A lot of ministries, nonprofits, and Christian-owned businesses treat Google and the big social platforms like an endless ocean they can fish in forever — and never build an audience they actually own. In a recent conversation on the Unscripted SEO Podcast, veteran marketer Adrian Nikolov (founder of the agency Haide Digital, with 18 years in search) made a case worth borrowing for anyone building a digital presence for Kingdom work: don’t lead from fear of new tools, make them serve the mission, and own your community instead of renting it.
🎧 Listen to the full episode on Castos, or read Adrian’s own recap.
Don’t Lead From Fear
Adrian founded his agency on a simple inversion of the “AI is going to take our jobs” panic: instead of cowering, he decided to make AI do the work better. As he and host Jeremy Rivera put it, the more you fear the thing that might replace you, the more likely it is to. There’s an old principle in that — be a faithful steward of whatever tools you’re handed. A new tool is not a threat to good work; it’s leverage for it. For a church communications team or a Christian creator, that means AI is not a shortcut around the calling; it’s a way to finally do the whole job with a small team.
Own Your Audience, Don’t Just Rent It
Adrian and Jeremy share a frustration: we handed the community aspect of our own websites over to social platforms, in part because we let comment sections get neglected. Imagine, Adrian said, if website communities had been built with the care of the best online forums — we’d be building them on ground we own instead of chasing reach on someone else’s platform. For a ministry, that’s the whole point: an owned audience is a real community you can actually shepherd, not a rented list of vanity metrics that disappears the day an algorithm changes.
You Don’t Have to Be an Influencer
Owning an audience sounds exhausting if you’re not a natural on camera — and plenty of faithful leaders aren’t. Adrian’s encouragement: the work no longer requires your face. AI can help fill the gap so quiet, behind-the-scenes people can still build a genuine presence — editing, responding, and showing up in writing — without becoming a daily performer. The message still matters more than the messenger’s follower count.
@unscriptedpodcasts Adrian Nikolov on Unscripted SEO: are you showing up where your customers are looking? business owners need to realize that buyers are researching you on large language models like chatGPT. if you’re not visible, you’re missing out! how are you making your business trustworthy online? #businessgrowth #digitalmarketing #trustworthiness
Watch and Serve Real People
One practical takeaway both men love is simply paying attention to real behavior. Free tools like Microsoft Clarity let you watch how someone actually moves through your site — where they get stuck, the link that wasn’t clickable, the image that failed to load. You don’t have to guess whether your site is serving people well; you can see it, and fix it. Hospitality applies online too: remove the friction that keeps a visitor from finding what they came for.
Measure What’s Real, Not What’s Flashy
When it comes to the new world of AI search, Adrian and Jeremy are both skeptical of chasing flashy vanity numbers. The same prompt to an AI tool can give wildly different answers from one run to the next, so obsessing over it is a distraction. The honest signal is real referral traffic and how the people it brings actually engage — a hundred thousand AI-sent visitors mean little if none of them stay. Count what’s real.
@unscriptedpodcasts Adrian Nikolov on Unscripted SEO: is seo the future of digital marketing? 🤔 it’s not just about keywords anymore. you need to master ux, development, content writing, and even social media! what skills do you think are essential for success in this new era? #SEO #DigitalMarketing #ContentCreation #UXDesign #MarketingTips
Build on Something You Own
Adrian’s core belief is that authority — trust and reputation earned across the web — is what everything now rewards. His framing is that search and content work aren’t separate from AI visibility; they’re the foundation the whole thing is built on. For anyone doing digital ministry, the lesson lands cleanly: invest in owned ground — your own site, your own words, your own community — and let the tools amplify it, rather than building your house on rented sand.
Connect
Find Adrian at haide.digital, read his recap of the episode, and connect with him on LinkedIn. For the full SEO-focused breakdown, see the complete episode recap on Unscripted SEO.