7 Ways To Control Your Content
Do you want more clients for your wedding or event business? You’re in the right spot as I share with you the seven most important tips to controlling your content and creating a marketing strategy the attracts - and books - your ideal client.
If you’re serious about marketing your wedding or event business, you need to be serious about your content. You need to control your content and be in charge of your assets, such as photographs of your work, or your tips and advice based on your expertise.
If you’re in the wedding and/or event space, such as a wedding planner, photographer, stationery designer, florist, DJ and so many more, you’ll want to pay close attention, because I’m talking to you with my seven best tips for how to control your content.
When you work in a service based business, such as most of us in the wedding and event space, you don't have anything but your content. When an event is over or a wedding is done and they’re on their honeymoon, all that you have are the photographs or video of that event. (You obviously have really happy clients too! Which is why testimonials are so important, but that’s another post for another day!) At the end of the day (or should we say event!), you're creating a moment-in-time experience.
Therefor, tn terms of marketing your business, your content is one of your best resources for attracting and booking new business. Sharing photos and videos of your past events, or sharing expertise from your years in the business, goes a long way to not only attracting future clients, but getting them to hire you.
My goal is to empower you to take control of your business’ single greatest asset: your content.
What Is Content?
Before we get into the tips about controlling your content, we should probably talk about what is your content. What am I talking about? When I use the term “content,” I’m talking about the digital items that you make, such as photographs, videos or blog posts, from your work for which clients pay you.
For us in the wedding industry, our content often comes from past events or weddings, or our experience and expertise in a certain niche. Therefore, your content becomes anything that you create for which you have a digital asset for. Content doesn’t live in your brain or your heart, it lives out in the online world for people (hopefully your potential clients) to consume.
When you plan an awesome event, you take a photograph of it, and you post it on social media, that’s considered your content. If you’re a stationery designer and you write a blog post with tips about when to send wedding invitations, that blog post is considered content. Then if you make a graphic from that blog post, and post it on Pinterest, that’s content too.
One foundational piece of content can (and should) create many pieces of content to be shared wherever you hope to find clients and connect with future customers.
Content is what you make and share from what you create. Got it?
Here are seven simple ways to take control of your marketing and own your content.
1: Website First
I like to talk a lot about a “website first” marketing strategy and it is one of the simplest ways to control your content. I believe that your website should be the foundation of all of your content. There I said it. Your website is “home base.” From your website, everything else stems out from there.
Whether it is a blog post, a gallery, a (hidden or public) page, or wherever you update your website, all of your content that’s worth sharing should start first on your website in some form.
Why does this matter?
There’s a lot of reasons as to why you should always post your content on your website first. The main reason is that it is an insurance policy against changes in third party platforms that you do not own.
When you post all of your content onto a third party platform that you do not own, you are simply building that platform, not your own. And, then what happens when that platform gets hacked or is no longer popular? You will, oftentimes overnight and without warning, lose everything you’ve built and have to start all over. That doesn’t happen with your website. You own and control your website.
2: Have a Post Event Plan
When you have an event or do a custom project, you should have a plan for how that content is handled once the event is over. And, this plan is decided ahead of time, not in the moment or on the fly. This plan is rinsed and repeated for every single event, every single time.
Once you receive the photographs from the photographer or the client, what happens next? How and where are the photos downloaded and stored? Whose responsibility is that? What happens next? A blog post, social media sharing? Who is writing and scheduling and keeping track? (Start with your website first, of course!)
Controlling your content starts with having a plan for your content so that you’re not recreating the wheel after every single event.
3: Simplify, Simplify, Simplify
What is better? A blog post that is done or a blog post that is not done? I’ll give you a hint, it’s a blog post that is done.
Sometimes - especially those of us in the wedding and event space - are guilty of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. When it comes to posting and sharing your content, don’t overthink it and get stuck overcomplicating the situation.
Don’t post 100 photos when 5 would get the job done. Don’t write the most clever caption even when a short and sweet to the point kind of caption would fit the bill.
As you're planning your content, look for ways that you can simplify your process and your message.
Oh and having a plan helps with simplicity (See tip above!)
4: Consistency matters
I talk a lot about the importance of consistent marketing. (You might even like this post I wrote with tips on how to stay consistent in your marketing.) When it comes to controlling your content, consistency matters. It matters a whole lot.
I heard somewhere that consistency will beat quality and frequency every single time when it comes to online marketing. This means that it is better to be consistent, aka doing things regularly, than going feast or famine. Further, consistent will win out over the quality of your photos or the quality of expertise.
You can have the most beautiful images of your work, but if you aren’t consistently sharing that content in your marketing efforts, it doesn’t matter. A competitor who is better at being consistent will show up higher in a search and get in front of more potential clients, even if their work isn’t as good as yours.
For example, instead of posting every single day on social media, burning out and going dark for 6 months, consider spacing your posts out over time. It’s better to post once a week regularly, and save yourself the time to work on other things.
Oh and simplicity helps with consistency (See tip above)!
5: Get The Most With The Least
When it comes to controlling your content, the goal is to do the most with the least. You want to get the most out of each piece of content that you do create, instead of creating a bunch of little pieces of content, randomly shared all over the place with no plan.
Don’t be a squirrel with your content creation.
Create a few pieces of really great, really solid content on your website and then share it out far and wide, over and over again.
Repurpose and repackage your content and don’t waste it by just sharing it once and done.
6: You Set The Tone
One key to controlling your content is for you to set the system, or the overarching goal and then letting someone else execute your vision. Too many of us get stuck in execution and not in setting the message and the tone at the top. Or worse, you hand off or abdicate control to a social media intern who has no idea what they’re doing.
Control doesn’t come in the actual doing, or the pushing of the “post” button. Control starts at the tippy top in setting the clear marketing goal, which then informs the strategy, which then informs the tactics.
7: Don’t Be A Hero
Controlling your content comes in the training of others to do your marketing for you. Whether it is posting on social media, writing blog posts, and on down the list of marketing options, every business needs help.
There are all kinds of tips on how to have others work for you and that’s not what this post is about. You can create videos, create standard operating guides - whatever works for you. Just get some help.
Remember, there’s a difference between controlling your brand and being a hero. Figure out a system that allows you to get some help when it comes to your marketing, so that you can stay on brand without getting stressed out.
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So, there you have it, my seven best tips for how to control your content. I hope you found this helpful as you plan your marketing strategy and work to get more leads for your wedding and event business.
If you’re a creative small business serving the wedding and event industry - such as a wedding planner, photographer, entertainer, DJ, rental company, florist, invitation designer and more - and you need help with your online marketing, content creation, or your Pinterest account, please send me an email at info@juliannesmith.com or check out my done-for-you and training services for wedding pros. I’d love to work with you to maximize your creativity and the overwhelm and work with the clients that you want to work with!
For more tips and advice on the wedding industry, be sure to check out past blog posts and sign up for my weekly emails where I’ll send you all kinds of wedding business education nuggets in 100 words or less!