You Didn't Invent Weddings

One of the trends I see in the wedding industry is not really a trend, but rather a story that has been repeated over and over: one generation creates and builds successful wedding businesses, then a new generation comes in, declares everything and everyone who has gone before stale and worthless and promotes their "fresh perspective" as the new and only way to do things. Then the cycle begins again.

If had a dollar for every website I've seen with an about page that says something along the lines of "I saw a need in my market for a good wedding planner [feel free to substitute planner with photographer, florist, blogger, caterer, etc] so I decided to open my own business", then I would be writing this post from a tropical island somewhere and not a city office. Do people seriously believe that the wedding industry was a sinking Titanic until they came along? That no one had ever run a profit and loss statement or looked at a balance sheet? That creativity didn't exist until they blessed everyone else with their new take on chair ties?

If the industry is over-saturated and too easy to enter, then it is because many talented people went before, paving the roads and building an industry that is now so ripe with opportunity. For a new company to claim that nothing done in the industry was done with excellence before they came along or that the people who have been in business longer than ten years are outdated and now irrelevant is ignorant at best, arrogant at worst.

There are plenty of people who many of us have never even heard of who built this industry into what it currently is and who are still setting trends and creating new blue oceans. Their time has not passed and there is much to learn from them. Take some time to study the history of your respective field as well as learning about the history of the wedding industry as a whole. Seeing the bigger, and historic, picture will help you create a better product or service for your clients.

How Social Media Can Help Offline Relationships

This past weekend I spoke at a fantastic conference that Lacy Branch and Lisa Zweifel produced for the Association of Bridal Consultants. Two of the other speakers for the event were Ali Phillips and Xochitl Gonzalez, two close industry friends of mine. Because we all live in separate states, we don't get to see each other as often as we'd like, so we were excited for the opportunity to all be in the same place at the same time.

Conversation with these ladies this weekend was easy and went far beyond small talk. We covered everything from business ideas to boyfriends and husbands to generational issues in marriage to religion and politics to stories about college and everything in between. One of the reasons conversation came so easily is because we "see" each other on Twitter every week. From keeping up online, we already knew the surfacey stuff and could get down to the deeper stuff far more quickly.

Social media is first and foremost about people, not about hawking your product or solely talking about your business. It also does not and cannot replace meeting face to face. It can, however, make that face time much more valuable.

If you use social media to engage in the community, the results will be far more beneficial for you.

First Wedding Business Marketing Study

Two Bright Lights and Engaging Concepts have teamed up to produce the first ever in depth wedding business marketing survey: "An Introspective into the Business Behind Saying 'I Do'". The results will be presented at Engage!10 in the Cayman Islands and after that only the participants in the survey will have access to the results.

I am such a strong advocate of basing your business and marketing efforts off of real data. Too many marketing plans are based on pure conjecture without any real objective research and this is a large reason why so many wedding businesses spend (and waste) money and time on strategies that do not work for them.

If you work in the wedding industry in some capacity (planner, photographer, stationer, caterer, calligrapher, blogger, publicist, industry consultant, big business, small business, part-time, full-time, etc), I'd encourage you to participate in this survey. It will take anywhere from 10-20 minutes depending on your pace and the more participants, the better the results.

As I mentioned, the results will be presented at Engage!10 and afterward will be made available to all of the participants, regardless of whether or not you attend the Engage conference. Non-participants will not have access to the results.

You can participate in the wedding marketing survey here.

If you have a blog that other wedding vendors read, I'd also encourage you to blog about this study as well. You can follow Two Bright Lights on Twitter here and you can follow both Rebecca and Kathryn from Engaging Concepts here and here.

Splendid Sundays Volume 31

A handful of splendid finds and interesting tidbits from around the worldwide web:

*Why ghost blogging or tweeting doesn't belong in social media.

*Women who would rather hire a pro than DIY.

*AisleDash, a new wedding website from AOL officially launched this past week with wedding expert Anne Chertoff at the helm as editor-in-chief.

*Quotable: "Talent hits a target no one else can hit, while genius hits a target that no one else can see." - Arthur Schopenhauer

Do you have any splendid finds to share?

Blogging vs Other Social Media Platforms

If you only have time to focus on one area of social media for your business, it should be a self-hosted blog. While I don't believe that every company should have a blog, it is the one platform that you own and that stays with you over time.

If you use Facebook and Twitter or one of the other social media tools, they can control that content by blocking, freezing or deleting your account and in some cases, by requiring that you give up partial or full copyrights to the photos and text you post. With Twitter, most of the content is not able to be accessed after a few weeks. With a blog, the content you produce works for you long after you publish it and you retain the full copyright. A blog entry you write today can still contribute to your SEO (search engine optimization) three years from now as people find the text through Google searches.

While the other tools are important to use and the communities are valuable to engage with, a blog is the one social media platform that will outlast them all and that will bring you the most return of investment for your time and money.

Splendid Sundays Volume 30

A handful of splendid finds and interesting tidbits from around the worldwide web:

*How copying hurts business: DIY does not stand for "Duplicate It Yourself"

*"It's time your talent - and you - get noticed." Details on the emerge contest for photographers.

*Google secures broad patent for location-based advertising.

*The national stationery retail chain Swoozie's has filed for bankruptcy. 

*New service to send and receive payments via cell phone.

*Quotable: "99.9% of the time we never come out the winner when we sell ourselves short because it erodes the respect we deserve." - Vicente Wolf

Do you have any splendid finds to share?

Understanding Your Advertising Options

Last year Saundra Hadley wrote two guest expert articles for Think Splendid on the topic of understanding advertising options. I'm reposting those links here since advertising can be a sticky area and one that is often misunderstood.

It's important to remember that while you should be measuring the return on investment (ROI) of each ad you place, that return will take time. You most likely won't see a return from advertising on a blog for just one month and you may not see a return from just one magazine ad. Having a strategy that includes a combination of placements and a longer time commitment may help you.

Here are Saundra's articles:

Understanding Your Advertising Options Part 1

Understanding Your Advertising Options Part 2

What have been your experiences with advertising?

Splendid Sundays Volume 29

A handful of splendid finds and interesting tidbits from around the worldwide web:

*Ami at Elizabeth Anne Designs has started a new blog called Edit and Post with tips and advice for the modern entrepreneur. My favorite feature so far (and one I've been nagging politely asking her to do for months) is the "Wordpress Plug-in of the Week".

*Will you be emailing this column? It's awesome.

*Your logo is not your brand. 

*Wedding fashion expert Randy Fenoli is going to be talking fashion on the red carpet before tonight's Academy Awards. You can watch here on Livestream.

*Tomorrow I'm heading out to Las Vegas for a couple of days for the annual Catersource + Event Solutions conference and tradeshow. If you're attending, I'd love to see you. The official Twitter hashtag for the event is #escs10.

*Quotable: "I wonder if real art comes when you build the thing that they don't have a prize for yet." - Seth Godin

Do you have any splendid finds to share?

Making Money in Business

I was raised to believe that there is more to life than making money. I still believe this. I also believe that if you own a business, you have to make money.

Somewhere along the line it seems that it's become trendy to run a business as a hobby and there is an almost sanctimonious attitude towards anyone who dares make a profit from their business. This is ridiculous.

What you choose to do with whatever money your business earns is your prerogative, but at the end of the day, the point of having a business is to free you to have the lifestyle you want, whether that means designer shoes and luxury vacations, more funds and time to donate to charity, all of the above or even something else altogether.

There's no need to apologize for doing what it ethically takes to build a successful business and certainly no need to apologize if that business makes money.