BridalTweet Wedding Forum & Vendor Directory

Want Kim Kardashian or Oprah to Mention Your Business?

Wedding Professionals:

I recently read Ivana Taylor’s article titled Why Influencers Matter to Small Business. Taylor reminds us that influential people matter to small businesses because they simplify and reduce the cost of communicating your marketing message to large groups of potential customers online. “We’ve been conditioned to think of celebrities as influencers because a single mention from them can set product sales soaring.” But the new truth is that social media has made it possible for wedding professionals like yourselves to easily reach brides. Here’s how to take advantage of this…

STEP 1: Move over Kim Kardashian and Oprah! You don’t need them to mention your brand. Instead, you can connect online with people who are influential in the wedding industry. If those 'wedding influencers' write about your business, it could have a huge impact. To identify wedding influencers, I personally like to use WeFollow and BrideTide’s Top 100 Blog List. Here are some helpful tips for building relationships with wedding influencers:

Read and comment on their blogs, Facebook wall or in Twitter
Find out what their marketing and promotional goals are and look for ways to help them out
Ask them if you can contribute relevant, high quality guest blog articles
Promote their content to your network
Partner with them on a mutually beneficial project that will build their audience, as well as yours

STEP 2: Become a wedding influencer. By mastering two basic fundamentals, any of us can be as influential as Oprah in our own little neck of the woods (aka the wedding world). These two simple rules will enable you to influence your customers (brides), business partners, suppliers, employees and even your family. Give it a try and see what happens. So, how did Oprah do it? In my opinion, here are the two fundamental things that I believe great influencers do really well:

Great influencers constantly look out for their audience’s best interest. No one wants to follow or dedicate their time to someone who is out for themselves. At the same time, influencers establish deep trust amongst their audience. They don’t over or under promise. Oprah would never promise something in a commercial that she couldn’t deliver in one of her episodes. If an influencer doesn’t have their audience’s best interest in mind, then an outbreak of disappointment will occur and their ‘following’ will begin to diminish.
Great influencers go above and beyond in terms of constantly delivering information, opportunities or inspiration that meets the needs of their audience. This can be done in the form of a blog, phone calls, emails, Twitter updates – you name it. Any form of communication works as long as you continue to wow your audience with insights that make their lives easier. This is the secret sauce to get your audience to keep coming back for more. To influence brides (or anyone for that matter), constantly deliver helpful information, opportunities or inspiration to make their wedding planning easier.

By connecting with wedding influencers and/or by becoming influential, you will see the cost and difficulty of marketing your business decrease significantly. What tips can you share about connecting with influencers or becoming influential? Please comment below.

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Enjoy!

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.

Comment by Favoritizm on October 8, 2011 at 6:02pm: There are so many people bidding for just a few minutes to be able to try and connect with the brides... I use the tried and true, how can I make this process as comfortable for both of us as possible.... and bring my real life favor samples for us to get the discussion going,,,

Comment by Rt. Rev. Dr. Ronald Turcot on October 10, 2011 at 5:34am: http://www.tampaweddingofficiants.com

I try to use "Blogging" and the rest is Facebook and also my added facebook page. It's important to make sure your website has many pages that give a lot of helpful wedding planning information as well as some of the wedding ceremonies I use. I offer something that is very rare in the wedding officiant business. Allowing the engaged couple to choose which wedding ceremonial robe to match their color scheme. No Minister or Priest will EVER allow a bride to do that. That that the wedding officiant MUST have a variety of lovely church/ceremonial robes to choose from. In addition, I offer information relating directly to types of venues to seek, what to look out for dealing with venues, less expensive venues to hire as well as highly recommended professional wedding vendors. I work at keeping the bride's expenses down. They really appreciate that. I see my job as a professional consultant that helps steer the couple to the right places for the right prices, THEN perform their ceremony. Service is always most important. That's how I receive so many recommendations.

Comment by jill - the poem lady on October 11, 2011 at 4:49am: I think it is important to work closely with event planners. When someone needs a customized poem for a wedding or bridal shower, I want to know the thepoemlady.com is already in their Rolodex. Find the top 10 event planners in your area and introduce yourself.

jill-the poem lady
Http://www.thepoemlady.com

Comment by tobey Lee Dodge on January 8, 2012 at 8:56am: Thank you for reminding us of what we should be doing to become "influencers". It's probably comes naturally to a lot of us in the wedding world. After all, we are here to serve others and are always thinking of ways to do things better, more creatively, and more efficiently for everyone's benefit. Just giving out good information and looking out for our clients and colleagues best interest is a wonderful way to frame the path to success for us all.