We just completed another social media dialogue website for The Something Blue Shoppe, a full service bridal and prom salon located in Hartselle Alabama.

Sarah Morris, the owner, contacted me after hearing a presentation I did on Doing Social Media Right for 2Be University in St.Louis. Sarah wanted all the advantages that goes along with our all WordPress based websites, including:

• Easy do it yourself content additions, upgrades, and site maintenance.
• Complete automatic interaction and cross posting with Facebook and Twitter
• Integrated blog
• Low cost hosting
• And the truly best SEO that only WordPress based websites can deliver.

We updated the look and layout, while still keeping the established branding of The Something Blue Shoppe

After just one lesson, Sarah is doing her own updates like a pro. I wish you could have heard the excitement in her voice when she realized just how easy her new site was to manage.

Please take a look.

Over the course of years I have had the immense pleasure to work with many very talented artists. Our industry draws them.

Today I read an article that really highlighted the point that it doesn’t matter how talented of an artist you are, if you don’t take care of the business end of your business it will eventually catch up with you.

No one would argue if I said that Annie Liebovitz is one of the most talented portrait photographers of our time. Today she stands on the brink of financial ruin.

While I doubt that many of us could ever find ourselves in hot water of the magnitude that Liebovitz finds herself, it still illustrates my point brilliantly. You have to work the business side of things in order to be allowed to pursue your art.

Just to clarify, by allowed, I mean that you have the resources needed to be able to create full time as a career. To create art for the sheer joy of it is sublime, but it doesn’t feed the kitty.

There are many wonderful resources out there to help us right brain thinkers tackle the left brain chores of business, Sean Low and Liene Stevens are two that jump to mind immediately. Then of course I am here to help put the tools you need for the marketing end in place.

Don’t get me wrong, I want you to be able to focus on your art and your unique talent. I just want you to be able to do it for the long term in a way that is financially beneficial.

As an aside: I also ran across these clips of Liebovitz at work. Take a moment to enjoy a master working her craft.

There is a lot of buzz about social media as free advertising. Well that’s not completely true. Doing Social Media right requires an investment. Not in the traditional way that you may think, not in money so much as in your time.
This is particularly true of blogs. Blog have an amazing power to increase your visibility and authority as well as to increase traffic to your main website but only if you know what you are doing. You also have to be willing to invest the time.
By time, I don’t just mean the time it takes to write and post relevant content.  It doesn’t matter if you write the most informative/witty/beautiful blog in the world, if no one sees it you are just shouting in the wilderness. So the question is how to you get your blog known?

Here are 3 tips for getting the word out.

1. Cross post: Every blog post I write, I post to Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, Plaxo and Bride Wire. It takes maybe an addition 3 minutes. Twitter, LinkenIn and Plaxo are automatic. Facebook posts automatically to my boxes but I go ahead and add a link on my status. StumbleUpon I do from a button on my toolbar and the BrideWire link I have saved to my favorite.
2. Comment: I make a point of commenting on like minded blogs. This does two things, since a link to my blog is in the comment, other readers begin to notice me. Second, the blog owner will often discover you and add you to their blog roll.
3. Label your images: The single biggest referring url I have is Google Images. Brides search for pictures online. If you take the extra time to label your images you are putting yourself way ahead of the game in terms of search. I cannot begin to impress upon you just how important this is. If you are confused on just what I mean, here is a good article on it.

Ever wonder why your advertising isn’t working like it use to?  Your target market has changed. They have embraced social media; they expect your marketing to be a part of a two way conversation with you.

I found this little video clip on Chris Brogan’s blog, it may help you understand why you need a Dialogue Website instead of a Static one.

Enjoy!

