The Role of Personality in Wedding Marketing

I collect chopsticks. It's one of those quirky things I began a long time ago as a tangible reminder of the places I've traveled. It's not something that defines me, and most of the time I don't even think about it -- it just happened to come up in conversation recently over sushi with friends. These small pieces that make up our lives aren't often in the spotlight, but they do come out in the conversations we have over time. They aren't grand philosophies, just little bits that add up in the sum of our personality.

When using social media for wedding marketing, I am not an advocate of being 100% business-focused. While I am a firm believer in boundaries (and those are different for each person), it is important to be a whole person, and that includes sharing some insight into who you are outside of your career. People connect over the dailiness of life. My most popular twitter post ever was a fleeting comment about buying my then 18 month-old nephew a new toy and him opting for the TV remote instead.

Part of a successful social media strategy for a wedding professional means a potential client sitting down in that first meeting and saying "I feel like I know you already." It's so much easier to close a sale when trust has already been established and, fair or not, trust is often tied to whether or not we like a person. Sharing a bit of your life allows people to know if you have the type of personality they're going to want hanging out with them for eight to sixteen hours on their wedding day.

People will do business with people they like, regardless of the economy. Give people the opportunity to get to know you a bit before they pick up the phone.