I would imagine that by now you know you have to be online and that you have to do it right. It is pretty competitive out there and having a website designed isn’t exactly cheap. So here are a few tips to getting the best website for your needs.

1. Know what you want and need before you approach a designer. Have a clear idea in your mind about what role you need this site to play. Is it simply an online brochure? Do you want to use it to build a community? Do you need it to be an e-commerce site? What do you want this site to achieve for you? If your answer to that last one is “more business” tell me how it will do that.

1. Know what you want it to look like in terms of style.  Bring up 5 or 6 sites you like and really give them a good hard look. What is it you like about them? Is it the visual elements or the functionality that caught your attention? They don’t have to be in the wedding industry, feel free to think outside the box a bit.

1. Know what you want to include. Do you offer multiple services that can all be included or would they be better served with individual sites?  For example, someone that plans both weddings and corporate events may be better served with two sites, each with a very different look. Ditto for the photographer that does both weddings and sports photography. The people seeking sports photography are going to be instantly turned off by the style that would attract brides. Not so for the photographer that does weddings and family portraiture; those two would easily blend. Think about your target market(s).

1. Find a designer that understands your industry.  Someone that understands your industry will understand your target market. I can’t over emphasize how important this may be. They are crafting your online presence, if they don’t understand your target market they won’t have a clue how to reach it. The may build you a technically spectacular site and still miss the mark.

1. Don’t micromanage it. Trust me; you are the only one that the minutiae will make any difference to. Yes it is important that the overall look is right, that colors and graphics are spot on to your branding and that the functionality is flawless. Moving an image 10 pixels to the left isn’t that important. Trust that your designer does this for a living, they know what works. Just like you would not want your brides to micromanage you, don’t micromanage your web dude.

1. Don’t rush it. Take your time in making the decisions in the first 4 points. Don’t put impossible deadlines on your designer. Every site is different and there is always something that has to be worked through. Better to let them work through it and get it right than to have them slap some band aid on it to hit your deadline. Be patient; remember right is better than quick.

1. Admit what you don’t know and ask questions. Yep, we tend to be a bit techie but a good web designer should be able to answer your question with an explanation that you can understand.  The key here is in the admitting what you don’t know. Just tell them it went over your head and to explain it to you.

I hope this has helped. I wish I had had a list like this when I had my first site designed. Wow, was I clueless. Jesse, if you are reading this, I am so sorry.

If you have been in the wedding industry for more than a nanosecond you already know that the single best marketing is word of mouth. What you may not know is how much word of mouth has changed in just the last few years. Yes it is still about the Courtneys telling the Ashleys who the best caterer is for their wedding but now when Courtney speaks she is telling half a million Ashleys instead of just one. With that kind of reach you had better be a part of the conversation.

I have been talking about the social networking phenomenon for a while now and it may be beginning to bore some of you. I think many more of you are just now beginning to see the light. I can’t go anywhere these days that I don’t get peppered with questions about blogs or Twitter or FaceBook. All of these are the building blocks of word of mouth marketing campaigns. Yes you read that right, I said marketing campaigns. The big boys of marketing recognize that WOM is a tool in their arsenal that can be crafted and managed.  Multi national companies like Coke and Proctor & Gamble are sinking money to the tune of 30% of their ad budgets into social media campaigns. They recognize the fact that it is the way today’s consumers get their information. So how does that translate to the small or even micro businesses that are bridal? Very easily, it just takes time.

Basic marketing consists of finding your message and shouting it at the masses and hoping it sticks. You craft the message and they have to take what you say at face value. WOM is essentially based on open two-way dialog. Yes that means you lose some control of your message, but if you think about it you never had any control over WOM anyway. With the tools today you at least get to be a part of the dialog. If you put forth the effort, Courtney and Ashley will invite you into their conversations where you can listen, learn and participate. That is what’s so new and exciting.

There are a lot of you that are building pages on sites like Facebook or are trying to maintain blogs but if you aren’t becoming a part of that community you aren’t accomplishing any thing more than your magazine adverts are. You have to become one of them in order to earn their trust. That is what a WOM campaign is all about. First you have to listen to them and then you have to participate.

