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

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.

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 lie 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?

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

It is well recognized that to convert a prospect to a client requires a dialog.  In the past that had to be done with a personal presentation, conversation, a phone call, a series emails or a combination of all.  The website was just a static information resource.  Now we have advanced the website to be a large page of the dialog, to become a Dialogue-Site.

A Dialogue-Site will,

• Allow for the simple additions of new information, images and files.  Done as easily as creating and sending an email.
• Integrate your blog within your website, directly increasing the ranking or your website and reducing traffic leakage due to people’s resistant to click into new sites.
• Dynamically, automatically display featured content in different locations on main page and other pages within your website.
• Allow site visitors to rate your content and even post comments.  Even support comment threading allowing true discussions to evolve on particular subjects.
• Automatically post notifications of any new information to Facebook profiles and page and Twitter.  Yes your website will automatically Tweet your changes and also post your Tweets to the front page of your Dialog-Site.
• Create XML sitemaps, save them and confirm notification of Google, Bing and Ask search engines to retrieve the new sitemaps.  All automatics every time you make a site change.
• Built-in social media links on every page allowing your site visitors to bookmark and note your site on their social profiles and within their favorite social media/networks.
• Site content syndication.  Allow off site subscriptions and reading of your site and its content updates via feedreader or direct email.  At not cost to your or your subscriber.
• Easily add new features and pages.

Find out how to get your site to be a Dialogue-Site

See an Example of a dialogue-Site

When the Tennessee Wedding & Events Specialists Association decided to replace their old website they had a long wish list. First it had to appeal to a very web savvy target market and be easy to use across multiple generations.  It needed to be updatable and expandable.  It needed to be fully optimized for both social media and search and compatible with mobile devices. It needed to integrate membership accounting functions such as membership applications and online renewal. What they chose was a website built entirely on a WordPress platform!

TWESA turned to the experts at the Agency@Think to find a solution. What they got was more than they expected.

TWESA.com is a full website including extensive galleries, blogs, video and member listings all built on a WordPress platform.  It is fully integrated into social media such as Twitter and Facebook, even the calendar has its own RSS feed.  This is just what visitors see.On the non public side, members are able to post to the site as well as update their listings.

The Agency@Think included a member’s only blog that functions more like a Facebook wall or a Twitter feed. Since the private blog is fully optimized for mobile devices, members can use it as an instant way to communicate with each other while working an event. The importance of having a private one to many back channel means of communication on a busy event day is priceless.

Also an important factor in choosing WordPress was the ability to incorporate membership accounting functionality. The site now has the ability for new members to apply and pay online, members to renew or upgrade online and automatically bills members when their annual dues are up. The system generates full reports on member billing and accounting activity; eliminating many dollars previously paid to an accountant for billing and record keeping. Because WordPress integrates so easily with so many plugins, the Agency@Think was able to set the payment function up completely with in PayPal eliminating the need for and expense of a traditional shopping cart.

Search Engine Optimization is important for any website. Previously TWESA had been paying over $200 a month for SEO. With the new site, because it is built on the semantically correct WordPress Platfom the site is virtually self-optimizing. With each new post or listing the site’s search power increases. But at the end of the day it is results that count.  The new Dialog-Site website has increased search engine referrals over five fold in just its first 30 days, with no additional advertising or other time expense.

According to Vicki Sanders, President of TWESA, “When we started this project I don’t think we fully grasped the possibilities. The Agency @Think understood our needs and not only showed us what was possible, but even added functionality that would benefit us that we never even knew existed. Many of our members have WordPress blogs that they loved. So we knew how well WordPress worked for that but we were surprised at how well The Agency@Think was able to use WordPress to build an entire website on those strengths.”

Way back in 1998, blogging was born and in many ways is responsible for the kick off of the whole Social Media shift. Estimates vary from 77 million up to 112.8 million blogs out there. In the Technorati “State of the Blogosphere 2008”, citing the McCann Report it is estimated that 346 million or 77% of internet users read blogs regularly and that worldwide 184 million people have started a blog.(March 2008).

What caused this exponential growth? For one thing, the tools became available to make every man, woman and child, no matter how technically challenged, a citizen journalist. From free to cheap, anyone could now pop their own page up on the web and let their thoughts out into the wild. That single thing began to change our world.

Before blogs, the information available to the average citizen was controlled by big media or entities with deep enough pockets to buy and maintain a website. Today, that is no longer the case. Blogger (Blog Spot in the early days) wasn’t the first blog platform, but is certainly the one that sparked the revolution for the average man. For absolutely no money and in as little as an hour, anyone with an internet connection could have a web presence.

