When it comes to social media, one of the biggest mistakes is the imbalance in communication. We tend to post far more than we read. Reading, or in my metaphor, “listening”, is far more effective in focusing your attention to peers that count.

As your friends list continues to grow on Facebook (or followers on Twitter), you should take advantage of the tool, called Lists. You can create up to 100 lists on Facebook, 20 on Twitter, to create sub-groups from your friends. This is, essentially, a simple database function that allow you to assign any friend to one or more groups.

For example:

• Venues in your market
• Businesses in your industry (regionally, nationally)
• Members of different local associations (in separate groups)

Once you have set up various groups, you can click on a particular group and just see the news feed on that group. This function enables you to focus on any sub-group, individually, filtering out all else. You can read what people are talking about and respond as appropriate.

Manage your friends, listen with two ears, and speak with one.

Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Authority

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Men and their tools. In our minds, we form an image of a man at Sears, drooling over the latest drill or gadget. Kind of funny… Somewhat sweeping, in its generalization.

One can have the latest tool for home improvement, but if you don’t know how to use it, the effort will be a failure.

The same is true in the wedding industry. The tools are wedding marketing media: magazine ads, social media, bridal shows, websites, postcards, and much more.

When a business has a marketing failure, it MUST have been the medium: the magazine, the wedding show, a lack of traffic to the website, or whatever the medium in question.

My response to this:

“Laying the blame on the wedding marketing medium is usually off-point. Far more often than not, the culprit is failure to have a well-crafted message.”

Business people are easily drawn to the new shiny object. The new bridal show in town, the new publication, the latest social media tool.

That’s all very nice. There is always something new to carry your message.

But in the end, if you don’t know how to swing a hammer, it doesn’t matter how shiny and new the hammer is. Why not take a lesson or two on using the hammer. In the case of wedding marketing, develop better ads, really prepare for a bridal show, keep your website current, have a Facebook strategy, and don’t let your blog get lost in the weeds.

Come to Wedding MBA and learn more about swinging wedding marketing hammer.

September 21-23, Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, NV

Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Blog

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The purpose of this post is to remind, cajole, and perhaps nag you. This week, the calendar flips to July, and we begin to count down the days toward 2011… dare I say.

Among the hundred other things on my agenda, I’m reassessing my own marketing plan, accomplishments, sales, and the like. I figure, if I’m doing this for myself, I have to drag you this, too. The questions I’m asking are challenging. The answers are both positive and negative. The goal is this little exercise of self-evaluation is mid-course correction and, in some cases, celebration.

Some of the questions on my mind are these?

1. Have my sales through June met or exceeded expectations?
2. Are my sales projections for the balance of the year on track?
3. How do sales track with the past 2-3 years?
4. How does my business match up with my nearest competitors? This is hard to measure in sales, but one should consider visibility, name recognition, product offerings, etc.,.
5. Is my sales mix (types of jobs, and percentage of business) to my liking?
6. Am I disproportionately depend on the referrals of too small a group? If the answer is yes, your business health is quite vulnerable to a simple job change by one or two people.
7. Who are my Top 10 clients or contacts? What am I doing to honor those relationships and not take them for granted?
8. Am I consistently participating in my local associations and networking groups?
9. Have I built a blog?
10. If I have a blog, am I posting on a regular basis, such as 1-2 times per week?
11. Do I have a social media strategy or have I fallen in the trap of too many “ham sandwich posts” on Facebook and Twitter?
12. When was the last time I refreshed and updated content on my website?
13. Do I put down my cell phone and turned it off when I’m having lunch with a colleague or friend?
14. When was the last time I sent someone a handwritten thank you note.
15. Am I keeping up with continuing education in my field and in my role as a business owner/manager?
16. What industry-specific conferences am I committed to attending during the second half of this year?
17. What business worries are keeping my up at night, and what can I do to address them?
18. Am I taking sufficient time off, to recharge, or do I prefer to play the role of martyr?
19. When was my last vacation? (A vacation does not involved relatives. It does involve reading fiction, perhaps some sun, and consuming umbrella drinks).
20. Do I have a vacation planned for the second half of this year?
21. Do you have a written marketing plan?

What other questions are you asking (or should I be asking)?

Another reminder: Remember to breathe and eat lots of green leafy vegetables.

Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Authority

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A good blog, even a decent blog, is a wedding marketing goldmine. Offering a highlight reel of one’s business and observations on your involvement  in client and industry events does far more than feed the search engine optimization beast.

Writing quality posts enables you to present your personal and business personality, while shining the light on people, companies, and organizations you interact with. It positions you and your company as the thought leader in field, in your market, and beyond.

Yet, in spite of these substantial benefits, so many business bloggers are running on empty.

So, I present to you the 10 Top Excuses For Not Posting To A Blog

1. Posting to Twitter is easier because there is a maximum of 140 characters, and I have a short attention span.
2. I don’t have an original thought to write about.
3. I’m too busy watching reruns of American Idol,  Jersey Shore, and World Wrestling Entertainment.
4. It’s easier posting about my ham sandwich lunches on Facebook.
5. I have so much business, I couldn’t possibly accommodate any more activity resulting from publishing a good blog.
6. It’s been so long since I posted that I forgot my login and password.
7. It’s more fun looking for the next shiny object than profiting from polishing the current shiny object, my blog.
8. I’m thinking about going out of business, and I wanted to accelerate the process.
9. To make sufficient time for blogging, regularly, I’d have to give up either shampooing my hair or vacuuming.
10. I’ve come to the realization that I’m an undisciplined, lazy bum, who prefers undermining my success, rather than executing the tasks that will enhance my chances of success.

So what’s your excuse? Or someone you know? Stay tuned for Part 2 of this combination rant/guilt trip, and exposé of incalculable lameness-in-blogging.

Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Authority

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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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