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.

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.

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.

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.

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.