You have to respond not just to the voices that love you but more importantly to the ones that don’t. If you find a negative comment about you or your part of the industry respond and find out how you can make it better. Learn from it. It is about becoming a trusted voice from the other side of the table.

But Christine, you say,”I don’t have time.” This is too important not to make time for. Here is a trick that I use called Marketing Blitzkrieg. Take one hour every other day and focus completely and totally on your WOM campaign. Get into the fray on Twitter or the blogosphere. Read as many forum posts or blogs as you can and respond. Most of these give you tools to ‘follow this thread’, use them. What that does is when someone responds to your comment you get notified, usually by email, and you cancontinue the conversation. You have to become a part of the dialog. It won’t be long before you become a recognized part of the community. That is your goal.

Here is why that matters: it’s not what you know or who you know…it’s how well you know them. Wouldn’t you rather do business with someone that you know and trust as opposed to someone based on just their slick ad campaign? Get Courtney and Ashley to know and trust you and they will do the rest of your marketing for you.

Word of Mouth, yes you can finally have some influence on the single most trusted source of referrals in the industry. You just have to work at it.

What is new media marketing? Should you care? Oh no, what is this going to cost me?

The answers to the second two are: Absolutely and a whole lot less then you might think. The first one is a little deeper.

If you haven’t heard about New Media Marketing then you haven’t been paying attention. NMM is about conversations, it is about sharing, it is about engaging your target market instead of just shouting your pitch into the air and hoping it lands on your potential customers. It is about building relationships first and making the sale later.

It’s blogging and Facebook and MySpace. It’s forums and email. It’s Flickr and YouTube and before you know it will be mobile phones too. Advertising has changed in so many ways in the last decade and it is the age demographic the wedding professionals seek that has been at the forefront of this wave.

It is the internet version 2.0. Yes, brides start by looking through magazines but they look there for ideas not their service providers. When it comes time to start connecting with vendors they hop on line. If the only on line presence you have is a webpage that is nothing more than an online brochure you are barely going to get noticed. Classic websites are little more thatn online yellow page ads. Today’s brides want more interaction.

If you read this month’s Bride’s Say column than you have an idea of why this is important. Bride’s today enter the market place with a huge chip on their shoulder. Rather than expecting the best they assume that every single member of the bridal industry is out to screw them. To say the very least trust is an issue. You can thank the few bad vendor and authors like the Fields and Rebecca Mead for that.

NMM is one way to help rebuild that trust as a way of attracting your potential customers. If you attach a blog to your website brides will read it and hopefully comment on it, by doing so they get an idea of what you are like. If it is well written they will get to see how passionate you are about what you do. If you post images of your work to your blog you can get a feel for what your market likes by keeping track of which ones are viewed most. They get to know you and you get to know them.

Another way to build community on line is through sites like MYSpace and Facebook. Build a page and read and post to the group forums there. Become an authority in your field, set yourself up as “the go to guy” when brides have questions about your segment of the industry. This is valuable even if the person you are talking to is neither in your price range or geographical location because brides that fit your demo will be reading these interactions too. There are a lot more lurkers than posters.

Flickr and YouTube are another way to get your name out. Watermark your images and upload them. That gets them out there for the world to see for free. There is a brand new group on Flickr put together by Marc Fuller from Great Wedding Network that is working to become the largest repository of wedding related images on the internet. They are soliciting images from brides as well as pros and tagging them so they are search friendly. I can guarantee that if a bride keeps seeing your name come up as she pick things she likes she if going to take the next step and contact you. Get your images out there and not just the set up shots that you put in the magazines and your portfolio but the quick snaps you take on site. Brides want to see the real thing not just the beauty shots.

Believe me, this is where your brides and grooms are, these are the places they go to do their research. You have to be there in a substantial way. You can’t just play around the edges on these things you have to be genuine and real. They will know the difference. Remember, this is about building trust before the sale and about making connections. Think of it as a 24/7 bridal show with a global reach without the sore feet.