Have you ever heard the phrase “What you measure, gets managed?”  I love that phrase. I have talked often both here and on Think Like A Bride about how and why you need to be tracing the stats on your websites and blogs. To name just a few of the things they will tell you:
•    What is getting the most traction
•    What you are doing well and not so well
•    Who is following you
•    When you need to rededicate yourself

That last one is really ringing true with me. You see, after my little mishap last January I rather lost focus on one of my blogs, Wedding Dish. Not only did I stop posting almost completely I stopped checking the stats. Last week I was on the verge of just chucking the whole thing, there are so many wonderful wedding blogs out there compared to the dark ages when I stated the Dish that I didn’t figure anyone was still reading it anyway. So after months of neglect I checked my stats. Holy cow, batman!  My visitors have nearly doubled to over 10,000 visitors a month. Ok then, I guess it’s still a valuable property.

Needless to say, I have rededicated myself to the Dish.

There are two lessons to take away from this.
1.    Blogs have legs. One of the reasons that I am still getting that kind of traffic is because my content is deep. I had been posting nearly daily for over three years before my hiatus. Google doesn’t forget, every one of those articles is and will continue to be indexed until the internet goes away.
2.    Tracking your stats is important. Had I been diligently tracking my numbers, trust me, I would have been just as diligent in posting. Nothing inspires you like knowing people are listening to what you say.

If you haven’t been to the Wedding Dish, please have a look. The brides are.

From the Archives of Think

I have gotten an earful lately from the photographers about price. I hear too many considering dropping their prices to compete with all the lower priced (read less experienced) options out there. Holy moly!! What are you people thinking?

Are you marketing the intangibles you offer? I have had this conversation over the course of the last few years with the bridal salons. I still am as a matter of fact; some get it, some don’t. Now I think I need to direct it to the rest of those industry professionals that have been at this for a while, that have built up a sterling reputation, that have become remarkable but are now running scared of the newbies nipping at their heels.

You need to take a good hard look at the intangibles you offer that they can not. I am not just talking about your product, I am talking about all the things you have learned to do over the years that they have not. It may be as simple as the way you package your products. I know a photographer that sends out his proofs in a beautiful custom designed box. I know a florist who deliverers her bouquets in special disposable vases so they stay in water as long as possible, even between photos. I know caterers that never have a wrinkled linen or a water spot on the silver, I know others that can’t say that. What are those things that you do that you don’t even think of anymore. The little touches, the extras that you don’t notice but that make all the difference.

Get your staff together to brainstorm. Ask the vendors that refer you. Ask your clients why they picked you. You may be surprised to find out just how spectacular you are. Make a list of all the things out of the bare minimum that you do for your clients. Let me give you an example…

When I did cakes I always put them on custom cake boards to match the cake. Never thought anything about it, I just hated those I would see with foil on them. One day a florist said to me that they were always happy when they knew I was doing the cake because they knew they wouldn’t have to try and hide the base. I added that to my marketing and the brides loved it. “Oh cool, custom board” To them it was a perk, to me it was just standard procedure.

I know a florist that has had two different brides mention his wonderful collection of containers. Now he is using them in his marketing. Not only are brides finding it a huge selling point but he is making an upcharge on rental. Duh!

Find out what you do differently than all the rest and find out why that may be important to your target market. Then you have to find a way to highlight it.

With bridal salons, one of the biggies that a bride should expect over ordering online was the way their gown arrived. If you order online the gown arrives inside out, compressed into a box that you or I would never believe it could possibly fit it. Needless to say it is a wrinkled mess. A bridal salon receives the gown the same way; the difference is that before the bride see her gown it has been steamed and fluffed and is looking fairy tale perfect. I suggested to salons that they buy a very cheap gown online, unpack it and put in on display just like it arrived along with the box. It made the point.

None of this will stop all the price shoppers. Nothing will; but now at least you aren’t having to defend your price with nothing to point at. Sell everything that you do, that is what makes you remarkable.

To read more articles like this, become a subscriber at Think Like A Bride

Personal Engagement Marketing

When I first started in this business the single best way to market yourself was through personal engagement with your customers. That meant one thing: Bridal Shows.

Websites barely existed and at best they were an after thought. The more things change, the more some things stay the same.

The single best way is once again through personal engagement, the difference is that now it is ALL about the internet. Let’s take a little look at where bridal marketing has been and where it is now.

