Writing Tips for Finding Your Blogging Voice

One of the things that people struggle with the most in blogging is finding their unique voice. I find that many tend to over think this and as a result their blog sounds much more like they are writing a high school essay or a literary analysis.  On the opposite side of the coin are the blogs where the writing is largely ignored and sounds more like an elementary student relating the school day to her parents:
"How was your day?"
"Fine."
"What did you learn?"
"Nothing."

While there is a time and place for each of these writing styles on blogs, the point of a blog is to be a conversation between you and the reader.

To achieve this, pretend you are meeting a friend for a cup of coffee or a cocktail for happy hour. How would you speak to them? How would you tell them about your day? How would you describe the wedding you just worked on this past weekend?

Chances are, you wouldn't tell your friend that the wind blew through the bride's veil and caused it to flutter like a golden butterfly. You would relate the events of the weekend in a much more natural, conversational style. As you write your blog, pretend that you are chatting with a friend and type that conversation as your post.

It may feel odd and the practice may seem a bit cheesy, but it will help your blog posts to come across in your voice and to sound like you.

What is your blog writing style like? Do you feel that your blog sounds like you?




This post was originally published in November 2009.

Splendid Sundays Volume 43

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

*Court throws out $1 billion copyright lawsuit against YouTube.

*Reading as a social event (thanks to Harmony Walton for sending this link).

*Handbag company loses their trademark to Juicy Couture (even though they filed it two years prior).

*If you missed it yesterday, I launched the #GetSplendid webinars. The first will be on how to get the most out of your blog analytics, and will be on July 13th.

*Quotable: "Trust that little voice in your head that says wouldn't it be interesting if...; And then do it." - Duane Michals

Do you have any splendid finds to share?

Splendid Insights: Saving Money on Weddings

Splendid Insight: When it comes to saving money on their weddings, couples are 206% more likely to seek out ways to do so during the months of June and September. They're least likely to do so in February.

© 2010 Splendid Insights

No One Will Buy That

"No one will buy that" are words that visionaries often hear about their new services and products from others, often uninvited.

When someone dishes this advice, whether meant as helpful or hurtful, consider the client base and audience they consistently work with. Is it the same niche as the one your product or service is targeting? If not, thank them for their opinion, add it to your grain-of-salt list and move on.

The Wedding Blog Awards Kick Off

AOL's wedding site, AisleDash launched the Wedding Blog Awards yesterday and they are open to anyone in the wedding industry with a blog. There are twelve different categories and they include a range of qualities including best retailer blog, best magazine or wedding website blog, and best service vendor blog.

Nominations are open until July 22nd. Here's some of the nomination info from Aisledash:

You are welcome to nominate three blogs in any of the above categories using the form below. The top three to five blogs in each category will be the finalists and the judges will select the winner in each category in early August. The winners will be announced on or about August 18, 2010.

The three to five blogs to receive the most nominations overall will be nominated for Best Wedding Blog.

I am one of the judges for the Wedding Blog Awards, along with Mark Ingram, Colin Cowie, Marcy Blum and Eric Hildebrand. You can read more about the judges here.

You can nominate your company and have others nominate you here. Good luck!

The Hottest New Thing In Weddings

Every Summer, Glamour magazine and other fashion and lifestyle glossies announce that they've discovered the hottest new mascara.

It's been Maybelline Great Lash (black, non-waterproof) for the past 15 years.

Why do they repeat this info every single year? Two reasons:

1. They know their new readers are not ordering back issues of their magazines to see what they've missed.

2. They're reminding their loyal readers that they still have their best interest in mind and are looking out for new mascaras that may trump Maybelline. In the meantime, rest assured that the one you've been using, at their recommendation, is still the best.

For wedding blogs, you have a bride's attention for anywhere from 9-18 months (maybe longer as they detox from planning and decide to enter the industry). It's okay to repeat content you had previously posted a year or two ago because the brides reading your blog today are most likely not combing back through all of your site's archives. Since there are several aspects that stay consistent through all weddings no matter the year, that information will still be relevant to them. It may be boring and old news to you, but to a bride who has never planned a wedding before, your insight into how to make her big day better is hot, brand new information.

Four Tips for Creating a Better Wedding Blog

Scientists estimate that the human brain processes around 40,000,000 pieces of information every second. Of that 40 million, only 40 make it to the conscious brain.

