Bloggin’ For Wedding Vendors

A recent poll on Problogger.net, What is the Biggest Source of Traffic to Your Blog?, reveals the current method most bloggers are getting their traffic. It’s no surprise that 46% of the bloggers who participated on this poll get most of their traffic through Google.

See the results to find other ideas to generating traffic to your blog. Social Media (Myspaces, Facebook, Stumbleupon, Digg, etc…) is in second place and those are the easiest ways for beginning bloggers to get traffic to their webstie. The name of the article is Where Bloggers Get Their Biggest Levels of Traffic, and you can find i Here.

Happy Bloggin!

–
DJ Francisco, Houston
Wedding Vendor Blogger

Many people who live in the offline world have a hard time understanding how a blog can drive traffic to their website. Some see blogs as a waste of time and others think it’s hard to keep up with a blog. They lose motivation so they stop posting to their blogs and as a result start to say that blogs don’t work.

The mentality is different from running your business offline and running your blog and business online. And changing your mentality from what you have worked so hard to do over so many years to incorporate new technology is hard, extremely hard as John Chow states in his Blog.

So understanding that Blogs are the Holy Grail to online marketing may be a bit hard to swallow. Well they can be if you work them correctly and understand how they can increase your current traffic.

Here are 10 Ways Blogs will increase Traffic to your Wedding Website!

1. Host your Blog on Your own Domain
   Your blog is going to bring in a lot of traffic, there is absolutely no doubt about that. However if you start a blog away from your domain name, guess where all that traffic will go to? You guessed it, it’s going to your blog, where ever it is. It’s not going to magically transfer that traffic over to your website. Additionally, it looks less professional to have a blog in one place and a business website in another place. It feels like there’s two of you and it could potentially lead to distrust.
2. Participate in Related Forums or Blogs
   Remember you are trying to establish an online presence and provide us with a little bit of your experience. Don’t worry, nobody is going to steal your ides, besides most ideas are not new nor are they original, they are all borrowed, so why not share them back. What it will do is establish yourself in the minds of your readers, whether they are brides or other vendors / bloggers, as an expert in your field. And if your participation is of high quality, then you will gain followers, who want to know what you are all about, back to your blog. Since most bloggin platforms and forums allow you to place a link in your comment, the more you participate in forums or blogs, the more links to your website you will create, and back links to your website are very important in building traffic to your website.
3. Cover topics that need attention NOW
   If you have strong beliefs about a particular topic in your industry or a current event. This is the place to vent it out, express your beliefs on the topic, and share your thoughts with others might (or might not) agree with you. For example, I believe that a DJ’s is very important in the outcome of a wedding, so I would hope and expect that other DJ’s do a lot to prepare for a wedding both professionally and personally. A lot of problems come because of personal misunderstandings, so I believe that wedding vendors should invest A LOT in their personal development. Depending on your topic, you too can voice your opinion on things like that and additionally on current events.
4. Quality Content (Can’t stress that enough)
   Quality content is key. If people can read your blog, understand your view, and feel like you are providing them with a value, an answer to their problems, then they will want to come back for more.
5. Create Some Buzz
   Attending a bridal show? Do you have a current discount this month? Did you make the cover of a local newspaper? Are you launching a new product line? Are you expanding your services? THEN Blog about it!!! People want what’s new and on the cutting edge.
6. Build and use and Email List
   Email Lists… all blogs and online businesses should have one. They are a great source of traffic to your website and for some businesses they are the bloodline to their success.
7. Do an interview with someone well known
   This serves as two purposes. One, you feed the person’s ego, which will motivate him to talk about you and your interview as well as where they can find it (Hint: Your Blog). Additionally, it connects you and puts you on the same level as that person’s perceived image. This is called social proof. Most people feel they can trust you easier if they have proof that others trust you.
8. Be the first in your field to build a quality blog
   Don’t just be the first in your field to have a blog, be the first to have a quality blog. A blog that updates it’s content often and provides answers to problems or helpful advice. Your audience will be brides that NEEEED good advice and help on something they have never done in their entire life. Be the go to person in your field. In turn, they will tell their friends and family about your website and your blog. Again, if your blog is in your website this applies if it’s off site, then chances are they will be directed to wherever your blog is.
9. Join the Social Networking Medias
   Facebook, Myspace, Linkedin, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Digg, Technorati, etc… these are all terms you must familiarize yourself with and join these services. There are many more and they all can and will drive a lot of traffic if help them, help you. I got 6 Weddings of Myspace alone, in 2007.
10. Be Patient
    Patience (lack of), the #1 killer of success. If you stop watering your seed just before it breaks through the ground, you will never be able to enjoy the benefits of your hard work. Bloggin Works, I know first hand, and there were many, many, many times where I asked myself; “Am I wasting my time? DJ in Houston: Google #1 Ranking (on 04/29/2008). I’ve had not only online success but also offline success. I’ve gotten calls from newspapers asking me for advice on something related to the wedding industry, which drive more traffic to my website.