We all loved bridal shows because we got to talk to the brides. We got to show our personality and our passion. In truth, it was about the only way to market. Oh there was the Yellow Pages and maybe one local magazine put out annually by the newspaper, but other than that there was little else.

Next came the influx of pretty, glossy local magazines. Before you knew it there were so many that you were having a hard time figuring out which ones to give your money to, lord knows you couldn’t do them all! So we did what we could and let their art department design our ad, virtually handing over control of our branding to someone else. Heaven forbid they got it wrong because we were stuck with their mistake for at least six months. Trust me I know, it happened to me. Even if it was right, it still just lies there hoping someone would be inspired to call you. What’s more, you were dependant on how good of a job the publisher did at distributing the book.

Then we were told that we had to have a website to be competitive and so we got a small site that was static and couldn’t be updated. It really wasn’t much better than the magazines. There was no customer engagement, we couldn’t change them and again, they just lied there hoping someone would find them.

Then came the holy grail of Search Engine Optimization and all the little tips and tricks to drive traffic to your static website. Get that baby on the first page of Google and we were home free. Ya, right. You bought into that too, didn’t you? Magazine sales reps said we had to have an ad to publicize our web site; web designers spoke lovingly of keywords and metatags. The Gurus preached Google AdWords to us in hallowed tones. Yet with all this, most of our brides were still coming from the bridal shows. Customer engagement still ruled the day.

That much hasn’t changed. What has changed is how we go about getting that personal customer engagement. Part of that is due to how today’s bride uses the internet and partly because of how the internet itself has changed.

The rise of social media and its influence on how our target market shops can not be underestimated. Today’s bride is interconnected and interactive. Her influencers are all over the world. She is as likely to keep up with friends around the corner as well as around the globe on Twitter or Facebook. She expects to find her vendors there as well.

Much has been written in the last few years about the plummeting readership of newspapers and magazines. Gone are the days when you could count of your market being plopped in front of the TV for 6 hours a night. If today’s bride isn’t using her time to read periodicals or watch mindless TV what the heck is she doing with all those freed up hours? She is sitting in front of her broadband connection talking to friends all over the world in one window, shopping in another and looking for advice in a third. All while playing around in a graphics program working on her save the date cards.

So what has all this got to do with you, your marketing and customer engagement?

First you get that you have to be out on the internet, right? Now think about it, your brides are engaging with people all over the world, all the time ; at work, at home, on their iPhone on their commute. Shouldn’t you be one of the people they are engaging with? “Now just how do you expect me to do that Christine?”

First off, your website needs to be interactive and change frequently. By Frequently I mean at least every third day. The best way to do that is to have a blog based website. One that can be syndicated for feed readers and that you can update yourself easily. The more often you post the more often the search engines take notice of you. Every picture you add and every word you type sends them a signal that you are alive. As you build a following of brides it also sends them a signal that you have something new to add to the conversation. That keeps you in the front of their mind. It gives you an opportunity to engage and connect with them. Just like at the bridal shows; except that instead of talking to one bride at a time you are speaking to many at once. What’s more, your words hang there in cyberspace until she is ready to hear them.

Once you have that down I highly suggest that you think about either Twitter or Facebook. I have a coaching client that has been diligently taking my advice since the first of June. In that time she has made connections with wedding planner all over North America, been featured on Wedding Bee and Ritzy Bee, been contacted by Alexis with Martha Stewart, the editor for Grace Ormond and Stacie at Get Married. She just did here first taping for the Wedding Podcast network. In short, she is making some very valuable connections through her blog and through the other social networking sites she is mining. Put another way, this is just like the time you spend at bridal shows meeting the other vendors. Just like in the real world, you network with the other professionals and they in turn get your name out. You can do the same thing in about an hour a day. Before you even ask me where you are suppose to get the time for that, why not try thinking like a bride. Drag your laptop out to the couch and network while you catch the latest installment of you favorite must see TV.

