Customer engagement took first place, with 85% of surveyed executives citing it as the main benefit of using social media marketing.  Only 21% of executives, however, think that it is a “great lead generation source”.  That means most of those surveyed do not think social media directly impacts sales.

Regardless, the majority of respondents agreed that there are numerous benefits to engaging in social media marketing, given it is low in cost, it can be used a source of feedback and results, and it allows for direct customer communication.

Although this was a small survey, I think the take away message is that it would be beneficial to utilize social media marketing as one of your marketing mediums for 2009.

What do you think the benefits are for using social media marketing?  Do you plan to incorporate more of it in 2009?

Not into Twitter yet?   Sign up for your free account today and let the fun begin!

Follow us on Twitter!

Wishing you good health, happiness, and success in the New Year!

Best Wishes,

The WeddingWire Team

Want to become WeddingWire Rated?  Get 3 or more of your past clients to review your services and you become eligible to place the WeddingWire rated logo on your website!  It’s a great way to let your past clients speak on your behalf - especially before the flux of new brides hits in the New Year!

Visit the Marketing section of your WeddingWire account today to get started!

WeddingWire is teaming up with Colorado radio station, 92.5 THE WOLF, for the Denver’s Best Engagement Story contest. Listeners can submit a quick story about how they got engaged and will be entered to win a Rocky Mountain Bridal Show prize pack courtesy of WeddingWire.com!  The prize pack is valued at $2500 and is complete with numerous gifts, including free services from the following vendors:

We would like to thank the vendors in advance who have donated their services for this contest! The Rocky Mountain Bridal Show will take place Sunday, January 4th from 11am to 4pm at the Colorado Convention Center.  Click here for more information on the show.

Interested in being part of WeddingWire contests?
WeddingWire will be launching contests like this in different markets throughout 2009.  If you are interested in donating your services in return for advertisement with WeddingWire and our contest partners (TV, radio, etc.), please email us at vendors@weddingwire.com.

Martha Stewart Weddings has a new home! The wedding platform can now be accessed at www.MarthaStewartWeddings.com.  The site was previously located under a tab on Martha Stewart’s main site, www.MarthaStewart.com.  This move will help drive more attention to their wedding platform and make the site more searchable.  And since WeddingWire powers the network of local vendors and online wedding-planning tools for their site, this new move will make it easier for brides to find you in the vendor catalog!  Check it out today.

• An Introduction to Google Analytics - A quick explanation of what Google Analytics is and how it works.

• Google Analytics: Measuring Interactions - Demonstrates how Google Analytics measures website interactions (beyond pageviews).

• Google AdWords- A demonstration of how Google AdWords works. It provides tips and suggestions too!

Let’s take a look at the difference between the two types:

• Outbound Marketing: Main goal is to find customers.
• Inbound Marketing: Main goal is getting found by customers.

So why are companies now using more Inbound Marketing tactics? Here are a few reasons I found:

• It costs less. Inbound Marketing is all about creating good content and talking about it. This can be done by starting a blog, creating a Facebook fan page, posting videos on YouTube, or using Twitter. All of these examples are free and can draw a significant amount of attention.
• Better targeting. With Inbound Marketing you can be more selective when choosing your audience instead of targeting the masses.
• It’s an investment, not an ongoing expense. If you invest money in creating content that puts you in the high rank of Google’s organic results (which is free), you will be there until someone else displaces you.

With the New Year only weeks away, it might be helpful to take a look at your own marketing plan and see if you can incorporate any of these Inbound Marketing tactics!

For more details on Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing, check out this great blog post from HubSpot.

Emails can work as a means of advertisement.  According to a recent MediaPost blog, email marketing is still the highest ROI channel and earning $45+ ROI for every dollar invested (DMA, 2008).

As mentioned in the blog, the key to email marketing is there is a right and wrong way to approach it. The wrong way involves sending the same email, multiple times. This tends to increase your list churn and drive readers away, making it very hard to earn back their respect.

The right way is to make sure that each email counts.  Here is my take on a few good tips from the MediaPost blog that you can use to help you do this:

1. Get the tone right - Position your products and services so that they meet the need of your customers during the realities of our time (i.e. down economy, low budgets, etc.)
2. Realize that discounts are not the only motivator - Although discount emails can sometimes work, they tend to fall into the “wrong way” category if they are repeated too many times.  Try providing helpful tips, value information, and timely offers in your emails.  These can boost your response and protect your margin.
3. Integrate online channels - Use emails to spark a conversation that will continue to other social mediums, such as facebook, twitter, etc.
4. Ask for feedback in each email and every source of contact with your customers - It is key for you to monitor customer feedback and experience. Make sure you listen to what the customers are saying and communicate back with them. This is only going to benefit you in the long run!
5. Thank your customers - Send helpful tips and special offers to good customers and new buyers.  This is a great chance for you to encourage your customers to tell their friends about you!