These Ten Techniques for driving traffic to your Wedding Vendor Blog are a compilation of what I use to drive traffic and from advice I’ve gotten from other, more established bloggers. One article I read was 5 Ways to Increase your Blog Traffic by Darren Rowse:ProBlogger.com and the other, post is by Seth Godin’s 54 56 Ways to Get Traffic to your Blog, which is also linked to from Darren Rowse’s Blog. Since they helped me out just by reading their articles, I link to them as a thank you and so other readers, like yourself can visit their blogs.

Happy Bloggin!

DJ Francisco, Houston
Wedding Vendor Blogger

Here are the top ten reasons you you should begin bloggin’

10. Because you can Promote your Service or Products

This should be done tactfully tastefully. The last thing you want to do is turn you blog into a spam blog or an self advertising posting page. But don’t be afraid to stand up for what you believe and how your service solves certain problems, as an example.

9. Because you love to express yourself

We all have a voice and we all want to be heard. Bloggin’ gives everyone that freedom of expression that the great US of A is known for. By expressing yourself, through your blog, brides can get a feel, a sense of how charming and intelligent you are. After all, brides and any other client buys if you reach their emotions, get them to trust you, and if they feel you are the best choice there is.

8. Because you can establish yourself as an Industry Leader

Leaders Lead. Leaders know where they are going and what they are after. Leaders know how to solve problems. Leaders are trusted. Brides look for the industry leaders. nuf said…

7. Because it’s ZERO-DOLLAR-MARKETING!!!!

Blogs cost nothing but time to keep up with. You don’t have to pay anyone to blog. You can but you don’t have to. You can do it yourself. You don’t have to worry about how much space you have to run an ad. You don’t have to limit the amount of words you can use. You really don’t have any ‘real’ limits. Just the limits you put on yourself. The most popular bloggin programs are FREE. Installation is FREE, if you are technically inclined or if you have a great tech support on your website host.

6. Because you can Network with other bloggers

Bloggers love to network with other bloggers. They will read each other’s blog and make comments on their buddies blogs, add their view about a particular topic, add their insights to the industry, promote other vendors they believe have great service, write a blog post about another blogger, etc… Bloggin’ is the new Secret Society, except it’s all over the internet.

5. Because you will get ‘wider’ search engine exposure

The more you post to your blog, the more content you will have accumulated, the more the search engines will have to chose from, the more traffic you will generate. Typically when you blog about your industry you will cover many words and keywords and search terms that you would never know your brides were looking for.

Here’s a quick summary of how this works. A bride is looking for a particular wedding services, product, or to solve a particular problem. She opens up Google.com; types in a term, search engine phrase, or keyword; gets all the Google.com Results; and clicks on the ones she likes or the ones that seem to do the best at solving her problem. Those keywords are the ‘gold nuggets’ we want to target. How to find them is beyond the scope of this blog post. In my case, I run a DJ company, the ‘gold nuggets’ brides used to get to my website was Wedding DJ in Houston. Now that was an ideal keyword, but in the real world of Google.com, not every bride will use that exact phrase. They will use anywhere from Wedding entertainers, wedding music, dj companies in houston, what’s the best dj in houston, etc… and those, each, return 100% different results from the other. I also posted an article titled “Related Search Engine Terms” where i went into detail on some of the keywords my Wedding DJ Blog attracts form Google.com and Yahoo.com

4. Because you can achieve a Higher Search Engine Ranking

Google and all the search engines, like all the brides that use it, are looking for quality, authoritative websites. As mentioned before, by posting constant, quality posts to your blog, you will soon become the leader in your industry for your service and Google.com will begin to recognize that after some time. As a result, it will bump your website up on the rankings. But you must stay focused on what search engine terms you are trying to rank high for and use them tactfully. How do I know this for a fact? My Wedding DJ Website ranks very high for my targeted keywords.

3. Because you will increase traffic to your website

This is almost a no-brainer, but I still have to put it in here. Higher search engine results, wider search engine tracking will result in increased traffic. If you are on page 10 of the search results and you move up to page 1 then your search engine traffic will increase by an estimate of about 1000%. I was getting about 10 visitors per day to my website before my blog, now I am getting over 100 visitors per day consistently. I got 175 a few days ago.