Once again, it is about personal engagement. Isn’t that where we started?

to read more articles like this one, become a subscriber at Think Like A Bride.

The more websites I design the more I realize that most people don’t know how to write for the web. I’m not just talking about keywords, that is just part of it.

Content is king on the internet no matter how you look at it.  It’s true for the search engines and true for your visitors. If you want your information absorbed, you need it to be digestible.

Most people don’t read on the internet, they scan. Here is a great article on how people absorb content online. Yes, I realize the article is 12 years old, but it still tells it like it is.

Here are the 6 things you should remember when you write your blog posts or copy for your site:

1. Use an informal style. It’s faster and easier to read.
2. 1 idea per paragraph. Since most just scan, they will miss the second point.
3. Use bullet points and highlight important points.
4. Outbound links increase your credibility.
5. Keywords. Using  the who, what, where and why in your copy is a great way to starting about adding keywords in a conversational tone.
6. Inverted pyramid style. Put your news and conclusions first and add details and background further in.

Above all, keep it short and sweet. I love this quote:

“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Further Reading

Seven types of bad writing

Being human is overrated (but not when you are writing)

I have been a follower of Holly Buchanan”s for a very long time. Along with a few others, she has been at the forefront on marketing to women. Face it, as wedding professionals we market almost exclusively to women.
I was reading an article of hers recently on her blog Marketing to Women Online and ran across the following quote:
“Although both men and women assign higher scores to own-sex designs compared to opposite-sex designs, men interestingly ascribed higher scores to female-designed products than the women do to male-designed products and this is further evidence of the fact that, given a choice, men have a greater tolerance of the female design aesthetic than women do of the equivalent male aesthetic.”

Clearly, men and women see things differently. They shop differently and take in details much differently. It isn’t about making things ”girly,” it has to do with layout, color choices, image selection and navigation. You can’t slap a coat of lipstick on a pig and make it suddenly female friendly. I have written extensively on Think Like A Bride about this very subject. You can find more there or on Holly’s site.

My question for you is: Who is designing your website?
Do you really think that a smear of lipstick and a scrap of tulle will do the trick?

I ran across an interesting phrase in Authority Rules by Brian Clark, Founder & Publisher of www.copyblogger.com.
“Google’s preference for constantly-updated content”

Just what does that mean and why should you care. What it means is that gone are the days where you paid someone to build your website and didn’t touch it again unless you needed to change an address or phone number. That was a hassle because you either had to know enough code to change it yourself or you had to call the designer, pay a hefty fee and then wait for who knows how long for them to find time to get it done.

Why it should matter to you is because unless people are finding your site through search, you are going to have to spend heavily to advertise it or no one will know you are there. That means print media, Adsense or worse. All a spend that you don’t need to make if you have a website that works right in the first place. I have always said,” Do you want to advertise your website or have your website advertise your business?”

Back to the original quote: Google’s preference for constantly-updated content.” In order to come up well in the search engines you are going to have to update your site frequently. By frequently I mean at the very least weekly. With a static website that is little more than an online ‘set it and forget it’ brochure Google and the rest of the search engines are not going to notice you. You are going to have to do what it takes to keep up with your competitors.

Today, blogs and blogging platforms used as content management systems are the state of the art answer. What you need to understand is that you are going to have to step up to the plate and
a) Learn how to use them
b) Make time to really do it.

Neither a or b is rocket science or an unattainable goal, you just have to do it.

With systems like WordPress the learning curve is practically a straight line. In other words, if you can send an email with an attachment, you can add content to your site yourself in only a few minutes. If you can’t manage that you need to seriously consider taking a class or two at the local community center. Like it or not, your clients are looking for you online and you need to have the skills needed to be there when they come looking. Online marketing isn’t a fad that is going to go away.

As for making the time, well as Nike say, “Just Do It” devote a half an hour a few times a week to add content to your site. This is the world we marketing today, like it or not. It isn’t going to go backwards. The question is are you going to keep up or are you going to turn your back on the technology and get left in the dust.

Let us know if we can help you.