These tips and others listed in the MediaPost blog can help you become a smarter marketer and assist you in crafting your emails the right way!

Feel free to share any other email marketing tips you have personally had success with!

Thirty-three couples’ dreams of getting married were shattered earlier this year when they learned their venues had shut down after Hurricane Ike swept through Texas. With their locations lost and their money gone, the couples sadly had to put their dreams of getting married on hold. Thanks to the Rachael Ray Show and the generous local vendors, the couples were thrown a dream wedding at Minute Maid Park in just one week!  Visit the Rachael Ray Show site for all the details!

Congratulations Christine, Ashley, and Team Rachael Ray for making so many dreams come true!

1. Save Time: Upload multiple images at the click of a mouse!
2. Get Organized: Click and drag images to put them in the order YOU want on your Storefront.
3. Tag your images: Simply choose a description or keyword “tag” to categorize your images, making them easier to share.

And in case you need even more incentive to start posting images, we will soon be publishing all tagged images to the Ideas section for brides to find you!  Brides will be able to search the Ideas section images and save their favorite images to their account.  And with your business name linked to all of your tagged images, this serves as yet another way to get your business name out there and reach brides!

Visit your Vendor Portfolio today and let the uploading, organizing, and most importantly tagging begin!

Here’s a few of my top choices:

• DrPic.com- Upload your images to this free image editor, utilize the numerous tools and then save your work to a disk or to the Web in whatever format you choose.
  

• FlauntR.com - This site is big on backgrounds, self-created magazine covers and basic editing tools.  You can even purchase prints of any of your designs.
  

• FotoFlexer.com - A completely free editor with numerous tools such as distortions, layers, effects, smart scissors and much more.
  

Now that the election is finally over and it’s back to reality, the economy is still struggling.  Those in the wedding industry have been relatively fortunate that the wedding industry tends to be more resilient compared to many other industries (think auto industry).   That being said, as a business owner it’s still a time for compassion as we all need a little help from time to time.  I was reading Seth Godin’s blog this morning and he wrote an insightful, two sentence post that I thought speaks volumes:

“Your customers and employees and investors will remember how you treated them when times were tough, when they needed a break, when a little support meant everything.

Check out some pictures from the show:

Ashley Conway and Katie Peck (WeddingWire) showcased our booth, handed out t-shirts, rings, and local vendor guides!

Robin and KT (Your Perfect Wedding by Di Fiori) got in the WeddingWire spirit and modeled our t-shirts

Shezad (Hakim Sons Films) stopped by to say hello

Ashley met local photographer Jory Cordy

A big thanks to all the vendors and brides who stopped by the booth! We look forward to seeing you again!

Martha Stewart Weddings Bridal Market Event

The Martha Stewart Weddings team hosted their annual Bridal Market event this past Monday at the Tavern on the Green.  We were invited to attend and network with guests! The event was beautiful and we had a great time socializing with the Martha Stewart Weddings team and attending guests.

Here are a few pictures:

Carine Halabi (Carine’s Bridal Atelier), Darcy Miller (Martha Stewart Weddings), Lynn Carter, me, and Megan Hermeling (WeddingWire)

Vanessa Holden and Darcy Miller (Martha Stewart Weddings), Mrs. Bee (Weddingbee), Lee Wang and Lynn Carter (WeddingWire)

The Wedding Salon

We attended the Wedding Salon bridal showcase on Wednesday, where the latest wedding trends were displayed. The Wedding Salon bridal showcase brings together the leading vendors and the top spenders in the wedding industry. This year’s show took place at beautiful venue, The Prince George Ballroom, and showcased a variety of great vendors. We even got to meet one of our featured NYC officiants, Rabbi Andrea Frank!

