10 Tips from Expert Wedding Bloggers

You’ve heard it time and time again – your business needs to have a blog. Having a blog allows you to show your expertise, attract new brides and grooms and increase your business, yet some wedding pros just haven’t embraced it.

Don’t know what to write about or how to find time to blog in your already busy schedule?

Here are some of the best tips from wedding pros and bridal bloggers to make the most of your wedding business blog:

1. Keep Your Content Current

It is important to keep your blog current with new content at least once per week.

I try to keep my blog fresh and current with new material several times a month. I probably spend 2-3 hours a week blogging. If I let it slide for a couple of weeks due to the busy season, I might spend one or 2 days playing catch up afterwards. It does take what seems like an enormous amount of time to me, but I realize the importance to my business.

– Lori O’Toole,  Lori O’Toole Photography

2. Know Your Target Audience

Your wedding business is not right for everyone, so tailor your blog content to reach your ideal clients.

Make sure that everything you blog about is relevant to your readers, as well as something that you know they want to know about or see.

– Shafonne Myers, Pretty Pear Bride

3. Write Short Informative Posts

Everyone’s time is precious- to keep your readers engaged keep your posts short and helpful.

Write shorter posts, an average of around 500 words. Nobody has time to read a huge dissertation on wedding dresses, and you don’t have the time to write it, however much you like the topic. Restraint is necessary when it comes to writing time, if you enjoy it.

– Sonia Rosua-Clyne, ii.do

4. Write What You Know

You are an expert in your field – show it by writing about what you know.

Always keep a running list of blog topics or ideas, and when you need to blow off steam, get your head out of a wedding budget, or clear your brain after a particularly difficult client call, stop and blog. Biggest timesaver – WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW ABOUT. Research is great, but experience is far more
valuable to your readers. Write what you know. Not what you think you know.

– Sandy Malone, Wedding and Event Planning Expert

5. Give Advice, Tips and Tricks

Brides and grooms are searching for helpful tips and advice, so give it to them!

The Weddeo blog focuses on offering readers invaluable tips and tricks for capturing priceless wedding moments through video. My favorite way to do this is to interview our real couples’ about their love story and feature their wedding highlights videos. In addition, the blog also offers our thought leadership about advancements in affordable wedding tech trends through our wedding-focused infographic series.

Don’t write fluff. When you write about the things you are most passionate about in your field, the writing comes easy.

– Kate Storey, Weddeo

6. Write and Schedule Your Posts in Advance

Don’t have time to write every day or week? Write and schedule your posts in advance.

One of my best tips is to queue posts… I have to be efficient with my time and can’t always post every day. So I pick specific days to blog and I write enough content to post for multiple days. Then I schedule them over the week so that my blog stays relevant and up to date.

– Dorian Smith-Garcia, The Anti Bridezilla

7. Allow Others to Create Content

From staff writers to guest bloggers, have others create content for you.

“Solicit guest bloggers in your field that compliment your work. This will help you build a community and will save you time having to write original content.”

– Kate Harrison, Green Bride Guide

“Many businesses have resorted to hiring outside writers, which I don’t feel is the right approach because your in-house staff will best be able to create content that is engaging to your core consumer base, as well as appropriate for your brand. I asked two of our sales staff, Jessica and Amy, to put their talents to work for the blog. Their blog posts sometimes come from questions submitted by clients like in the Ask Amy section, or are very current and engaging topics about jewelry, fashion and watches.”

– Jayme Pretzloff, Wixon Jewelers

8. Use Time-Saving Shortcuts

Blogging is more than just writing – there are photos to add and social media promotion. Check out these shortcuts:

Photos:  

I tag all my photos and try to use photos that might be attractive to new brides who are looking for the 1st time. Resizing, logoing and arranging the photos for a blog post is tedious and time consuming. I use a script now from Code & Hustle that does all that work for me – it probably saves me at least an hour a post since I started using it.

– Lori O’Toole, Lori O’Toole Photography

Social Media:

Link your social media accounts and send full articles, microblogs, and / or images between them. For example, my WordPress blog feeds Facebook and my Facebook and Instagram accounts often feed my Twitter and Tumblr. Choose your main vehicle and feed other social media platforms from it.

– DJ Bri Swatek, Spinning with Style

9. Utilize SEO and Social Media

Blogging is useless if no one can find your site. SEO and social media play important roles.

I have found that one of the best ways to attract blog visitors is through proper SEO in addition to social media. Optimizing for SEO will help ensure that your posts are able to rank higher and ultimately be seen in the search engines. Social media is especially useful as long as you build a strong following- a tribe of readers who love the content you share.

– Jayme Pretzloff,  Wixon Jewelers

10. Attract Clients With Your Unique Point of View

You and your business are unique. Show it!

My number one strategy to attract brides and grooms is my point of view. I really attempt to make each post I write focus on the couple, their style, their family and friends, their music, etc. I try to highlight how the choices they made from the venue to the décor to the key songs really showcase their style as a couple.

I often hear a complaint from wedding vendors that they “don’t know what to write” or don’t have any ideas for their blog. Shakespeare cranked out somewhere in the neighborhood of 37 plays and 154 sonnets in his short lifetime. He also borrowed and rewrote liberally. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel when writing. Just express your own unique knowledge, experience, and point of view, so that your readers (your customers!) can get a sense of who you are and what expertise you will bring to their wedding day.

– DJ Bri Swatek, Spinning with Style

The single most important strategy for attracting brides is to create highly visual content. Within that though it is very important to create content that is unique to you, that has its own voice.
Don’t waste time creating blog posts a) if you don’t have time to promote them and b)if you’re just going to repeat what others do. There are so many wedding blogs out there. Make sure yours is unique.

– Marta Segal Block, GigMasters

What tips can you start using for your wedding business blog? Have a tip to add?  Note it in the comments below…

Photo Credit