Because a blog is an inexpensive, fast way to build an online presence, it is an ideal way for entrepreneurs, consultants, speakers, authors and yes Pre Wedding couples to establish their wedding presence and their wedding presents!
Since your readers can post comments, you create a conversation with your audience and build rapport perment record of the event as a result.
The very nature of a blog is perfect for the busy bride today, usually a professional person. They are quick and easy to update. You create fresh content frequently (two to three times a week is recommended minimum) that is useful for your wedding party and family and loved by search engines. In contrast to “traditional” static website, a blog is a dynamic site that encourages your visitors to interact with you through commenting so they can get to know you better.
When you create a conversation with your audience (visitors, readers, prospects), you are establishing a connection that can also use the social networks or facebook and Twitter . You build your social network and increase the visibility of your wedding and services in a casual way.
A blog is an essential tool in the professional bloggers marketing toolbox. Combined with a website, an ezine, database management and ecommerce system, you will have everything you need to run your wedding news globally and online.
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10 Steps for Starting Your Wedding Blog
Before you get to the nitty-gritty of setting up your blog, there is some pre-work to do. This will ensure you start right and put your best foot forward
1. Before you do anything else, examine the reasons why you want to publish a wedding blog. What is the purpose for the blog? How does the blog’s purpose relate to your wedding purpose?
2. What are the objectives or outcomes you want from your blog? Some people use a wedding blog as a photo generator to build their picture collection, usually 300 or more. Some are looking to build a visibility platform, for say relatives that are not able to attend the ceremony. While others use the blog to develop content for other purposes of wedding albumns. What do you want to get out of your blog?
3. Who is your ideal reader? Who are you writing to/for? For most weddings I’ve worked with, the ideal reader is similar to their ideal client. Their friends that are soon to also get married. It’s important to know your audience so you can meet their needs and address their concerns, challenges and what they’re looking for to improve their engagements, weddings & honeymoons .
4. How do you want your readers to feel when they read your blog? This may seem like a weird question, yet it will help you tap into the emotions of your audience. Do you want your reader to be entertained, amused or a traditional wedding? Again, tapping into this will help you focus your content on serving your blog wedding reader.
5. What do you want your readers to DO when they read your blog? This relates to the goals you set for your blog. If your blog is a lead generator, then you must have very clear steps for guiding your reader to subscribe to get blog updates and/or get your lead generating content. You can have a form box for people to leave their emails so that you can send them a small gift – perhaps a digital ebook on weddings.
6. How much time do you have to devote to your blog each week? This is getting to the heart of blogging. If you can’t commit to writing a lot of valuable content, then you’re doing yourself and your readers a disservice. Be honest. The most effective and successful blogs are those with fresh, new content posted at least two to three times per week. If that is reasonable for you to manage fine, otherwise I could update your blog working with you . Will you have a team of bloggers? Your wedding party? Remember, there are many, many ways to create content. It doesn’t have to be all you all the time.
7. What’s your blog’s core message? What do you want your readers to learn? Why should anyone read your blog, and more importantly why should they subscribe to and follow your blog? By RSS feed. This is another key piece to get in place before you start your blog. A series of posts that articulates your core message and provides new readers with an introduction and overview of what they can expect to learn from you about your wedding.
8. Create an editorial calendar. It’s no secret that content rules on a blog, so it’s helpful to have a content plan going into the game. A key element of a good blog is having a list of 7-10 keyword-rich categories. Once you determine the categories (or subtopics) of your blog, you can plan your content calendar. If you plan on posting three times per week, then plot out post ideas for each of your categories. Make a list of 5 topics for each category. Then, fill in your calendar. Five topics times ten categories and you’ve got 50 blog posts in the pipeline.
9. Do your homework. Critical to your blog’s success is knowing your competition. Finding great blogs will take a bit of time and research. Start at Technorati.com and search for blogs using your keywords. Next use Alltop.com and Blogs.com to find the best of the best.
10. Build your blog. Now that the research is done, you know your message and have content ready to go, it’s time to get down to business and lets build the blog. This is where the fun part starts and cannot be easily covered in a bullet point.
Two things to think about:
1) Are you a do-it-yourselfer or will someone build the blog for you?
2) Are you a techie or not? There are many blogging platforms each with pros and cons. If you’re a techie, you may prefer WordPress.org. If you’re not comfortable with tech stuff, then Weebly.com may be a better option for you.
As you can see, there’s more to wedding blogging than initially meets the eye. The more preparation and thought you put into your blog BEFORE you start, the more successful it will be. Once the prep work is done and the blog is built, you’ll have a powerful marketing tool for creating a highly visible web presence attracting people to your wedding blog around the world.
