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Facebook or Blog?

January 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I ran across an interesting question today about where you should put more effort, in your blog or your Facebook page.

I’m not really sure why that is a question. Let me break it down for you.

Your website is your own personal piece of  internet real estate. Think of it as your home because in terms of your marketing, it is. Your blog should be the heart and soul of your website. In web design today, integrating your blog as a page on your website is the only way to go. If your blog is off on another url from your main one you are missing the boat.

Today’s brides go to one place to find their vendors above all others:

SEARCH.

If you aren’t ranking high in search engines for what you do and where you do it, you are behind the game.

Reread that last sentence. Notice I did not say for your name. I hope to hell you rank number one for your name. Unfortunately, that isn’t how brides search. They search for things in places.

Huh?

They search for florists in Bucks County.They search for wedding planners in Washington, DC. They search for caterers in Fairbanks, AK. They don’t search for Polly Sue Purebreds Catering. If they do it is because they have already been made aware of Polly Sue from a referral and that is a post for another day.

Now that you understand this, you understand why your personal piece of real estate is so important.

Back to the original question: your blog or Facebook.

Every time you post to Facebook, you are sending all that Google juice to Facebook.com, not to Polly Sue’s url. Great, I’m sure Mr. Zuckerberg appreciates the Google juice, but frankly, you need it worse than he does.

Think of it this way, you have an office or a store but you still meet people in the local coffee-house. Instead of investing to improve your office or store, you take time and treasure to improve the coffee-house. That’s just dumb.

How about this instead, you work on improving the store, and then post updates on the coffee-house bulletin board. When your potential customers start looking for you the coffee-house bulletin board is one of the many signs pointing to your store. When they get to your store, they see how amazing you are.

Enough with the analogies, if you don’t get it yet you never will.

Your blog should be an integrated part of your website.

Facebook should send traffic to your website, not the other way around.

Post to your blog and have it automatically cross-post a headline and an excerpt to your Facebook page leading them to your website.

 Done.

 

 

Filed Under: Announcement, Marketing, Social Media, Website marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Expert Advice? Bring on the Peasants!

February 10, 2011 By 7 Comments

Yesterday I was accidentally made privy to a forum conversation about some of that ubiquitous bullshit advice from a self-appointed expert. Yikes there was talk of burning the source at the stake!

I am delighted to say that a leader arose, went to the source and got the offending {dis}information pulled.

I have to tell you, there is something about peasants with pitchforks rising up that warms my heart. 8-)

Is there any reason that we can’t all do the same thing?

In my post about bad experts last month I told you I didn’t have the answer…yet.

Well maybe now I do.

Here are my thoughts; let’s start calling these people out. Seriously, in mass, in true peasants with pitchforks manner. If you see bullshit, call it! Leave a comment, post it to your FB page, tweet to your network and get them to comment. Keep it up, storm the castle. Create a hashtag, #pitchfork  or #BS or #infoFAIL

Go so far as to start a BS category on your own blog and call it out there. When they start to see referrals from your site in their stats they will check it out.  OK, you are sending them traffic but your content is highlighting the absurdity of their advice.

Following the peasants with pitchforks metaphor, you have to get your network involved. Your lone comment won’t do any good, they have to see that mob with torches at the castle wall.

Or, I suppose, you can just continue to grumble about it in the forums and change nothing.

Filed Under: Ask Christine, Inspiration, Rants & Raves, Social Media Tagged With: , , ,

How to Collect Testimonials

September 3, 2010 By Leave a Comment

We all know how important testimonials and reviews are; but where do you get them? You probably already have more of them floating around out there than you may think. You just have to know where to go to harvest them.

Your Inbox: Go back over those emails and hunt for any positive feedback. Chances are good that your clients have told you how wonderful you, your service and/or your products are. There names are right there. It’s a good idea to just use the reply button to ask them if they mind if you use the testimonial in your marketing material. That way, even if the email is a year or two old, you will be reminding them of the nice things they said.

Wedding Wire: You can either copy and paste onto your website or just link your reviews to your site. Wedding Wire has a handy badge that puts a few of  your reviews right into your sidebar.

Yelp!: If you are getting positive reviews on Yelp! you might as well use them. Again, copy and paste.

Twitter: Check any tweets that mention your name. (You do this any way, right?) You can hit Twitter search for your company name or you can just check for tweets with @{your twitter name} If you watch HGTV, they do a brilliant job of this.

Facebook: Check your fan page for positive comments from your fans. Send them a private message and ask if you can use their comment or ask if they would elaborate  for your marketing.

Your blog: Go back through the comments. I bet there are some that attest to your design style or just general brilliance. Go with them, they are already public. You should also consider putting a tag in you signature line inviting people to comment on the post.

Google Alerts: In addition to what other Google Alerts you have set up, you should also have them set up for your name. You never know when some one is going to mention you on their blog. You can always add that to either your testimonials or your press page. This should also yield any mentions on the Knot or similar sites.

Email marketing: If you do email marketing, include a survey in your emails and just come out and ask for testimonials.

Wedding Websites: Get in the habit of asking your clients if they have a wedding website. This may yield a lot of information in addition to testimonial. What do you want to be they will post wedding pics? I don’t know anyone that doesn’t complain about not getting images of their works. Be sure to ask if you can use them first. Before the wedding, you may be able to get a deeper feel for your client and what they really think by reading their site.