How can you use this information to make your blog better? The answer is simple: curate both content and design. Here are some tips on how to do so effectively:

1. Instead of showing 50 photos from a wedding, choose the top ten. If you're really struggling with this, show the top ten and then link to a gallery or slideshow that features more. This will give people the option to consume more based on their level of interest.

2. Use shorter paragraphs when you write and include a hard return between each. A long block of text is more difficult to read because it is more difficult for the brain to process. If people leave your site literally feeling tired they will be less likely to do business with you because they subconciously know that there is something about you that wears them out.

3. If you run ads on your site, the temptation to add more tiles in order to increase revenue is great. Avoid it. The paralysis of choice is at work here: when there are too many ad options to choose from, people tend not to click on them at all. Have your blog designer create white space between ads to allow for visual breathing room and be selective on how many you show.  If you need to increase ad inventory, consider selling geo-targeted ads that allow you to maximize prime blog real-estate and allow your advertisers to reach exactly who they want to. Your advertisers will be much more likely to renew and pay a premium for ad space that works and brings them a return.

4. Write less and say more. Other studies show that people stop reading text on websites after 400 words (which is why magazines that produce content for their websites the same way they do for print rarely see success online). If you have quite a bit to say on a topic, write it all out at once and then break it up into a blog series. As a bonus, you'll now have blog content for two or three days instead of just one.

PS: This blog post is exactly 400 words.

Splendid Sundays Volume 42

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

*How Knot to Succeed in Business: An Interview with Carley Roney and David Liu of theKnot.com

*Getty is giving Flickr users the opportunity to make money by contributing to their stock archive.

*"This Isn't the First Time New Orleans Has Survived the British." New Orleans is using $5 million of BP's money to launch a PR and advertising campaign to keep tourism and convention revenue up despite the oil crisis.

*The Food Network gets into the travel business.

*Quotable: "You may not have a dress code, but your market does." - John Jantsch on respecting your market's view of fashion.

Do you have any splendid finds to share?

Splendid Insights: Destination Weddings

Splendid Insight: Online interest in destination weddings has increased by 44.21% since 2005 with 12% of that increase occurring between January 2009 and January 2010.

© 2010 Splendid Insights

Introducing Splendid Insights

Since last September I've been working on some market research projects that relate to social media and weddings. While full reports will be released at a later date, each Saturday I'll be featuring a Splendid Insight (which is also the name of the research division of Splendid Communications) that gives a glimpse into how social media is impacting the wedding industry.

You can follow these updates through the Splendid Insights category or by bookmarking SplendidInsights.com. If you're already subscribed to Think Splendid, then you'll see the updates in your email or reader each Saturday.

Enjoy!

It's Not Social Media, It's You

When I lived in the Philippines, I'd often go out for ice cream with a family I worked with there. On one occasion, the adults were having a conversation and the five year old daughter of the family was trying to get everyone's attention. Her methods weren't working very well and finally she blatantly yelled "HEY! Look at me!" It was cute and everyone laughed. It worked because she was five years old.

Too many times, I see companies jump into social media with the same self-centered attitude towards getting attention. Rather than engage with people in conversation, they push one-way messages to anyone who will listen (and to people who aren't listening at all). When those don't work, the tactics get more aggressive and essentially wind up as "HEY! Look at me!". When that still doesn't work, they declare that social media is a time waster and has little business value.

The problem isn't social media, the problem is you. No one cares how great your product or service is, that you won every possible award between 2002 and 2006 or that you are simply the best at what you do. They don't care because you haven't tried to care about them. The most overlooked word in the phrase social media is "social". Listen and interact in a two-way dialogue, even if it's not at all about your business or what you offer. Unless you're a five year old girl creating puddle art with your halo-halo ice cream, demanding attention without giving any will only leave you hoarse from shouting.

Owning Your Story

Ten years ago I received a 3:00 am phone call from a staff member stuck in India. This person had lost their plane ticket home for a flight that was scheduled to leave in less than two hours and were counting on me to get them out of their mess from half a world away. Fortunately, this was back in the pre September 11th days when my advice of "turn on the waterworks at the ticket counter" worked. Today, that solution wouldn't go very far. Then again, today, you can reprint a ticket easily thanks to the advances in the airlines' processes.

