The Wedding Marketing Authority, Andy Ebon is en route from the the DJ Think Tank Conference in Miami to the National Association of Wedding Professionals, Naples Chapter.

The afternoon seminar (registration at 2:30pm, 3-6pm) topic will be: Building A Focused Social Media Strategy.

Andy will also give a talk for the chapter’s general membership meeting, which begins at 6:30pm. The presentation is titled: Success By Association.

Both events will be held at The Naples Beach Hotel , 851 Gulf Shore Blvd North, Naples, Florida.

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This post is the fourth of a recap series about a meeting of the Las Vegas Wedding Network. Seven brides spoke and answered questions about their wedding planning experience.

Jazmine told a story about a vendor she met a bridal show who took the time to look up her Facebook profile, find out a little bit about her, and connected with her. The vendor was able to look her up, using the email address she provided.

One of the meeting attendees was aghast and agitated, shouting out her question: “Isn’t that stalking?”

Calmly, Jazmine responded with the following… paraphrasing:

“At the time, my profile was public, so anyone on Facebook could have seen my complete profile. I have since made much of my profile less public, until I’ve made a friend-connection. I thought it was ‘sweet’ that the vendor took a little time to learn a little about me, see I had a child from a previous marriage, and more. It showed me they were interested in me.”

More than once, during the evening, Jazmine pointed out the importance of people remembering names and faces, particularly at bridal shows and showcases. She remembered a specific instance where one exhibitor at a bridal show had shoved a business card at her, three separate times. Other people, seeing her on multiple occasions, remembered her by name.

Opinion – What to make of this: First of all, it’s not stalking. Not by a long shot. If some approaches you to friend them on Facebook, if you don’t want that to happen, just press ignore. If they persist, and annoy you, it’s one click to BLOCK them.

If you approached 100 brides via Facebook to follow your business group page or connect as a friend, some percentage would connect with you and others would not. Your approach might go like this:

Dear Jazmine,

Enjoyed meeting you at the Bridal Spectacular. I know you’re still in the decision making process, and thought you might want to follow my business fan page, and learn more about what my company is about, and see what we’re doing. Hope you’ll become a fan.

Andy

That’s a pretty benign approach, and, again, some brides will become a fan, others won’t. Don’t over analyze it. Having a soft Facebook strategy is a perfectly reasonable marketing move.

It’s important to remember that what YOU prefer as a customer, is not relevant when you are the business owner. Don’t project your likes and dislikes on the bride. This is an opt-in approach. Those brides that choose to follow you are exercising Permission Marketing.

Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Blog

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On the road again. This time to Atlanta, Georgia, for two wedding marketing seminars, hosted by The Georgia Bridal Show and The Southern Bridal Show.

Bridal Show Producer, Tommy Vaughn, is bringing me in to present, Selling to Today’s Bride and Building A Focused Social Media Strategy, in two afternoon sessions at the Gwinnett Center, in Duluth.

As always, session material has been refreshed, recently, to keep pace with industry and communication changes.

If you do business in Greater Atlanta, there is still time to register. If you know someone in the area, who you think might benefit, please pass on the information.

Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Authority

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Several months ago, I wrote a post about the limits of stable relationships one can reasonably expect to maintain.

The magic number, as researched and popularized by Anthropologist, Robin Dunbar, maxes out at about approximately 150. This, of course, runs counter to the ‘relationships’ we amass on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and the like.

So what exactly is the difference?

Just came across this video, from Robin Dunbar, himself. Give it a look.

Andy Ebon

The Wedding Marketing Authority

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Earlier this week, I brought Wedding University to Greater Cleveland (Cleveland, Akron, Youngstown). The sponsoring organization was Today’s Bride, a 21-year old company providing a total package of wedding marketing opportunities, including website, bridal shows, and publications.

At one level or another, all businesses want new prospects to become customers and existing customers to invest more in a product or service. The day before the all-day seminars, a skeptical local business questioned the intent of the host in a public Facebook post: paraphrasing “Isn’t this just going to be Today’s Bride trying to sell us more advertising.”

The ever-so-vigilant, Anna Herman (Something New Entertainment) chimed in to praise this blog, and my approach to educating wedding industry businesses.

Anna Herman got it. And, happily, so did my hosts, from Today’s Bride.

The goal of seminars, such as these, is to provide information and coaching to help local area businesses be more effective marketers. Simply put, driving traffic to a website is really effective only if the client website is up-to-date, optimized, and easily navigable. Offering thorough circulation of a magazine is more helpful to businesses that have well-designed, intelligent ads. And attracting thousands of brides to wedding shows does the most good for companies that have planned for the show, create a glorious presence at the show, interact well with prospects, and follow up after the show.

The Today’s Bride staff performed the following functions:

• Organize
• Promote
• Host
• Introduce Speaker
• Mingle
• Provide Hospitality
• Register Attendees
• Show Appreciation

The things they did NOT do, were:

• Self-promote
• Sell

The results become quite clear. Some 70+ attendees absorbed a myriad of information, at a modest expense, in a compressed time frame. Different people learned different things, depending on their own knowledge base.

They never felt as though they were being sold to… because they weren’t.

