Your Testimonials Page

So as I stumble through the world of wedding and event blogs, from time to time I come across details that make me stop, shake my head, and give me a urge to contact the blog owner.

On this one, I did…

While looking through a wedding planners’ website, and glancing through the pages, as I got to her ‘accolades’ page, I noticed the first entry was from a summer 2007 wedding – 3 years ago!

I knew this planner was active and had a good rep, surely she had to have more recent testimonials, and as I scrolled through the dozens, I noticed the last entry was 2009.

Your testimonials page should always read from the ‘most’ current – not the best, the most current! Because brides surf wedding sites long before they ever get engaged, and if they keep coming back to your page with a 2007 testimonial on top, they may not notice the new ones you added. I’ve booked many a bride because for years they’ve been watching my site and love reading through the testimonials.

So, fess up, who has their most favorite testimonial on top? Who isn’t even trying to collect testimonials?

Jolyn | Wedding Planner Coach
Secrets of a Wedding Planner

Manage Your Social Media

I love twitter and Facebook for many different reasons.

But I hated the time it took to keep connected and updated. I tried many tools, but thought all lacked usefulness the way I wanted to use the social media.

Then I found Hootsuite – you can activate an account at www.hootsuite.com

I like that I can see multiple of my twitter accounts and multiple facebook pages, and post to as many of them as I want at one time.

They do have an app for using with the iphone, but right now it only seems to work with twitter – can’t wait until it can coordinate with facebook too.

If you are struggling to merge all your social media accounts into a handy managment system, this one may work for you too. If you are using a different management tool – which one are you using?

Jolyn | Wedding Planner Mentor
Secrets of a Wedding Planner

Your Website Snapshot

I’m sure in your internet surfing you’ve seen a photo of your website in a directory or other website. Did you happen to notice that perhaps the photo was of an outdated version of your website? Well, there is an easy way to make sure the internet community is using your most current version of your website.

I try to remember to use this tool everytime I make a major design change to my website. Most internet directories pull off of one program for their website thumbnail pictures…and you can make sure it also is using the most updated version.

If you haven’t done it yet, or if you’ve had an established website and have made some design changes recently, then you need to visit – http://www.snap.com

Simply force it to visit your website and take a new snapshot, and in a short amount of time, you’ll see updated versions of your website image appear in many directories and website.

Don’t enter your domain frequently, because you run the risk of becoming disliked (LOL) so only submit your domain this one time, and then only when you make major graphical changes to your website.

Jolyn | Wedding Planner Coach
Secrets of a Wedding Planner

$1 Search Engine Lessons

Yup, that’s right – learn ‘just about’ everything you need to know about Search Engine Optiminzation (SEO) for as little as $1…I know it sounds too good to be true, but trust me, it’s not.

Justin Brooke is one of the SEO gurus…and I’ve used many of his techniques previously to give my websites higher ranking. Needless to say, I was shocked to get the email telling me that he had put together an e-book of the myths of SEO and how best to conquer them…and it was selling it for just $1 USD.

Well, I had to look, so I signed up, read the e-book last night, and even I learned some new strategies to apply to my websites again (and will be working on this weekend).

That’s the thing with SEO – you can never know it all, because it changes all the time.

So if you want an economical way to begin learning SEO or want to brush up your SEO knowledge to put to use to your website then check out what it includes here:
SEO Lies: A Report about SEO Truths

• Click the link above, scroll to the bottom of Justin’s page to enter your information and purchase the e-book
• A copy of the e-booked will get emailed to you immediately
• There will be a special offer from Justin on the second page after you purchase the e-book – it’s your choice to read it or not, but I wanted you to be aware of it.
• And you should know that I get to profit $1 from the sale of this e-book, just by sharing it with you – you know I’m not one to hide details…so you can choose to purchase the book or not, but I think you’ll find it will be one of the least expensive lessons you learn about SEO

So there you have it, you can choose to purchase the e-book or not – but if you are looking at learning about how to improve the ranking of your website in the search engines, this is a great place to get started.

Jolyn | Wedding Planner Coach

PS. By the way, I still think Justin is crazy for offering this low price for so much knowledge, so you might want to grab the e-book before he comes to his senses and removes it or ups the price!

First Website – A Blog

Sometimes it is tough to get a professional wedding planning website up and running – either waiting for a graphic designer to complete the work or to get all the content laid out for a website. If you find you are ready to start, but not ready to launch your website, then you may want to consider a wordpress blog, with a magazine style layout.

This blog is made in that format – although it’s a blog, the first page has more of a magazine look to it, so it looks more substantial then just a blog.

You can get your own template just like this one - Click here to visit Revolution Theme website!

First you will need to have wordpress blog software installed on your website, then you can add one of these templates to give your blog a fresh and clean look. I find them easy to navigate and edit to match your own personal style. You can edit not only the layout, but the colors, and even the header navigation.

There are cons to relying on a blog for your website – the first being it’s vulnerability to hackers. Make sure you know how to backup your website files, but more importantly, your database – so that if something does happen to your website, you can quickly restore the files.

A definate pro, is that many blogs are getting more weight, more quickly by search engines such as Google – so you may be able to start getting ranking fairly quickly.

Definitely worth checking out if you are anxious to get a professional website up and going until your website designer can have yours finished.

Jolyn | Wedding Planner Coach
Secrets of a Wedding Planner

Webstats: Your Visitors

Knowing your website visitors is one of the most important aspect of monitoring your website statistics.

