a Christian marriage.
Write It Out
Writing your blogs mission statement is a great first step to enter online marriage ministry. These few sentences will help you in all aspects of design, writing and promotion. Don’t skip this step! You will be glad you did it!
It is tempting to skip defining your mission in the hopes that your blog will evolve as you start writing. Some people are even afraid that if decide on a mission they will be locked into a box and won’t be able to write enough content. These fears are justified, but unless you challenge yourself it is far more likely your blog will lack focus then you will feel trapped in a box.
What is your blog’s mission statement? Let us know in the comments!
All of the blogs linked in this post are CMBA members! Check out our full list of awesome Christian marriage blogs!
Next: Does Your Blog Need Glasses? Blogging with a Vision
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Brad,
Thank you for getting me thinking on where are we going with the blog. I only thought about writing what God led me to write and praying the content will bless others. I realize quickly it blessed me just by writing about the things in my heart.
God Bless,
Steve
Brad – Thanks so much for this. It’s been so long I don’t tend to think of it, but this is absolutely vital.
It’s also good to examine this yearly. You change, so what you are passionate about changes. Your understanding grows, and your audience morphs. Sometimes changes are good and should be incorporated into your mission statement and followed. Other times the changes are not so good, and your mission statement help you get back on track.
It’s good to be reminded of my mission and why I’m doing what I’m doing, especially since I took a sabbatical. Good food for thought!
Thanks for this tip!!! I’m sure my mission will change and evolve with time:)
Blended4Purpose
Our purpose is to discuss the issues surrounding blended families, subsequent marriages and life after adultery in a transparent way. Our desire is to share our growth, mishaps, struggles and victories encountered while blending a family of eight, getting over the death of prior spouse, divorce and adultery by both parties.