Here is a list of some blogs I read. Some I have included because of their popularity and some because of how well done they are.  The first one is the highest rated wedding blog in the states and is written by brides; the rest are the blogs of wedding professionals. Give them a look.

Wedding Bee

Bridal Wave

A Softer Image

The Artist Eye

Style Me Pretty

Bridezilla

Your business will not grow if you do not market it. Period. End of story.

That’s may seem like a pretty strong statement especially in an industry where word of mouth has long proven to be the number one source of new business. You can’t buy good word of mouth advertising so what are you supposed to do?  You can prime the pump a little, that’s what. Build some traffic, create some buzz. You just have to do it in a smart, transparent way.

Here are a few simple truths that when taken together can point you in the right direction

One tenant of smart marketing is to spend your ad money where your target market is looking for you. In our case that is the internet and they are fanatical about looking at and sharing pretty pictures.

Another truth about our target market is that they tend toward being self-centered and narcissistic. They love to see themselves and their choices held up and applauded.

If you applaud their choice they will do the work of spreading the word.

Here are some things I discovered from my blog stats over the last month or so. Recently I posted some wedding photos of the daughter of a friend on my blog along with a link to her photographer’s site so they could see more images. Out of courtesy I sent mom a link.  By noon the bride had forwarded the link to a few friends. By the end of the day my site traffic had QUADRUPLED and the photographer’s had TRIPLED.  Hmmmmmm. Remember, I only sent the link to one person, but that person cared about those images enough to want to share them.

Something else I have noticed is that my referrals are almost all coming from Google images now. Needless to say I am trying to post some type of relevant image on every post. My numbers continue to climb.

Here is something else I ran across last month: JEEP’s new site was being praised on one of the PR/Marketing blogs I read. Why? Because the have added a page where fanatical JEEP owners can up load pictures of their pride and joy. People will share that which they are passionate about. What is your target market more passionate about than their wedding?

Bear with me, this will all come together. I promise.

I recently came across a site for a bridal salon that posts photos of the “Bride of the Month”. Now don’t you know what that has done for their site traffic?  They ask for brides to submit their photo and chose one at random each month. The post a new one each month but don’t archive the old ones.

We are getting closer. Now how do we tie this all together? Use you blog to showcase something every week, our cake of the week, or centerpiece, or bouquet or ‘best looking Groom’ or funniest cake smashing, whatever works for you. Make sure to drop the bride an email asking for permission and then send her the link. They will do the rest.

What’s all this going to cost you? Maybe an hour a week to pick you favorite image, post it and send the appropriate emails. Some of you will need a small digital camera to capture your images, some of you will work through your photographer associates. It isn’t about the best images; it is about consistency and using real wedding material to generate word of mouth. Be sure to have your blog linked to your primary website.

I can hear it now, “How is this going to help me.”  Because if you have a large number of woman in the prime marrying demographic check your site, or better yet being referred to your site every week when any one of them gets engaged yours is going to be the first site they hit to set up an appointment. You have been referred to them over and over by their friends, family and sorority sisters.

It is about priming the pump for word of mouth and getting your market to generate the buzz for you.

I talk a lot here about social networking and word of mouth marketing.  I ran across a recent report from BIGresearch that finds that 94.2% of consumers regularly or occasionally give advice about products and services they purchased, and 90.8% regularly or occasionally seek advice about products and services before making a purchase. Are you doing anything to harness the power of WOM advertising?  Or are you running in horror that someone might post a negative comment?

When you go online to research a product or buy something don’t you always look at the customer reviews? I know I do. I wouldn’t even think about buying something on EBay without considering the Seller’s rating. When was the last time you bought a book on Amazon and didn’t read the customer reviews? What are you doing to give brides a way to check out your fabulous reputation? Hoping they post on theKnot.com? Asking them to tell all their friends? Come on. The only time most people are going to go out of their way to post about you is if you made them mad. “Going out of their way” was the key phrase in that sentence. How about making it easier for them?