2. Because you will increase your Lead Generation

Leads are golden. A lead from your website means that you just need to do a few more things and that lead will become a client. After you’ve created some great content, you’ve established yourself as an industry leader, provided great value, solved a problem for your bride, they will gladly give you their contact information so that you can offer your services. Have a way to capture that information by putting a form on your website. Just try to get the basic information: Name, phone number, email address, and wedding date. other than that you can get the rest of the details when you communicate with them.

1. Increased Income

This is why I blog at http://www.fhpentertainment.com/blog/ …. nuf said

Happy Bloggin!

–
DJ Francisco
Wedding DJ Blogger

RSS = Real Simple Syndication, or a really easy way to read this blog, without having to visit it every day.

Summary

RSS is part of the family of XML format, developed specifically for all types of websites that update their content frequently. Using an RSS reader you are able to receive website content, News, Blog Entries, and any other information published in an RSS feed without visiting a website. You just launch your RSS reader and if your favorite website or blog has any new articles, the RSS reader will retrieve them and show them to you. The best part is that you can set it to receive news from many websites that cover topics that you are interested in.

Definitions

RSS - Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0).
XML - It’s basically the formatting language that software and websites use to distribute the content to your feed reader.
Syndication - The Process by which a website is able to share information, such as articles, with other websites… Or other people

Description

RSS is nothing more than a simple format that is used to Syndicate content to subscribers of a website or blog. The format allows for the subscribers to receive the content without the need of opening a web browser, such as Firefox or Internet Explorer, using a program designed to read the RSS feeds. However, recently most web browsers have started to support RSS feeds and you are able to read all your feeds from the web browsers RSS option.

Thanks to the aggregators (programs or websites designed to read RSS feeds) you can obtain a summary of all the websites or blogs that you like from the comfort of your very own desktop, email clients (Outlook, Thunderbird, etc…), or through web applications specifically designed to read an RSS feed. You don’t have to open up your web browser and go to every website or remember all the website addresses.

The most important part of this format is that it is establishing a new chain of values in the sector of content or information technology (IT) and changing the way that information is accessed both from big companies and corporations and from regular website owners. Many companies are experimenting with the format and to develop new ways to use it to deliver information to the consumer or subscriber.

Syndication is not only a phenomenon designed to aid weblogs, although it has helped their popularity. There has always been syndication and the sharing of information through the XML language, this way we can offer a way to reproduce our own content in other websites in an integrated manner. This helps increase the value of the website that publishes the RSS information and establishes the author of the content as a leading authority. For example if someone reads an article online and that person likes the information and feels that his readers might benefit from that information, he will publish a link, a summary of the article, or the entire article in his website by just pointing to the RSS feed of the article.

Confusing and too technical??

It can be confusing so the best way to understand this is to start using it.

The RSS Feed for this Blog is located at:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/BlogginForWeddingVendors

If you click on that link, it will give you a better idea of what the RSS readers see.

If you copy that link and add it to your RSS Reader you will be able to read this blog from your email program.

What are some RSS Readers?

I personally use the RSS feature built into my email application, Thunderbird, but there are many other programs designed specifically reading RSS feeds. I love Thunderbird because I always have it running and if there is a new article or some news that have recently been published, it will notify me with a sound so I can see if the article is of any relevance to me, if so I will read it either at that time or whenever I get a chance.

Since I don’t use any other RSS reader, your best bet is to visit our friend Google.com and search for “rss readers” or “rss aggregators” and select the one you like most.

Happy Bloggin!

–
DJ Francisco
Wedding Bloggin’ DJ

To prove the point of how effective blogs are, let’s do a case study on a website I released a few months ago. It’s ran by a blog.

In January, I was at a wedding reception doing the Master of Ceremonies and DJ duties. They had this one thing I had never seen at a wedding before, and to tell you the truth, at first I was very skeptical about how it would work. Well, to my surprise it was a huge success, people lined up for hours to take their turn in this new phenomenon… Ok, I’m exaggerating, it was not a phenomenon, but it sure seemed like it. What was it?

It was a Photo Booth,

…the same concept as in the malls, but this was portable and was all digital. People lined up for hours to wait their turn at the picture booth.

So being the entrepreneur that I am, I thought, wow that would be a great thing to offer. Especially since this one photo booth came all the way from Dallas Texas to provide their service.

You can find my website by doing a search in Google.com for “Houston Photo Booth” and you will see the website listed as #6 on the first page of the search results.

This was possible for a few reasons.