This mindset should apply to all wedding businesses in working with clients and referral source. The process of educating a client, directly or indirectly, about your area of service, will always make them a better client and improve the relationship.

What are you doing, one-to-one, or for a group, to enlighten, inform, educate or motivate your audience?

If you’re not consciously doing that, periodically, maybe it’s time you should.

Thank you to the entire crew at Today’s Bride – Jim, Denise, Jennifer, Rachel, Sabrina for being great hosts, both to me, and to their clients and future clients.

Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Authority

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As of late yesterday, almost 60 wedding professionals from Greater Cleveland (including Akron, Youngstown, and beyond) had chosen to invest one business day and a few dollars in Wedding University, a 4-seminar presentation by THE Wedding Marketing Authority, Andy Ebon.

Today’s Bride, a full service wedding marketing company (bridal show, magazine, and website) is hosting the wedding marketing seminars.

The all-day seminar series will cover a variety of topics designed for wedding industry businesses, including: Website Usability, Effective Bridal Show Promotion, Print Ads That Sell, and Building A Focused Social Media Plan. The day will be capped of with a catch-all, question and answer session.

This is an 11th hour call to spread the word to any wedding industry peers you have in the Greater Cleveland market.

Today’s Bride is a member of BSPI (Bridal Show Producers International).

Andy travels North America and beyond, presenting single seminars, half-day and full-day sessions, as well as speaking at national and international industry conferences. To inquire about bringing The Wedding Marketing Authority to your market, please feel free to inquire via this site or call 702-227-9926.

Cleveland Rocks!!

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Online Networking

This week I passed something of a milestone on Facebook: 2000 Friends. It got me to thinking about the actual meaning of such a lofty number, and a previous post about The Dunbar Number (worth reading if you missed it).

The Social Media total, as of today, looks something like this.

• 2016 Friends on Facebook
• 702 Connections on LinkedIn
• 4411 Followers on Twitter
• 4787 People & Businesses that I follow on Twitter

Among the reasons for these numbers… I’ve lived a few years (reminded of that, because today is my birthday). I’m involved in a number of trade organizations, and have been so for many years. I travel for business to speak at meetings and conventions.

The Facebook reality is that having 2000+ friends doesn’t REALLY mean one has that many active relationships. On the personal side, Facebook has reconnected me with many old friends, a number of whom I’ve truly rekindled relationships with.

At a business level, people follow my activities, and I follow others. It’s interesting to learn more about other people, personally and professionally. Sometimes, what people post is TMI (Too Much Information) or just plain drivel. The same is true for LinkedIn, Twitter, and most other social media.

It’s nice to have the possibility of mass awareness on connection, but I’m going to follow the 80/20 rule. I’m going to put 80% of my effort into 20% (or less) of my connection. If one connects and communicates in a less random fashion, the results are likely to be light years better.

What do you think?

Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Authority

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Social Media

During the next 10 days, Andy Ebon, The Wedding Marketing Authority, will be making meeting presentations and doing seminars in Silicon Valley and Los Angeles, hosted by local chapters of NACE (National Association of Catering Executives).

• Tuesday, March 16th: Chapter Meeting, dinner and presentation titled, Electrifying Your Marketing Edge
• Wednesday, March 17th: Building A Focused Social Media Strategy (a 3-hour seminar)
• Details: Silicon Valley NACE

The following week, I head to Los Angeles NACE.

• Tuesday, March 23rd (afternoon): Building A Focused Social Media Strategy (a 3-hour seminar)
• Tuesday, March 23rd (evening): Chapter Meeting, Dinner and Presentation: HEADLINES: Print Ads That Work
• Details: Los Angeles NACE

If you are in the area, consider attending. If you know someone in the area, who might benefit, please pass the word.

Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Authority

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Ten Business Building Strategies To Start The New Year: Tip #9

Introducing Dunbar’s Number

Dunbar’s number is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. Relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person. Proponents assert that numbers larger than this generally require more restricted rules, laws, and enforced norms to maintain a stable, cohesive group. No precise value has been proposed for Dunbar’s number, but a commonly cited approximation is 150.

Dunbar’s number was first proposed by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar. He theorized that “this limit is a direct function of relative neocortex size, and that this in turn limits group size … the limit imposed by neocortical processing capacity is simply on the number of individuals with whom a stable inter-personal relationship can be maintained.” On the periphery, the number also includes past colleagues such as high school friends with whom a person would want to reacquaint themselves if they met again (Reference: See this Wall Street Journal article).

Put in context: We now have tools such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and the like, that enable us to create and renew thousands of relationships. That’s fine, but Dunbar suggests a reality we should probably understand, if only subconsciously. A friend on Facebook, a connection on LinkedIn, or a follower on Twitter are not relationships of the highest order.

Sit down and made a list of 100-150 people in your world that are important to you, at both a personal and business level. If you really endeavored to stay in regular communication with them (on the phone, by letter, in person), how much room would there be for anyone else, at a meaningful.

Your personal relationships would be more complete. Your business relationships would be deeper and have true strength.

Go ahead, make the list, and a communications plan for 2010.

Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Authority

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20 Great Authors, including Andy Ebon’s chapter: Building A Focused Social Media Strategy

More details in The Wedding Marketing Superstore!

Andy Ebon

The Wedding Marketing Authority

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