What does that have to do with what I do now in online consulting? Everything. A large part of what I bring to the table is the ability to look at situations and find solutions that work. Everything I experienced in that job - the stresses, the deadlines, the crazy phone calls, the amazing people - brought with it a lesson that shapes the way I see the world and approach business. Every other experience in life does as well.

Every job and project you've worked on in the past is part of what you bring to the table. A client asked me the other day, "why would anyone care what I did 20 years ago?". My reply was because it mattered - and when she started telling me her story, she too began to see that it mattered and that it applied to her career now. Life doesn't fit neatly into disconnected boxes; everything adds up, all the dots connect.

When you're telling your story, don't revise history. Own your real story - good and bad - and allow all of what and who you are to make the services and products you offer better.

Successfully Blending Online and Print Media

Last week at Engage!10, Rebecca Grinnals debuted the preview video (seen below) that Cloud Nine Creative produced for the upcoming issue of WedLuxe magazine, Canada's luxury wedding magazine.

I'll be the first to admit that weddings leave me a bit jaded at times . . . and from recent conversations with many others in the bridal industry, I know I'm not the only one. One ballroom starts to look like another, chiavari chairs all blur together, and the stylized shoots featuring suitcases stacked as a guest book table make the blogs look all the same rather than as separate entities. This video however reminded me of the aspirational aspect of weddings and what print magazines can do to deliver that magic in a way that social media hasn't quite yet managed to capture.

I don't believe that print is dead. TV didn't replace radio and blogs won't replace everything print. I do believe however, that just as radio had to adjust and do things very differently once television came along, the same will hold true for print and online. Magazines can't continue to run the way they always have and bloggers cannot be arrogant enough to believe that they hold the golden ticket to the future (I'd like to see a wedding blog try commanding and getting a $45,000 online advertisement - not going to happen).

What WedLuxe has so brilliantly done is blended online video with a print product. And as a promo for their magazine, it makes me want to pick up the next issue and flip through its glossy pages in a way that I've never wanted to click through a website. I'm betting that if it has that effect on my somewhat-jaded-towards-weddings-because-I-work-with-them-daily self, then it will definitely be a delightful part of a bride's wedding planning process.

Here's the video, enjoy!

Four Ways a Blog Can Help Your Business

Out of all the social media platforms, blogging is the most powerful and the one that will remain consistent as other online tools come and go. Here are four ways blogging can help your wedding business:

Blogging to Get Clients
Blogging can help you get clients in several different ways: by showing that you are an expert at what you do, by showing that you have been around for a while and aren't going to skip town with their retainer (a valid fear since several companies have closed their doors during the recession leaving couples high and dry), and by helping build trust between you and the potential client before you even meet for a consultation.

Blogging for Future Book or TV Deals
Many publishers and television networks are now asking for Google Analytics data to show proof of platform before awarding new contracts. They want to see that you have a built-in audience that will buy your book or watch the show. You may never book a single client from your blog, nor may you need to, but if you want future opportunities in the form of publishing or TV, a blog can help you negotiate those contracts and land those deals. 

Blogging for SEO
Blogging can help your search engine rank, whether you are on a self-hosted blog or not. By writing on a self-hosted blog (most often a Wordpress.org blog), every word you use in a post is crawled by search engines, and then the semantically-related words are indexed as keywords for your site. The more frequently you post, the more frequently your blog is crawled and the more keywords you have connected to you.

If you blog on a third-party site (Blogger, Typepad, Wordpress.com, etc), then the links back to your own site are counted as an outside site saying that your main website has credibility.

Blogging to Protect Your Trademarks
If you are operating your business in Oregon and someone opens a business of the same name in Connecticut, they could argue that your businesses are regional and your trademarks aren't a threat to each other. Online media can help establish you as engaging in trans-state commerce, which can help you protect your trademark outside of your region.

Why do you blog for your business?

Splendid Sundays Volume 41

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

*"One New York hotel is offering a luxurious package for expectant mothers looking to give birth in the U.S. and gain citizenship for their child." They've sold 15 of these packages so far.

*Consumers who use a coupon when shopping online spend 56.5% more on their purchases than those who purchase without a coupon or discount code.

*AveryHouse and I Do Films have teamed up to create an exclusive wedding album that incorporates multimedia elements with an iPad and still photos.