First, the power of the webstie, FHP Entertainment.com is so strong that if I place a link on my website for any website and add the right content, I can get any page indexed by Google.com. So that’s what I did, I wrote a small launch post for the new Photo Booth Rental Service in Houston I had started.

Second, I decided to use a Wordpress blog and an existing free template. So the design time was NOTHING. It was already done for me. All I had to do was come up with the content and fill up the website with the content that I thought would compel people that visited the website to take an action.

Finally, because of the Blog Content that I added to capture as many keywords as I could think up. Using the same tip I gave out at the Related Search Engine Terms post, I took all the popular keywords for my DJ website and replaced them with photo booth.

What was the result?

The website was launched in February 11th, 2008, exactly 2 months today. I’ve had 23 people fill in the form for more information. A few other decided to call my phone number, and one other emailed me directly at my DJ website looking for pictures, pricing and availability.

A couple booked the service within the first phone call and a few wanted more pics of it being used. I will dare say that about 10 people out of those 23 will book the service. Not bad for 0 advertising.

As it stands, my form sends out one emial at this time. The pricing information.

Hope you can see how powerful bloggin’ is.

Happy Bloggin!

–

Francisco H. Perez
Wedding DJ Blogger

Start Bloggin’

So you’ve installed your blog on your website (hopefully)… Now What!?!?

To get started, you have to have a focus, an angle, a niche, a way to solve a problem so to speak. You have to find something that you can write and educate your readers about. Bloggin’ is all about solving the problems people have. At the meeting someone summed it all up, “Why do I want to read about someone’s day in the park?”

People really don’t want to read about that, they want to read to solve a particular problem.

For example, you will only read this blog if it solves your problem on how to integrate a blog to your business. If not, then you will probably not find it interesting, you won’t read it, and you won’t come back.

There are blogs about scrap booking, moms cooking and losing weight, dating advice for men, etc…

And then there are the professional Bloggers, the ones who make all their income through bloggin’

Yaro Starak : Entrepreneurs Journey, Darren Rowse : Pro BLogger, Brian Clark : CopyBlogger, and a few others. These bloggers make a healthy income, between $5,000 - $20,000 a month just from their blog. Now that’s motivation…

On a side note, I am a member of Yaro’s Blog Mastermind Group ( Blog for Profits Blueprint - Make money from your Blog ) and I’ve been a member since June of 2007. Membership is closed at this moment but will re-open to the public at a later time.

Getting started is the hardest part.

I remember when I first started bloggin’ I thought to myself. What will I write about? Who will read my blog? Who am I to start a blog? What will my friends think when they find out? Should I even tell them? I’m a math major, I suck at writing and expressing myself and people won’t understand me… and so on

And these are of course, the hardest things that I had to get over; my own stumbling blocks. At the time I really didn’t know where it was going, I just had read, from my initial Google.com search,that blogging was a great way to get your website to rank high on the search engines. I really didn’t know or understand how, but that’s what a lot of articles said so I said, what the heck let’s just try it.

It took me a while and it wasn’t easy, but I didn’t have anyone to guide me, I just did it.

A year later I achieved #1 in Google.com, Yahoo, and/or MSN for highly sought after keywords. Now I am content to be in the first page of the search results, which even that is hard to do.

Here are a few of the keywords:

1. DJ in Houston
2. Houston Wedding DJ
3. Quinceanera DJ
4. Bilingual DJ Houston
5. Wedding DJ in Houston

Why is this important???

I know it’s common sense, but let me elaborate. As a marketer, you soon learn that you have to put your brand in front of the bride as much as you can so that they can see your brand and recognize it. Jennifer preaches that a lot and you may even be tired of hearing it but that’s because to marketers that’s common sense but to us business owners, it’s not. It takes some repeating to get us to understand that concept, and that’s perfectly natural. We are worried about providing a great product or service more than anything.

Now-a-days the internet IS “the information super-highway” and it’s called that for a reason, if you need information on anything you just go to the internet and search for it. And that’s what brides are doing, they are searching for the best options on reception halls, on DJ’s, on photographers, etc… and if you are not on there, you are no one to them. Your website is on an island that they will never take the time to find. They are going with the top few and once they find one that is good enough.. they will book that service or buy that product.

Again this is stuff most people already know…

Stay Motivated:

Write what you love about and love what you write about. It’s as simple as that. That is the best way to keep up with your blog. You have to love your customers, and in bloggin’, your readers are your customers. Love them enough to be able to solve their problems. Help people with your accumulated experience! You own a business and have done your job a million times, that makes you the expert and brides want advice from experts, they want to know what to do and how to do it, or better yet how you will do it so they won’t have to worry about it. They will read your information, find it useful, and you’ll feel great about it. Not to mention that you will benefit by getting an extra event you would have never gotten had it not been for your blog.

