8: Google Yourself To Fix Church Online Reputation Problems
We would all like to think that everything online about our Church is positive and current. That is not usually the case. More than likely, there is a lot of misinformation about your church floating around online hurting your church reputation and giving a false image.
There are many potential reasons for this. The most likely is that previous Pastors or Staff Members may have setup accounts or posted information that is now outdated.
Sometimes well-meaning volunteers have either been given the task by the church or have taken it upon themselves to get the word out. But the information they used is now either outdated or was never correct in the first place.
What types of information could be out there that you would want to correct?
Most of the outdated information will probably be related to incorrect contact information. This is probably because your church has changed locations in the past or changed other details like your phone number or website address.
You will want to correct these as much as possible and fix church online reputation issues whenever possible. No one else is going to correct it for you. There is no one out there with the burden or ministry of correcting your online misinformation. Even though there may be people out there who feel called to the ministry of HURTING your church online reputation.
You have to find the wrong information and initiate a way to correct it. The longer you let it stay out there, the more likely a potential new guest or visitor will find it.
It would be extremely frustrating to show up to a Church based on the wrong address or service times. If a potential new church visitor has that experience due to bad information, they may not be back.
What you hope you WILL NOT find.
Everyone is a potential author now that everyone has access to a Facebook Page or free blogging software.
Unfortunately, the most dedicated ones are usually pushing negativity and promoting disunity. People have created entire blogs focused on telling what they say are church secrets or just flat out attacks on past and current leadership.
Unless you are searching for that type of thing about your church you may not even know it is out there. And, unless you make the effort to fix church online reputation problems they will stay out there messing with the image people have of your church.
As you begin to search for outdated information you may find more serious issues you have to deal with. That is good in the long run since it would at least be exposed and out in the open, but of course annoying when you find it.
You may also find out information about current or past Pastors, Church Staff, Volunteer Leaders and Church Members that you were not previously aware of. Like I said, this is probably a good thing to know, but may not be fun to deal with.
Remember though, if you can find it then your current attenders and potential new visitors can also find it.
Just like the incorrect contact information, it will be better for the church if you find that picture of your Youth Pastor in a speedo NOW instead of later. Just kidding… There is probably already a picture of your Youth Pastor in a speedo on your church website right now.
You will never be able to correct or find ALL of the bad information out there.
The goal is not really to fix everything. The internet is too big and has already sucked your outdated information onto sites that you will never find.
Plus, a lot of this bad info will correct itself when you claim and optimize your Local Business Directories. When you are Googling and you find an outdated Business Directory Listing, you will want to check and see if it is already in the Local Business Directory list that you are in the process of correcting.
If it is not one of the sites on the main list, you will want to correct that as well if possible.
It is a huge task. But if you make a diligent attempt to search for, find and correct everything you can then a lot of it will be cleaned up. Most likely if you cannot find it after diligent searching, a potential new church visitor will not be able to either.
So the goal is just to do as much as you can to clean it up.
How do you FIND and CORRECT this Misinformation?
There are several things you will want to search Google for to fix church online reputation issues and find out if there is misinformation floating around online about your church.
Remember, the more often you have changed locations or changed your contact information or website address the more incorrect information you will probably find.
Church Planters who have had to move around town a lot will probably benefit from this process the most.
Step 1: Google Yourself
- Current & Past Church Names
- Current & Past Church Address, Phone Numbers, & primary church Email Addresses
- Current & Past Church Website Addresses
- Current & Past Pastor and Staff Names
- Anything else you can think of…
Step 2: Copy and Paste links to the incorrect information into your Local Promotion Resource Document
Even though you will delete these links as you fix them, you will want to keep all of your work in one place. Your Local Promotion Resource Document is the place to store these links until they are fixed and corrected.
Step 3: Take action to Fix and Correct the Incorrect Information.
When you find incorrect information or issues you want to address, do your best to contact the website administrator or someone in charge of the website. For most locally based websites you will probably just need to send an email to the contact page email address or form to begin the process.
If you find a Local Business Directory that needs to be fixed that is not on your other list, you will want to Claim and Optimize it just like the others.
Look for a link that says something like Claim this Business
or something similar on your specific church listing page on that site, then follow the process they give for verification by email or phone to get access and correct the listing.
This cleaning process can take some time, but is worth the effort.
In addition to Google Maps, potential new visitors to your church are searching the web as one of their primary ways of finding a church. If they find incorrect information about you, it could be an excuse for them not to visit or return to your church when they try to visit an old location.
In addition to an outdated location, one of the biggest problems is having old church service times on these random sites. If people find that information and show up at the wrong time and would probably not be too happy about being misinformed.
I would suggest removing all service times from everywhere but your website. On all other websites you simply direct people back to your main website HUB for all service times and other information. That way if you ever decide to change something like that, you can just change it once on your website and be correct everywhere.
Take some time to search and correct. It will pay off for your church.