Take a look at some pictures:

Rabbi Andrea Frank (A featured vendor listed on WeddingWire) and Katie Peck (WeddingWire)

Table design by Marc Wilson Design

Bridal model and me

Table design by The Lincoln Center

Page titles are essential to your web pages for a several reasons, which include SEO and usability.  Page titles are one of the first items that search engine spiders crawl when indexing your site, so page titles need to be relevant to the content on that page.  Additionally, that page title appears in search engine results so if you want click throughs, it needs to be relevant.  Ann Smarty at Search Engine Journal details 7 criteria for effective page titles that are good to keep in mind when building or updating your website:

1. page title should be short and concise (unless you want it’s broken at the end);
2. each page title should be unique and the unique part should go first (if a visitor keeps several tabs from the same open, he should clearly see what each tab is about);
3. it should be catchy (to communicate an effective message);
4. page title should conform to the page purpose (e.g. calling to action or informational);
5. page title should be based on your keywords (for Googlebot to understand what the page is about);
6. page title should be focused (don’t try to include all your keywords in the title the home page);
7. page title should be semantically correct (Google is likely to apply some kind of semantic analysis to titles to make sure they are not spammy).

There are some photos from the event on our Flickr page. We also had Billy J Disc Jockeys to entertain the crowd starting at 6am.  There’s nothing like some electric slide at 6:45 in the morning!

Electric Slide - Running of the Brides from Brian on Vimeo.

All and all the event was a huge success thanks to My 106.1 and the team of professionals who worked very hard (and very quickly) to make Lisa and Victor’s dream come true!  WeddingWire would like to sincerely thank everyone at My 106.1 and the participating vendors for making this event a complete success from start to finish!

Participating vendors included:

Check out the My 106.1 contest page for highlights from the event!

1. Have clear economic targets. Be exact with how much traffic you want or will spend.  Don’t be vague right now.
2. Use strong bid management tools. If you outsource your PPC, stay in touch with your account manager.  If you do it yourselves, keep a watchful eye on it.  Don’t just let your PPC campaigns sit around.
3. Shift ad dollars to stronger channels. Consider all your advertising options and use the methods with the greatest return, which may mean putting more into paid search and less into bridal events for instance.
4. Seek capped agency or technology fees. Just make sure if you outsource your PPC campaigns, that fees don’t eat into your margins too heavily.
5. Protect your bottom line first. Revenue targets set in 2007 may not work right now and you’ve got to be constantly adjust your targets right now.  Protect your bottom line, what that mean a year ago is probably different right now.
6. Stay calm. Don’t over react and don’t be afraid to be creative with your advertising and constantly be testing new ad units.

1. MySpace - 71,486,821
• Build a profile for your business
• Browse through your network and connect
2. Facebook - 42,777,397
• Create a fan page for your business
• Build a wedding group or participate
3. Ning - 3,757,563
• Build your personal niche social network
4. WordPress - 134,875,738
• Create your blog and build incoming links
• Participate and comment on wedding blogs
5. Twitter - 1,723,476
• Create a following with your micro-blog
6. YouTube - 73,537,222
• Showcase your business with video content
7. Flickr - 22,511,915
• Create online photo albums and tag your pics
8. Digg - 21,632,429
• Build incoming links to the content on your site
9. Upcoming.Yahoo.com - 3,419,626
• Broadcast your events and the places you will be
10. Answers.Yahoo.com - 23,386,964
• Share your expert knowledge with brides-to-be

Share which of these you are currently using and feel free to post links to your pages with your comments!

When asked about specific types of interactions, Americans believe:

• Companies should use social networks to solve my problems (43%)
• Companies should solicit feedback on their products and services (41%)
• Companies should develop new ways for consumers to interact with their brand (37%)
• Companies should market to consumers (25%)

It’s an interesting study that supports the common notion that social media should be a part of your overall marketing plan.  Whether it’s a Facebook Fan page, a Myspace profile, a Flickr profile, or a company blog, customers today have many places to visit on the web today so being where they are is going to be key to attracting new business.

What social media avenues are you using to reach today’s brides?  What has or hasn’t worked?  What are your barriers to using social media if you don’t already?

The first is called Issuu.com.  This company lets you upload a PDF document and it will turn it into a Flash version of the document to link or embed on your website.  Here’s an example from Practical Photography magazine using it to put the magazine online. As a wedding vendor, I can envision you using this to show off your portfolio or even as a new way to manage your sales documents online.  This small, embedable version opens up to a full version by clicking on it.

The second is Flowgram. This company allows you to create online presentations that incorporate images, powerpoint, and even live webpages. Additionally, you can narrate your presentation by recording audio and music. You can place your online gallery of photos (even if it’s on flickr already) on your website, but with Flowgram, you can narrate it. You can literally tell prospective clients how you designed this piece or what the newlywed couple was doing here or your inspiration for something else. If a picture is worth a thousand words, Flowgram lets you put a few of those words with your image. Here’s an another embedable example:

WeddingWire has partnered up with My 106.1 FM in Philadelphia for a Wedding in a Week contest where one lucky couple will literally have a week to plan their wedding…with the help of WeddingWire’s great vendor base.  The actual wedding will take place on 10/10/08.