Now that you’ve got them, what do you do with them.

Put them on your website.

You should have a testimonial or accolades page in you main navigation menu. More that that, pepper them through out your site. If you do a blog post about a wedding and then get a testimonial you can always go back and add it to the post. It’s a little known fact that if you have a dynamic website  your homepage is probably not where most of your traffic from search lands first. If they do a search for pink and green weddings or wedding food on skewers or escort card they will land on the page that talks about that, not your homepage. So, it pays to put testemonials in as many place as possible in addition to your accolades page.

Marketing Package

If your business is the kind that puts together a full on marketing packet, you should have a page of testimonials in it. You never know who will see these and you always want to let them know what others are saying.

Testimonial are powerful, in some ways they are another form of word of mouth marketing.

Filed Under: Back to Basics, What Brides Say Tagged With: , , , , ,

More Than One-Third Of Women ‘Addicted’ To Facebook

July 12, 2010 By 1 Comment

Yep, more proof that Facebook is still a good bet. The above title is from a Media Post Study released 7/7/10.

Here is the juicy quote:

Showing the degree to which Facebook has become the gateway to the greater Web, nearly half — 48% — of all respondents now claim to get more news through Facebook than from traditional news outlets.

In addition, shedding new light on the dynamics of female social networking behavior, 50% of respondents believe they could rely on a “Facebook friend” for their help in a crisis; while 46% say it’s okay to be Facebook friends with someone they don’t like in real life.

Read the whole article for yourself

Tomorrow I’ll have some things your can do to spice up your Facebook page.

Filed Under: Blog, wedding marketing Tagged With: , ,

Two Schools of Thought on Social Media Posting

January 26, 2010 By 2 Comments

There are two distinct schools of thought on how to handle how you use social media: short and frequent versus longer and less

social media graphic

social media graphic

often. Is there really a difference and which style is for you.

The conventional wisdom for blogging was that the best strategy was to put up short posts on a daily basis. Limit yourself to 500 words or less but do it every day.  This is the part that got a lot of my clients groaning. The thinking behind this was that in the eyes of the search engine every post represents a page on your site. Another factor was to keep subscribers happy and coming back. Well with the rise in popularity of microblogging sites like Twitter a new thinking is beginning to emerge.

First let’s look at Twitter. If you are on Twitter than you know what I am talking about when I say that there are too many people clogging the twittershpere with mundane stream of consciousness nonsense. “Yum, starbucks here we come” “Uploading Saturday’s wedding”  “Such a nice day and no photo shoots”  Please people, I have a life, I don’t want yours. Then along comes an article on how the CDC is using Twitter to keep everyone informed about the Swine Flu issue. (which, btw, I found on Twitter in the first place)

Be Simple and Selective on Twitter, Don’t Over Complicate: Unlike many of us (myself included) who congest Twitter’s airwaves with excessive banter, the CDC exercised impressive restraint in sharing only the most essential content. In a weird way, its Twitter account @CDCemergency felt more authoritative precisely because it didn’t spray unnecessary junk our way. Everything it shares is important, timely and actionable. When it arrives, you know it’s important.

Precisely because it posted only the most essential content, you pay more attention to it. I follow close to 500 people on Twitter; it is the ones that only post meaningful things that I really pay any attention to at all. Do you want your followers to hear what you have to say or are you just posting to hear yourself tweet? Constant tweeting can be a plus for name recognition but are you getting recognized for what you want to be known for?

Some one that is doing frequent right on Twitter is Bravo Bride. They post about once an hour but always with a new item on their For Sale boards. It’s almost like watching the Home Shopping Network pop up on my twadget sidebar. What a wonderful, guilty pleasure.

As for blogging; more often doesn’t have to be the only way.  There is such a thing as evergreen posts; those posts that will be just as relevant 2 years from now as they are today. Suppose you write really great how to posts, those will most likely look good for the life of the blog. It’s ok for these to be longer. They may also have the added benefit of looking better to the Googlebots and if they are really good they may just land on the front page of Google and stay there for up to a year. One of the keys is that these posts have to be really well done. Mediocre just won’t cut it for a long post, so edit, edit, edit.

If the posts you write tend to be more topical and time sensitive then you have to be a frequent poster. Just by the nature of the beast you will want to lean toward quick hits here. Think of them as more of a news flash than a well researched feature article. Get your facts right, make your language concise and hit it and get it. Toss in a couple of well labeled images and you are on your way.

Here is an example of the difference.

Short post:  Amber & Josh’s Wedding.

This would be an example of a post that would be short.  Get in all the important information and relevant keywords like your location and the venue complete with town and state. Use your great pictures and let them carry the information for you.

Long Post: Why Amber’s Wedding Makeup Looked So Great & How Yours Can Too

Same wedding, maybe even same images but this time you are giving the brides tips on how to achieve the look they want in their pictures by using the right makeup tricks. Yep, you may have to pick up the phone and ask the makeup artist a few questions, do a bit of refining but you will have a post that has staying (and search) power.

There isn’t anything wrong with either approach. There isn’t anything wrong with a combination of the two. What you want to be careful of is mixing them up. No one wants to read a 1500 word review of some strangers wedding. If you go long, make it packed with information that your readers can use.


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