Before we begin, let’s clear up a couple terms:

Visitor (also called Hits) – this is ‘any’ visit to your website – could be a real person, could be a search engine robot, could be an email harvester, or could just be a quick blurp of your website on the internet. Although these numbers quickly get high, it’s not the numbers we care about. And depending on your statistics program, a hit on your website may count each item on your page that is opened…so opening your home page on your website could result in as many as 2-35 hits being registered with that one single action.

Unique Visitors – are the visitors we care about. It counts each ‘real’ visitor one time a month – so if that same person comes back 6 times in a month, they won’t squew the unique visitor logs. This is the number that essentially tells you how many real visitors you had visit your website.

Website Challenge: Look at your unique visitor listing and answer the following:

• How many unique visitors to your website this month
• How many unique visitors to your website last month?
• Did the number of unique visitors go up or down?
• If it went down, can you use the rest of your statistics to find out why?

Unique visitors will have a big play as we move through more and more website statistic analysis, but for now, the important thing to know if the difference between your site visitors and your unique visitors – so you can concentrate on the unique visitors.

Call Jolyn today at 780-486-5310 for a website statistic analysis to quickly get you understanding your website statistics and what you should do based on the information it reveals.

Jolyn | Wedding Planner Coach

But I have the look?

High end clients are nearly every wedding professionals ultimate goal…we want the clients that give us the freedom to give them our very best as professionals.

Recently, I’ve had opportunity to speak to a number of wedding professionals across the country, and I kept hearing one thing… “I have the best website, the best business cards and the best testimonials…but I still don’t have the number of couples I want”.

And the first thing I do, is go to their website and then I type into google how I’d find that professional…so I may type in “New York wedding photographer” for a New York photography company. And guess what? After 4 pages, I still haven’t found their company…

If you aren’t on the first page of google, then you need to find a way to be seen! I often encourage my mentoring clients, if they don’t have the time, money or skill to invest in search engine optimization, then at least google your most relevant search term, and purchase advertising on the first 3 directories you can find in that search. Why pay to be listed on a directory that doesn’t show until page 9 of Google??

Firstly - being listed on such prominent websites will give your website a higher recognition by the search engines, even if not a higher ranking. Secondly, hopefully the engaged couples will see your listing and stop looking at the rest of the websites on that page.

Don’t let your website be on page 10 of google..the couples will never find you that way. Make some efforts to get your website recognized…because it doesn’t matter if you have the best – if no one can find your website to see it’s the best!

Jolyn | Wedding Planner Coach
Secrets of a Wedding Planner

WebStats: How often?

Understanding your website statistics is an important part of understanding how your website is functioning, how your visitors are using your website and how you can improve your website to make it work better for your business.

If your website is hosted, then you probably have some form of statistics available from your host. I use AWStats available through my host. If you can’t access your website statistics through your website host, then you may want to install GOOGLE analytics to give you some stat access to your website.

So once you find your stats, you’ll probably find tons of data, and graphs, and lists and links…if you’ve never analyzed website statistics before, then you’ll probably be a bit overwhelmed. It’s a lot of information to take in.

I’m going to try to walk you through the different statistical elements of your website at least twice a month, so that you can gain a better understanding of your website – but first, I have a new a habit I want you to develop….

I want you to log in to either your website stats or your google analytics – at least once a week! You think you can do that?? I know it doesn’t sound like much, but it’s important for you to start looking at the numbers and at least seeing if they are going up or going down…and as you start to look at them more frequently, it will start to make more sense.

How often do I look at my website statistics? Well, if I haven’t changed much on my website, then I check my stats out once a week. But if I’m actively changing details on my website or reformating, then I’ll usually end up checking every day to see if any trends are developing. Ultimately, there is no right or wrong answer about how often you check your statistics, it really comes down to how you use the information you find there…but we’ll start analyzing that in our next chat on stats!

Jolyn | Wedding Planner Coach

Just ‘Add This’!

With the explosion of social media and marketing…viral marketing is easier than ever to start! If you aren’t familiar with the term – viral marketing – it’s where one person tells a friend, and they tell a friend, and they tell a friend, etc.

Networks such as Facebook, Digg can give your website quick exposure.

A simple way to catch into this market with your website, is with the Add This bookmark icon – one simple icon in your blog posts and on your website, can allow website visitors to easily bookmark and share your website or blog.

Take a look at the bottom of this post to see the button in action!

Jolyn | Wedding Planner Coach

Marketing Magic…I Love Andy…

If you don’t know the Andy I’m speaking of, the Andy who the guru to marketing within the wedding industry…then it’s time you become very familiar with Andy!

I first met Andy at the Professional Wedding Planners Conference in Toronto in February 2008 – and although his presentation that day didn’t have a whole lot of new information for me, I realized I had yet to do anything with the information I already had…his address reminded me of all the things I had promised to work on or change with my current website…and when I got home from the conference, I put myself to task on getting those changes finally made.

Andy Ebon is owner and writer for ‘The Wedding Marketing Blog’ which can be found at www.weddingmarketing.net/blog – for those new to the industry – it gives you loads of information on advertising and marketing to the couples you want to work with. For those of us who are a bit more experienced, it gives us a kick in the butt to change how we’re doing things.

Either way, it’s a great resource to help you focus your marketing and advertising efforts and definately worth reading weekly (but I bet you’ll soon find yourself checking into his updates daily!)

So if you don’t know Andy yet…check out his blog…and if you have the chance to hear him speak at a conference – definately do so…his no nonsense approach to marketing is approaches worth making an effort for!

Jolyn | Wedding Planner