We’ve been blogging religiously since early in 2006 – for me it was a no brainer!
Our target market are brides and grooms… our demographic are young, fairly affluent professionals – they were on MySpace (wow, blast from the past), they were the first on Facebook, to have smart phones and were pinning before most people knew what it was.
For a wedding planner blogging was a great way to give couples a taste of what we do – we’re all about planning, organization and details.
Things like quotes from couples we’ve worked with on how easy we made the process, images of recent weddings, information on great reception venues, and wonderful wedding professionals as well as tips and trends drive traffic to our site…
It used to be that easy – if you build it, they will come – but then everyone started blogging…. We found that several things kept us ahead of the pack.
- Blog on a regular basis – we have a team of 5 planners, we charged everyone with blogging once a month; that gave us one post a week plus any extras I came up with in between. (We see HUGE spikes in our traffic when we blog- more on that later).
- Have a short, catchy title – we LOVE titles that sound just a bit edgy – it gets people’s attention.
- Give credit where credit is due – quote (and link) to sources if you are quoting someone else’s idea or photo – not only is it good business etiquette but hyperlinks and tagging colleagues help your searchablity.
- If you are referencing something in one of your previous blog posts or on your own site (Recent Weddings, Services and Pricing) , link to them – it’s good to build that visibility.
However, the biggest change in our ranking came when we recently rebuilt our site – making our website compatible for mobile devices, adding in social media links – so people can easily share our posts and having great analytics ROCK!
Here are the ‘Before & After’ screen shots of our website:
Before:
After:
Being able to see the spikes in various topics of blog posts, see where people are finding us and what search terms they are using has been key to keeping our great web ranking and keeping newly engaged couples interested in our work…
Blogging and sharing your blog posts on social media outlets is easy, fun and engages your clients – with the right tools you can increase your traffic and establish yourself as an expert in your field.
– Mark Kingsdorf, Master Bridal ConsultantTM
