Bloggin’ For Wedding VendorsWhere Wedding Vendors learn to Blog

10 Ways Blogs will Increase Traffic to your Wedding Vendor Website

DJ Francisco on April 30th, 2008

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

Read More Comments (0) Getting Started, traffic

How to Blog

DJ Francisco on April 7th, 2008

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

Read More Comments (1) Getting Started