Why Blogging is Essential for Your Wedding Business

Kristina Stubblefield: [00:00:00] Thank you for tuning in to WedPro Business Solutions. I'm your host, Kristina Stubblefield. Today I'm going to be talking about why blogging is essential for your wedding business, and in this episode I'm going to talk about the benefits of blogging, what to write about, how to promote your blog, and how to measure results.

Now, I first want to start off with the benefits because if you're not currently blogging, You're going to be thinking, okay, Kristina's telling me something else I need to add to my plate. But I think if you listen to this episode, you're going to hear how blogging can play a role in helping with additional content for your business.

Now, let's start with one of the first things that I think about when I talk about the benefits of blogging, especially for [00:01:00] wedding professionals, it really helps establish authority and builds trust, and it allows you to showcase your expertise. And when engaged couples are looking online or browsing your website, this really can help enhance your credibility because when engaged couples are browsing your website, then you demonstrate credibility and it just comes down to helping build trust.

Next, I think about website traffic. This can help drive more traffic to your website. And you may be thinking to yourself, but if my blog lives on my website, how does that happen? You optimize your content using keywords. To be found more on the search engines, and this helps [00:02:00] attract, you've heard me talk about that before.

You want to be like a magnet that attracts your ideal customer, and this by blogging is one way to do that. As I mentioned just a second ago about search engines by consistently creating new content on your website. I've covered this on a past episode before when I've talked about your website. When you create new content and you update your website, then that helps you in the search engine rankings.

So in addition to building authority and trust, you're also increasing the rankings of search engines. All good stuff, but I'm not done yet. You're also providing value to clients, and what I mean by this is you're probably going to share out advice, news tips, and you're [00:03:00] going to help people through the wedding planning process at some way, shape, or form, and when you provide valuable content to your audience, Then that tends to drive referrals, more traffic leads, and at the end of the day, what you're probably looking for is more booked events.

My other thing that I think about when I share with people about the benefits of blogging, when you write a blog post for your website, you also are creating content for social media. Now, what would I be talking about? Social media is one of the ways that you would promote your blog. So you can not only just share out your blog post, but each blog can be broken down into segments that get shared on multiple social media [00:04:00] platforms, including Google, as well as the second largest search engine YouTube and what this really helps you with is to drive engagement. And when you increase engagement, your increasing your reach. And that all drives traffic back to your website. Now, next up, you're probably thinking. But what do I write about? You might not realize it, but the years that you've been doing this or the experiences that you've had, you probably have a lot of content.

It's just tapping into that. And when I think about content for blogs, you could be talking about real weddings. Maybe after each event you write a blog post about it. That is a way that you are not only building your authority and trust, but [00:05:00] you're giving valuable content to potential clients.

You can also share planning tips and, a lot of times wedding professionals think they have to just talk about their business or their specialty. You can talk about other planning tips, whether it has to do with a venue or a budget or things like that, that you've experienced with engaged couples or at actual weddings.

You can also talk about trends or give ideas that provide inspiration to engaged couples, but also you could dig into those personal stories, maybe behind the scenes, maybe advice that you have from doing this for so long and how you handle things that come up. At events, again, you're back to showcasing your credibility and your business.

[00:06:00] So there's so many different topics that you could look into for blogging, and as I've mentioned on previous episodes, with the use of artificial intelligence AI to help you generate blog topic ideas. But you can also look at what's on social media. What are there Tik Toks out there about, what is all over Instagram or what are you find that people are talking about on Pinterest?

You can pull ideas from many places. However, if you turn to yourself first and what you've been through and your experiences, you probably find that you have a lot more content than you may realize. That takes me into my next topic promoting, okay, if I write this blog post and put it on my website, then what?

It's not just build it and they will come. I would love that for everyone. And of course it's important to have keywords and to [00:07:00] use strategy with your blogging, but you also want to share it with others and social media is a great way to do that, and that could be on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, but also don't forget about your Google business profile, sharing a blog post on Google business.

You actually can do a post on Google business as well as provide a link. To that specific blog post to your website. That is a great way to promote your blog or each one of your blog posts. But don't forget about the Facebook groups if they allow this because you are providing strategies, tips. To share with people, but you want to make sure that, that Facebook group allows that content.