Let’s look at EBay and Amazon. When I buy something on EBay I quite often receive a follow up from the seller to post a positive review to up their rating. They always include an active link where I can post my rating. Do you do that? If you did, where would they post?  Look at any book on Amazon and there is a link to “Review this Book”. It is right out there, easy to find and for the world to see. Even blogs do this. At the end of every post is a cue to “Post your comment”. It is all about making it easy for the people you please to spread the word. Trust me, the ones you anger will find a way no matter how hard it is. (More on that later)

I met with my web designer and am having him enable comments on each one of my columns. I’m making it easy. I want to know what you think and I want you to know what my other readers think. You should be doing the same. You need to have a comments page on your website. It needs to be easy for everyone to find to both post and view. Since it is on your website you control it and have the ability to delete something if you need to. You also need to follow the lead of the EBay sellers and send a follow up email with an active link to each of your clients encouraging them to share their experience. You have to prod them to post. . By having it on your website, front and center, it lets your potential clients know that you have nothing to hide. “Yes, please review me. I have ever confidence that you will be happily satisfied.”

I have said it often enough that you should know it by heart now; today’s brides trust personal recommendations far more than advertising. How far are you going to use that bit of information? A marketing site I read made the comment that anyone can post one or two positive testimonials, but who can argue with one or two hundred? Give your potential clients the personal recommendation of as many happy clients as possible Yes, there is a good possibility that the random negative comment will show up. I want you to know two things about that. First, like I said if it is on your site you have control and the power to remove it. Second, I hope you will read it and learn from what was said. It may sting but you need to know what is being said so you can fix it. It is how we improve. Better that a disgruntled bride limits her negative comment to a site you can control rather than go completely off the deep end like this young lady did. http://angrybride.proboards107.com/index.cgi Yes I buried that url as far into this article as possible but feel free to post there. I’m all about transparency.

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.

Announcing release of Kertesz² our new WordPress based full dialog website for Professional Photographers. Featuring an easy to configure landing page and impressive dynamic image content gallery Kertesz² offers style and ease of use. Kertesz² is an excellent full featured stand alone website, or ideal companion configured to enhance and increase the search rank of Flash based photographers’ template sites like Bludomain. Kertesz² is provided to you fully setup, tested, SEO optimized and integrated on the webhost of your choice. It can even allow your existing site to remain in place, while your new site is being completed.

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Photographers have long been considered visionaries of our industry in terms of internet marketing. They were among the first on the web and the first to see the value in the heavy use of images in marketing to brides. But in choosing their website platform they have faced a dilemma, select a Flash template like Bludomain for its optical appeal or choose a standard HTML type site sacrificing optics but getting much better search engine traffic. They know they need a visually beautiful site to show off their images and talent. But the brides, over 90% of whom use Google to help plan their wedding, never see the photographer’s website in the search listings. Kertesz² is the remedy

Building on the inputs of our clients and the advancements in WordPress over the last year we have totally reinvented Kertesz, with Kertesz². The code base is all new! (and 30% larger.) Fully compatible with WordPress 2.8 and using all the 2.8 features. Compatible with the past and even better, it takes advantage of today’s new features in an even easier to use and customize theme. If you are currently using WordPress it is easy to add Kertesz².

Using the technology of Kertesz² we have increased our clients website traffic 500% in less that 4 weeks. We have even taken brand new domains to front page Google search search results, also in less than a month.

Kertesz² retains all the features of the old Kertesz, updated. Better, more interactive, easier to design main page options, improved photo galleries and contact forms. Easier to style and with more impressive graphics. If you already have a Flash based website, like Bludomain, with the inherently poor search potential, Kertesz² can easily replace your splash page, making it easy to add search friendly content, integrate your blog and Twitter and Facebook feeds and rapidly move your existing Flash site towards the front of Google.

Regardless of your situation Kertesz² will increase your site traffic and prospective clients. If you have any questions just send me an email.

Today’s brides come from a very different mindset than those of even a few years ago. If you look through their posts on various forums you will see just how comfortable they are buying online. They do it everyday in their regular life and they expect to be able to do it in their wedding planning. Read more

Yesterday I sat down to hand off a new site to the client. WOW! In less than 20 minutes she had it down. Read more