*Three tips for curating your audience.

*Quotable: “I don't want to do business with those who don't make a profit, because they can't give the best service.” - Richard Bach

Do you have any splendid finds to share?

Engage!10 Insights and Reflections

I've been in Grand Cayman this week for Engage!10, a wedding business intensive for professionals working in the luxury wedding market. This is the fifth Engage! event Rebecca Grinnals and Kathryn Arce have produced, and I am fortunate to have been to all five, three as a speaker and two as an attendee.

This week I've been reflecting on the past Engage conferences and why I find them so valuable and I wanted to share some of my experiences with you. Here are some of my takeaways from this week's event:

*It's important to create with velocity, not just volume. This idea wasn't one from any one speaker, but an unspoken lesson I took away that seemed to be threaded throughout the presentations and conversations I had with other people there.

*From Rebecca Grinnals's session on the state of the wedding industry: Other than a car or a house, weddings are one of the most expensive purchases a couple will ever make. Do your processes respect that investment? (This second insight is from conversations with Colin Cowie and Todd Fiscus during the non-presentation time.)

*From Carley Roney's presentation on insights into how the high-end bride buys: 98% of luxury brides use professional vendors (rather than a "friend who loves to plan" or an "uncle with a great camera") yet they still spend ten hours per week online planning their wedding (with the non-luxury bride spending 8 hours) and 72% of luxury brides research vendors online. High-end companies need to engage online in a strategic fashion more so than their lower-priced colleagues.

*Winners ignore negativity, losers wallow in it. - Cindy Novotny

I know it's not politically correct to talk about money, but I feel it's necessary since there are many workshops and seminars competing for our time and education budgets. When choosing where to allocate your resources, the return on investment is a huge factor. At the very first Engage conference I took home an idea that generated about $90,000 in revenue for my company over the course of the following ten months. It wasn't an idea that was specifically articulated by a speaker, but a lesson I learned in one of the sessions by keeping an open mind and letting my brain connect dots. The idea also wouldn't have worked (I thought it was too scary at first) had it not been for a conversation with some of the attendees in the lobby afterward that boosted my confidence to run with it.

The other financial elephant often in the room about this conference is the cost. Engage is expensive by design: the price tag helps ensure that the people attending are often beyond the aspirational stage in their business growth. They are people who work in the high-end market and have solid businesses. Because of this, I have always found that the conversations and lessons learned from the people in the room over dinner are just as valuable as the keynote content. You can pay less for seminars with the same speakers, but the results will be different because the people in the room are a huge part in making an event what it is. I have always come away from Engage with a handful of ideas that have changed the way I approach things and have made some of my best friends in the industry that started with conversations shared in the lobby bar late in the evening.

There are no silver bullets in business, and Engage is certainly not one of them, however, for me, this week marks the fifth successful case study in how strongly effective it can be for a business. The next Engage is in October at the Breakers resort in Palm Beach. If you feel it is something that can help you, you can sign up here.



Photos courtesy of Donna Von Bruening Photographers

Zen and The Art of Social Media

Avoiding burnout from business in general is something I've talked about before, but social media burnout is something that is becoming more common and is a different topic. Here are some sentiments I've been seeing on Twitter recently:

"Taking a break from social media."
"Overwhelmed with Twitter or Facebook."
"Burning out on social media. There are just too many blogs!"
"Cup of coffee and 1287 unread posts in Google Reader! Gotta get through them all!"

Since social media isn't a fad and is becoming more critical for businesses to engage in, here are some tips on staying engaged without becoming overwhelmed:

1. Treat Social Media As Part Of Your Workflow.
Make time in your work schedule for writing blog posts, reading and updating Twitter, reading blogs, etc. If you are on a creative roll, write extra posts and save them in Evernote to use later on. (Confession: this post was written months ago, and facing a case of blogger's block, I pulled it out to edit now.)

2. Become Besties With "Mark All As Read"
Create a "must-read" folder in Google Reader with a reasonable number of blogs (I keep mine around five not including client blogs).  These are the ones I will read in their entirety.  As for the rest of the blogs in my reader, I unapologetically skim. Learn to let go.