You may have to get the approval of [00:08:00] an admin or something before you utilize it. Email marketing is a great way to share your blog post. Maybe you send out a monthly or quarterly newsletter. Maybe you share information out to leads that you've acquired, again we're back to that blog post creates credibility and just drives home that you're a professional, you're experienced, you're the vendor to go with.

Also guest blogging. That is a great thing that you can do is you can reach out to other wedding industry bloggers or maybe even publications and do a guest post for their blog. This is a great way to reach new people and also share information out about your business.

I've mentioned search engine optimization, SEO a few times, [00:09:00] and by using relevant, keyword there. Relevant keywords. You can optimize your images and you can make sure that you have a title in there. You can put a call to action by doing those things to increase your SEO. That is going to help your blog post, be found by engaged couples or your ideal audience.

The next thing is collaboration. That is one of my favorite words, and I feel like wedding professionals have so many opportunities to collaborate with one another, and blogging is no different. You can actually guest blog. For one of the vendors that you work with all the time and vice versa. So what I mean by that is maybe you write a blog with ideas, inspiration tips, [00:10:00] and one of the vendors that you work with all the time can put it up on their blog.

And share it out on their social media. So you can expand your network, but you also can reach new audience as well. 

You can repurpose content, so you can take parts of your blog post and do short form videos for TikTok, YouTube shorts. You can also do social media posts just using part of the blog content and link it back to the full blog. So when you do a social media post, you don't have to include everything from the blog post.

You can just include a little information and entice them to click to get to the full blog post. Now, I encourage you to use multiple social media channels to get every blog [00:11:00] post out there. You don't want it to just sit on your website. You want to use it to increase your visibility, brand awareness to drive you more traffic.

That's the key. One of the other things that I want to make sure I talk about is how to measure results. Here I am talking about how you need to do something else in your business, but I want to make sure you get a return on your time. And one of the ways that you can measure results is looking at your website analytics, and everyone should have some type of analytics connected to their website.

In previous episodes, I've talked about Google Analytics. It's a free tool and that tells you how many visitors have not only come to your website, what pages they have went to, which pages are the most popular, what content are they interacting with? It can get very detailed, but what you want to know is how much of your website traffic is going to your actual blog, [00:12:00] and then what blog post are they visiting? That is one way to look at your results. So first of all, you want to have an increase in your website traffic because your blog should be part of your website. Now, you can also look at your social media engagements from likes, comments, shares. Now, is there a tool that magically makes all of this come together?

This is in an episode about those types of tools. There are many different analytics and engagement tools out there, but one of the things that you can pay attention to is in the social media platform, reviewing those insights or analytics. And the other thing is you also can look at how many new leads you're getting.

That is one thing. Have you noticed if you just started blogging, have you noticed an uptick in your website traffic? [00:13:00] Have you noticed an uptick in the number of leads you're getting, common sense wise, depending on if you're running ads as well, or if you're just blogging. It may be that, that is driving additional traffic to your website and also helping convert people to filling out your form or your inquiry on your website for more leads I always said that I'm a numbers person. I want to make sure when you're spending time it provides a return, and although it may seem a little challenging to look at multiple places for multiple results, here is what I do know to share with you consistent blogging

can help establish credibility. It can help build trust, it can help turn visitors into leads, which leads then turn into booked events. You can [00:14:00] utilize blogging as a way to build momentum for your business. What I can share with you is consistent blogging is important to not only help you establish credibility to build trust, but by creating new content on a consistent basis, you are also showing up for your business. You're staying relevant, top of mind.

Search engines love new content. It's going to increase your rankings, and by increasing your rankings, you're going to drive more traffic to your website. It's a ripple effect. More traffic to your website, more leads, more opportunity for booked events. And I've just seen results firsthand for wedding professionals, how they've started [00:15:00] to blog and it has increased their network.

It has increased their audience. What it comes down to is it's increased their reach way beyond what they have in the past, and it is driven more website traffic leads and the opportunity to book events. I hope that you've found this episode helpful, and I know that consistent blogging can help you in your business. If you're not already part of my free Facebook group, please join WebPro Business Community and you'll get additional tips, strategies and more. If you're interested in courses that I have available regarding digital marketing, visibility, social media, and other topics.

You can go check them out on courses.webprosolutions.com. Until next time, take care.