What Brides Are Saying About You

Wedding Professionals:

These days, it is so incredibly easy to find out what brides are saying about you online. Observing these conversations is now a standard marketing practice and there are a number of free tools that you can use to listen to what’s being said about your business.

To help you out, here are my two of my favorite ‘online listening’ tools:

1. WhosTalkin – Visit this site and enter in your business name. Click ‘Search’ and WhosTalkin will display a list of websites that mention your business. You will be enlightened by the results. And what I love most about WhosTalkin is that you can slice and dice the results. WhosTalkin makes it very easy for you to quickly soak up these real-time conversations that are happening about your business.

2. Google Alerts – This tool allows you to set up custom searches. Then, when those search terms hit Google’s radar, Google Alerts will email you. For example, I have set up a Google Alert for the searches ‘bridaltweet’ and ‘bridal tweet.’ Each day, I receive an email with a list of websites that mention my business name.

Not only does this information satisfy our own curiosity about how we’re viewed across the wedding industry, but more importantly, this information helps us to find opportunities for our business. It helps us to uncover what our customers love, what they need more of, and what they need less of. Finally, it never hurts to reward or respond to those who create positive mentions about your business.

In this new age of social media, it is crucial that you let customers voice their opinion. This means that you may on occasion come across negative mentions about your business. If that happens, my recommendation is to respond privately. There's nothing worse than a public he-said, she-said battle. The backlash of comments could be worse than the original comment itself. If you do need to respond in a private manner, then respond with a 'how-can-I-help' message. Yes, holding back from a public dialogue can be difficult and it does require having a very thick skin but the good news is that you’d be surprised how many other people might respond publically for you – with positive comments about your amazing service. Having others defend you is much more authentic and credible.

Do you have any tips to share about monitoring mentions of your business online? If so, please share your comments below.

About This Blog: Christine Dyer is the Creator and Founder of BridalTweet. Christine has an MBA in marketing and shares over ten years of marketing expertise with the wedding community. In this weekly blog, 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.