Create a Social Network Strategy for Your Wedding Business

I constantly get emails from wedding professionals asking me for help with Facebook, Twitter and BridalTweet. For the most part, wedding professionals want to know how to maximize their time and effectiveness while on these sites. Because let’s face it, you have a limited amount of time and plenty of other important business to take care of.
My first question back to these inquisitive wedding professionals is:

What are Your Goals? What do You Want Social Networks to Help You Achieve?

One must answer that question first. While each wedding professional has different goals, I’ve decided to choose the four that I believe are the most popular.

Common Goal #1: I want to network with other wedding professionals to gain business insights from my peers and to develop mutually beneficial partnerships.

Common Goal #2: I want to promote a wedding service or product that is on my website.

Common Goal #3: I want to position myself as a thought-leader in my industry or specialized area.

Common Goal #4: I want to increase my website’s search engine ranking on Google, so I need to increase the number of relevant links that point to my website.

Write down one to two main goals that you would like to achieve for your business through social networks. Once you have done that, you will be ready to come up with very specific ways (or tactics) that social networks can help you achieve those goals. Implement those tactics and be sure to monitor your success over time. Regularly ask yourself if you are achieving the goals that you originally outlined. If not, tweak your tactics to ensure that you are achieving your goals.

Before you know it, you’ll have developed your very own social network strategy. This strategy or plan is something that you can refer to on a regular basis to make sure that you are achieving your goals and being as productive as possible while on social networks.

Again, there isn’t a one size fits all approach to this. However, here are some examples of effective social network strategies for wedding professionals…

Strategy #1
Common Goal #1: I want to network with other wedding professionals to gain business insights from my peers and to develop mutually beneficial partnerships.
• Tactic: I will use BridalTweet’s Member Directory to search for professionals in my area. I’ll request vendor friendships, and then I’ll start to engage in online conversations with those professionals.
• Tactic: I will attract the attention of wedding professionals at BridalTweet by asking a thought-provoking question.
Tactic: I will create a Facebook Fan page and will engage in conversations with wedding professionals who become my fans.
• Tactic: I will conduct a search on Twitter for users who are talking about weddings. I will ‘follow them.’ If they ‘follow me’ back, I’ll start to engage in conversations with them.
Ways to Monitor Success: Each week, I will keep a record of the meaningful online conversations that I have had with wedding professionals. I will keep track of online conversations that have either led to ‘meet ups’ or have improved my business.

Strategy #2
Common Goal #2: I want to promote a wedding service or product that is on my website.
• Tactic: I will create blog posts at BridalTweet, Facebook, and other wedding websites to talk about my product or service. Within the blog posts, I will include links to my website.
• Tactic: I will post thought-provoking comments on other wedding blogs or on Twitter. This will grab the attention of brides and professionals, enticing them to visit my website and to view my products or services.
• Tactic: I will join BridalTweet’s Twitter This Please Group to encourage other BridalTweet members to tweet about my product or services.
Ways to Monitor Success: Each week, I will keep track of the sites that are driving the most traffic to my website. Google Analytics is a great tool to use to help keep track of this. I can also use Bit.ly to shorten my urls and to track the number of clicks that my links receive.

Strategy #3
Common Goal #3: I want to position myself as a thought-leader in my industry or specialized area.
• Tactic: I will write blog posts on BridalTweet, Facebook, and other wedding websites. Within my blog posts, I will enhance my reputation by consistently sharing my expertise and insights about my specialty.
Ways to Monitor Success: Once a week, I will monitor the comments that people leave on my blogs. I will also search for my business name on Twitter to monitor what people are saying about me.

Strategy #4
Common Goal #4: I want to increase my website’s search engine ranking on Google, so I need to increase the number of relevant links that point to my website.
• Tactic: I will write blog posts on BridalTweet, Facebook, and other wedding websites. Within my blog posts, I will include links with relevant keywords that will point to my website.
• Tactic: I will join BridalTweet’s Vendor Link Exchange Group and will swap links with other professionals.
Ways to Monitor Success: Once a week, I will monitor my ranking on Google.

What helpful hints can you share about your social network strategy? Please comment below.

About This Blog: Christine Dyer has an MBA in marketing and shares over ten years of marketing expertise with the wedding community. In this weekly blog called Supercharge Your Wedding Business, you'll find advice on an array of wedding business topics such as how to market to brides, social networking, wedding PR, wedding sales, vendor networking, branding, pricing and much more. .Please pass this news along to your own professional wedding network. To receive this advice in your email inbox each week, Sign Up for a Free BridalTweet Membership.