This is an interesting contest for us and we hope that one lucky couple will make the most of this experience.  The typicaly wedding planning cycle is almost 16 months and we’re shrinking it down to just 6 days!  Voting starts this weekend on My1061.com.  Anyone can vote, but you’ll need to be in Philadelphia to actually see the wedding.  So be sure to check out My1061.com this weekend and choose the couple you feel is most deserving.

Here are some of the participating wedding vendors making this event possible:

Ironically, I also came across a new social network dedicated to remember those that have passed called Footnote which recently presented at the TechCrunch 50 conference.  Footnote bills itself as the “Easiest way to gather and share the unique life of someone or something special.”  So perhaps if you’re ever in need of a place to digitally remember someone, you might try Footnote….apparently 80+ million other people already have.

Running Brides - Mazza Gallery from WeddingWire on Vimeo

It’s easier than ever to use your domain in your email address.  If you host with a company like 1and1.com or GoDaddy.com, then you defintely have email addresses waiting for you.  If you use a private company to manage your website, contant them about new emails immediately as they should have emails for you as well.  Even if you’re a true do it yourselfer and host your website on a computer in your own home and only have a domain, Google Apps provides business solutions to manage email through Gmail while still maintaining email addresses that end in your domain and not gmail.com.

The bottom line is having your company in your email address is a must these days.  Even you think too many people have your current email address to change, simply start replying to emails with your new one and people will have your and improved email address.

1. Bookmark your best posts on Delicious
2. Use StumbleUpon to bookmark posts as well
3. Use the status message on LinkedIN to link to your blog post
4. An interesting idea is when leaving a comment on an industry related blog, put the blog post link in the URL field instead of your normal blog URL.  However, by no means mention your post.  Simply leave an insightful comment adding to the discussion
5. Share your post on Facebook using BlogCast (could the status message here as well)
6. Make sure your posts get shared FriendFeed automatically
7. Let Zemanta insert related article links at the bottom of your story.  You can get the plug-in for Wordpress, Movable Type, Firefox and others here.
8. Tweet about your post on Twitter.

So what ideas work for you?  Or better yet, didn’t work for you?  I’d love to hear.

Wedding services require relationships.  These relationships are the foundation of your business and will differentiate you from your competition.  One of the best ways to get a relationship off the ground with your blog is to offer information and advice about your area of expertise.  Admittedly, some people will take your information and run, but not all will and many more will begin to return regularly.  This will help build credibility for you as an industry expert. Your passionate about what you do, so use that energy to drive your content.  People will notice your enthusiasm.

If a bride-to-be can quickly see from your blog that you are an ‘expert’ that can provide some customization or distinction to their wedding, this can often make them more likely to want to work with you.  In this instance of using your blog to generate leads, give site visitors information that is useful, but also make sure to encourage them to contact you also, perhaps to customize XYZ part of their wedding.  Give to get.

Additionally, because so much of your business relies on relationship building, being transparent and with insight about you as a person is also a great method to start connecting with brides-to-be.  Your thoughts on a news story or blog post can be a right way to share your personality with readers.   People appreciate honesty.

Lastly, make sure people can contact you, EASILY.  What good is lead generation if you’re unavailable?

Do you do anything unique or creative to generate leads?  Share them with a comment.

Hope you’re ready for some Olympics action because the games kick off today in Beijing.  In honor of the games, we’ve put up a festive logo for the occasion on our homepage.  In case you’re wondering how to watch it when the time zones are so far apart, NBC is airing nearly all of the events via their website so we can watch the events when we want to.  How’s that for on demand?  Check it out.

Anyone think Michael Phelps can win gold in each event he enters?

A new report was released by The Pew Internet & American Life Project indicating that people are using online search almost as much as email.  The study of 2251 adults (18+) reports that 49% are searching daily compared to 60% using email daily.

While email is still one of the most cost effective means of marketing to potential clients, and will remain so for the forseeable future, reports like this remind us that it can’t be our only marketing tactic.  Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts should be a component of your marketing plan now, as should the use of social media (Facebook, Myspace, Digg, etc).  This report is a friendly reminder that finding new clients takes a variety of activities.  At WeddingWire, we make sure each individual vendors’ storefront is search engine friendly to maximize your exposure to those searching via Google, Yahoo!, MSN and others to give your listing maximum exposure.