Write with passion

In order to get brides to read your posts, you have to put some passion into them. If you are passionate about your job, then they will FEEL it when they read…

Put some EMPHASIS on words that you want to stick out or have meaning.

Use words that describe actions, people remember action if it’s detailed. For example…

The reception hall was elegantly covered with beige satin chair covers, the round tables had the same satin texture under chocolate brown table runners. Each table runner was precisely placed by the lady in a cross pattern

Now that took some time, effort, and pain to transfer an image in my head into the precise words that I thought would be a good example. Given my targeted audience, you (wedding vendors) you can probably see the same picture I saw. And it’s a lot more memorable than and descriptive than: The hall looked nice.

This should give you a good idea of how to get started bloggin’. Remember to get rid of your personal blocks, write to solve problems, stay motivated, and be passionate about your subject. You already are the expert in your field. Now you just need to transfer your experience, the experience you want to share and you know will help your brides, into words.

^Here’s to bloggin’!

–
Francisco Perez

Owner of the DJ in Houston Blog at www.fhpentertainment.com

So what are your options if you want to get started with your own wedding vendor blog?

1. Wordpress.com (free)
   Wordpress.com is a great source if you want to get started. Wordpress is, in my opinion, the best bloggin’ software you will use. That’s what I use and that’s what a lot of bloggers use. It’s easy to use and it’s free. The only downfall about using Wordpress.com is that all the traffic that you attract will be sent to Wordpress.com.

2. An installation of Wordpress on your own domain (after initial setup… free)
   This is what I recommend for everyone, right from the start. You will have to invest a small amount of money to get it installed on your website or a new website, but all the traffic you attract will be directed to that website. For, example, I get a lot of traffic toe my DJ Website, FHPEntertainment.com because of my blog there. If I were to have started my blog with one of the free blog hosts, they would have benefited from all that traffic.

3. Blogspot.com (free)
   Blogspot is another free blog hosting platform. It’s an alternative to Wordpress.com and it’s owned by Google.com. But the concept is still the same and the traffic results are still the same: If you earn traffic it will go to your blogspot.com blog, not your business website.

4. Typepad.com ($4.95/mo.)
   I don’t know anything about Typepad.com or why people would pay a monthly fee for a blog. But it’s there and it’s another alternative.

I would recommend anyone that is looking to seriously increase traffic to their business website, through bloggin’, to take the time and install Wordpress on their website server. The software is free, I would be willing to get it set up for $50.

Here is a summary of some of the stuff covered at the meeting. Some we did not get to because of a lack of time.

1. Online Traffic
2. Web Usability
3. Email Marketing

Online Traffic

• Need a Website
• Identify Targeted Keywords
• SEO For Targeted Keywords
• Search Engines Love Content
• Best Way to do this W/ a Blog
• Most Major Business Have a Blog
• Blogs are nothing but content
• Content can be used to targe to your search terms

Website Usability

• Do Not Confuse Visitors with Links
• Website Should Direct Traffic
• Sales Copy
• Customer Should Call or Email you
• Why? - They take an Action
• Tracking Visitors Google Analytics

Email Marketing?

• What email marketing is not
• Spam, Send same email continuously, insult customer
• Send Information Strategically
• Personal
• Build Relationship
• Keep In contact with customer until he sings your contract
• Surveys, Reviews, Thank yous

Summary / Conclusion

• Go over everything in summary
• More Traffic = More Calls / Emails = More $$$
• Once Traffic gets to your website direct them and get them to take an action
• Once they take that action, keep in contact with them at least until they book

–

Francisco

Hello all…

This Blog is made in order to help those wedding vendors that want to get started bloggin’ and don’t know where to start… or just need a few examples of where to start.

Just to review what we covered at the Premier Bride meeting.

A successful website needs 3 Things.

1. Traffic
2. Easy Navigation / User Direction
3. Constant Communications with the visitors that take action

Of course, there are many other things, but these were the ones covered.

What you can do, currently is analyze how easy your website navigation is and how easy it is for your visitors to call you, email you, or communicate with you. Then think about how you can “Make it better”

What to expect from this blog.

• What Blogging Platform to select.
• How to come up with bloggin’ topics
• How to track your Visitors
• How to maximize your email leads
• How to capture email leads
• What to do with you email leads
• Where to place your subscription form
• How to optimize your website for search engines
• How to optimize your website for your visitors
• and whatever topics that are important for wedding vendors.

–
Francisco