3. Know Your Purpose
If your blog's business model is dependent on being the first to "break" a story or hot new trend, then you probably should stay up on what everyone else is blogging about.  For most non-professional bloggers however (and most wedding vendors fall into this category), you don't have to worry about that because you are generally writing from your perspective and every day hands-on experiences in the industry.  If I post something that's been covered by 30 other wedding blogs, I generally don't worry about it because my reader base is different than theirs and most of my posts are written from my point of view, so they're naturally going to be different anyway.

4. Follow Who You Can
Don't feel guilty if you can't follow everyone who follows you. Each person is different and it is better to authentically communicate with fewer people than to pretend to follow those whose updates you never read but filter out through Tweetdeck.

5. Automate
Write your blog posts in advance and schedule them to update automatically at pre-set times. Set up an account with Twitterfeed so that a note that you have a new blog post feeds into Twitter automatically. Schedule things with Twitter to update automatically at certain times (note: this should only be done for announcements, never for real time events - for example, you should not schedule a twitter update for Friday at 6 pm that says you are baking cookies with your daughter, however a note about an upcoming holiday open house is perfect for pre-scheduling). 

6. File
For blog posts I really like and want to reference later (either for a quote or to illustrate a point in a future article I write), I click the "email this" in Google reader and email the post to my Evernote account.  I then enter tags into the email so that I can easily find it later offline. 

How do you avoid social media burnout?



Originally published December 2009

Splendid Sundays Volume 40

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

*Celebrity event professionals Marcy Blum and Preston Bailey have announced their next Bailey and Blum mentoring class, set for August.

*Joy Nudd has launched CoBBlestone Rue, a resource focused on lifestyle for the modern family.

*J. Crew launched their Men's Shirt of the Month Club on June 1st. An interesting subscription model for a non-subscription business.

*2009 had the highest number of business start-ups in 14 years.

*Nole Garey launched the redesign of the Oh So Beautiful Paper blog this past week.

*Quotable: "Some people don’t need to reinvent the wheel; they just need to see what the wheel looks like in purple or yellow or whatever the season’s color trend." - Ramon Gomez on designing for clients

Do you have any splendid finds to share?

Quick Tip for Getting More Retweets

There are several free services you can use to shorten a link to make it fit on Twitter. Statistically though, Tweets that use tinyurl.com to save space are retweeted much less than tweets that use bit.ly or su.pr. Using the last two to shorten your links will increase the likelihood of being retweeted.

A bonus: both bit.ly and su.pr allow you to track clickthroughs, so you can measure how far your message is spreading.

Jealousy, Apathy and Celebrating Milestones

In the past few weeks some very big things have happened professionally for friends and colleagues of mine. Pop the bubbly and share a toast types of milestones.

Yet when these people shared their great news with others they count as friends, the overall response was a bit lackluster. Perhaps the word "congratulations" never appeared on a vocabulary test in middle school? On the occasions I observed the lack of enthusiasm for their good fortune, it didn't strike me as jealousy on the part of the others hearing the news, but rather apathy. If whatever good wasn't happening to them, they just couldn't get excited at all.

As you grow and become more successful, others will find a way to excuse your success as something else. These write-offs aren't always blatant misgivings about the circumstances that got you to where you are. They often come in the form of pretending that what should be a big deal is really not a big deal at all.

Ignore these brush offs and celebrate your journey's milestones anyway, with or without them. It is a big deal and you deserve the glass of champagne.

How to Make Online Advertising Work for Your Wedding Business

Some people confuse advertising online with being involved in social media. They are not the same thing.

In 2007, 68% of Internet users clicked on online ads. By 2009 that number had dropped to 16%.

While it may seem that online ads no longer work, that's not entirely the case. 34% of people surveyed also said that they looked up a brand after seeing an online ad for them and 20% discussed a brand on a social networking site after seeing that company's ad online.

Even though the number of clicks an ad generates has decreased significantly, online advertising can still be effective if you are active elsewhere in social media.

Ubiquity is the new black. If someone sees your ad on a wedding blog or website and doesn't click on it, but it leads them to search your company on Google instead, what will they find? Just your website or a wealth of sources talking about you? If your entire social marketing strategy consists of having your own website and advertising on other websites, your return on investment will be very low.

To see better results, participate online. Use social media to generate free publicity for your wedding business. Dominate the first page (or better yet - the first few pages) of Google results. Be everywhere.