If you’re looking for tips on updating your site to make it more search engine friendly I’ll soon be posting regularly on items to think about.  In the meantime to get you started, here’s a few great resources on the web.  Some of the websites and blogs you can find in my Google Reader include:

• Search Engine Land
• SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog
• Search Engine Roundtable
• Search Engine Watch Blog

There’s lots of sites out there to find information on SEO tactics and using the web to your advantage as well.  As most brides will start their research on the web somewhere

We had a team of employees attend this event with myself and Sonny arriving there at a little before 5am to greet about 50 or so people already waiting in line (the first group got there at 1pm the day before!)  Here’s a few Running of the Brides pictures for some Friday browsing and more are found on our Flickr page:

The 10 ways consist of:

1. Select testimonials from customers similar to your prospects.
2. Select testimonials that give specifics.
3. Edit carefully and lightly.
4. Group testimonials for greater impact.
5. Use many short quotes instead of a few long ones.
6. Don’t be afraid of long testimonials.
7. Include full names, titles, and locations when possible.
8. Feature photographs (maybe).
9. Enclose each testimonial in quotation marks.
10. Use a powerful headline to introduce testimonials.

The article contains more detailed information on each bullet point.  So if you’ve got testimonials, or reviews on WeddingWire, be sure to make them work for you.  You’ve done great work in the past, now show prospective clients how you make their dream wedding happen.

Have you done something unique or different with your testimonials?  Leave a comment to share the community.

You can find this badge in your account by logging in > click on Marketing > click on WeddingWire Rated.  Just paste the code onto your website.  It’s that easy!

Do you have the Rated badge on your website or blog? Leave a comment with the link!

Yesterday Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia announced their second quarter financial results that included positive revenue news amid a weak economic environment.  They highlighted several items within their departments, but the one take away that applies to you as wedding vendors are the two highlights listed under their Internet section:

• Second quarter traffic showed solid gains, with page views increasing 23% over the prior year’s quarter. These strong traffic and engagement trends continue into the third quarter of 2008, with July page views trending up 50% year-over-year.
• The marthastewart.com website unveiled a suite of wedding planning tools, powered by WeddingWire, enabling couples to plan and manage their entire wedding experience on marthastewart.com.

The second bullet is more to show our mention in their press release, but the first bullet should resonate with you.  Why?  It means people are increasingly visiting their site, which includes their wedding section.  More and more brides start their vendor searches online and now that MarthaStewart.com is offering brides a vendor search component, as a WeddingWire vendor you need to be sure that your storefront is up to date.  Additionally, get those newlyweds reviews! After all, we give them a gift just for 5 reviews.

So in the spirit of this new feature, I thought I’d do a little introduction on what an RSS Feed is and how to find their feed URL (or create one).

What is a RSS Feed?

An RSS (or Atom) Feed allows blog writers to syndicate their content quickly to people across the web. Feeds are piped into feed aggregators, programs or sites that allow people to read multiple blog or news feeds instantly without having to visit the actual site.

How do I find my Feed?

Each blogging solution differs slightly in how they display your Feed link. Below is the method to finding Feed links on some popular blogging programs.

Blogger (or Blogspot)

• Blogger typically provides a link at the bottom of your blog homepage that should read: “Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)”
• Right click this link and select “Copy Shortcut” (Internet Explorer) or “Copy Link Location” (Firefox)
• Paste this in WeddingWire on your storefront

Wordpress

• Hosted
  - Feeds for hosted Wordpress blogs (the free blogs that Wordpress hosts) are simply your blog URL plus /feed/ on the end.
  - i.e. - http://yourblog.wordpress.com/feed/

• Installed
  - Installed Wordpress blogs (blogs that you host on your servers) do not all automatically have a feed setup and ready to go. It’s best to create a feed for this type of blog anyway. The easiest way to create a free Feed is to go to www.feedburner.com. It takes just a minute to setup an account with a Feed.
  - Your feed link will look like this: http://feeds.feedburner.com/WeddingWireVendors
  (Wordpress also offers a popular plug-in to manage your feeds called FeedBurner FeedSmith)
• Paste this in WeddingWire on your storefront

Typepad

• First ensure your feeds are enabled by going to your Weblogs tab > Configure > Feeds
• Then select “Post” to enable feeds
• Once your feed is enabled, you will need to display a link on your blog to obtain the link for it
  - Do so by Setting Your Content Selections and selecting Post Feed for display
• Once the is on your blog, simply Right click this link and select “Copy Shortcut” (Internet Explorer) or “Copy Link Location” (Firefox)
• Paste this in WeddingWire on your storefront

And for those creative minds, here’s a link to 51 different RSS icons for those that like something different.

The event is coming up fast so if you’re thinking about attending, registration and other information about the event is on the event website.

Conference Website

We hope to see you there!