My how that little seed has grown. The technology behind social media has been growing as fast as the number of blogs. Led by the technorati among us, newer, better and faster tools are being launched on an almost daily basis. The brightest constellation in the blogospere today is Twitter, the micro-blogging platform. In posts of 140 characters or less, anyone with a bit of wit or wisdom and a touch of dedication can become a rockstar in their field.

Let’s look specifically at the wedding industry. Today blogs platforms have become sophisticated enough to replace websites. This site is built on a blog platform. For years small wedding vendors have struggled with their web presence, often held hostage by their web designer over any changes. Web sites were an expensive proposition that once launched, rarely were updated. By using a blogging platform, the ability to update a website at the click of a button is with in the reach of anyone willing to devote the initial time to learning the platform. Unlike the old days, that learning curve has been shorted to a few hours. On a simple to use platform like WordPress, anyone can be confidently in control of their own web presence in a few short lessons.

Why do you need any of this? Well we know that our brides are on the web, we also know that the single best way to get them to find us is through search. The best way to get good search rankings is by having lots of great, search friendly content. The more often that content is updated or added to, the better. That spells one thing, blog.

If you read yesterdays post than you already know that blogging is about sharing. My advice is to use these new tools and this new media to share your passions. You have 346 million potential readers.

Here is some further reading on blogs and blog statistics if you are interested.

State of the Blogosphere 2008

Wikipedia

Social media, when you get right down to it is nothing more than human conversation. Conversations like you have every day, at work, at play at any social gathering; with one exception.  Social media makes it happen on a global scale in the blink of an eye.

When you talk about social media, you are talking about tools like Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and a dozen other sites just like them. The common denominator is that they each have the ability to turn what you have to say into a conversation. You put your thoughts and ideas out there for your network to respond to. You share what you know and what you have with others and they share what they have with you. It really is that easy.
One of the comments/concerns I get from people when I suggest they start a blog or join Facebook or Twitter is “No one wants to know what I had for breakfast.”  Well that’s true, but if you think that is the only thing you have to talk about you’re not listening to yourself. Don’t you have more intelligent conversations daily? I bet you do.
Think about what you have talked about today with a bride; or what was said on the phone with a colleague. The thing most people don’t realize is that each one of us has a truly unique perspective. We all see things differently than anyone else on the planet. Take for example a group of photographers; if you give them all the exact same subject they will all capture it differently. Whether it is the equipment they choose, the angle or the lighting, no two images will be exactly the same.  It’s the same with florists; give eight florists the same bucket of cut flowers and you will get eight completely different arrangements.

Being a part of social media is sharing your unique perspective. The more you share, the more your network will grow. Then you have all these people that are sharing their unique perspective with you. Whether you are learning and sharing with other wedding professionals or sharing your unique perspective with your target market, everybody wins.

Tomorrow I’ll start exploring some of the tools of social media.

Internet Marketing. Do You Just Not Get How Important It Is?

I’m working with a client right now that has me a bit baffled.  I don’t think they quite understand how important their online marketing is.

We sat down and came up with a very simple yet comprehensive plan. Nothing fancy, just a new blog based website and an email campaign. Three weeks later…

I’m still waiting. The holdup is they want to launch the email campaign first since they already have (a very old) website and they are still compiling their email lead list. Ugh. It seems that their leads are all on paper forms that clients have filled out and they have to wait for their son to put them on the computer.

COME ON PEOPLE!
Hire a virtual assistant and have it done in an afternoon. Move forward. This stuff is important. Spend a little on this, OK?

I know that I have been preaching that social media marketing is insanely inexpensive but it’s not free. Yes, compared to conventional advertising; print, TV, radio, it is insanely cheap. If you do it yourself that is. If on the other hand, you are so unaccustomed to computers and the internet that you have to ask what Excel is then you are going to have to pay someone to do it.

Big business gets it. A new report by Aberdeen Group spotlighted by eMarketer shows that 63% of “best-in-class” companies’ surveyed plan to increase their social media budgets this year despite the recession. Another report that came out this year, The Forrester Report stated that “budgets in this emerging category (social media marketing) are still miniscule — three-quarters of marketers have $100,000 or less earmarked for social media.”

OK, admittedly no small business is going to spend that kind of money, but it doesn’t take that kind of money for a small business to buy in to social media. If you look at what you spent last year on advertising, and eliminated one print ad or reduced the size of them all across the board you could come up with more than enough to hire a professional to get you going in social media.

Hire someone to design a plan for your company and get it set up. Hire them to train you or an employee on how to use the applications. Then either take the time yourself to do it or make it the responsibility of a trusted employee. For next to nothing you are creating your own in house marketing department. It’s not rocket science people but you do have to put forth the effort to either do it yourself of pay to have it done. You can’t just not do it; you’ll get left in the dust.

I have to tell you about one of my coaching clients. I got a call from a very talented graphics designer in Canada asking for help back in May. Holly was doing what she could as far as social media Read more