5 Social Media Marketing Lessons for Wedding Venues from Gary Vaynerchuk

5-Social-Media-Marketing-Lessons-for-Wedding-Venues-from-Gary-Vaynerchuk

New York Times bestselling author, and CEO of the fast-growing agency VaynerMedia, Gary Vaynerchuk is one of the most compelling entrepreneurs and marketing thinkers of our time. With an especially discerning eye toward social media marketing, he’s been able to predict where the industry is going and advised businesses on how to take advantage. Here, we channel his social media marketing know-how into five tips for wedding venue marketers to improve their social media marketing efforts.

1. You’re a Media Company, Whether You Realize It or Not

Gary maintains that every business is a media company. His point is well-made: With the cost of distribution essentially reduced to zero, there’s no reason not to build a social audience around your brand. The best way to do that is through publishing content consistently, even daily, if at all possible.

Time is a precious resource, and you may think that you don’t have enough of it to adopt this mentality. But, not all posts need to be complex or directly related to your venue every time.

Our Recommendation

Develop formats for recurring posts to give your social media marketing game some structure. If you need some help getting started, check out our post on the 5 super simple posts anyone can write.

2. Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook

This is the title of one of Gary’s books and it basically means, “give, give, give, ask”. He uses it to explain that you should “give” followers useful or fun content much more frequently than you “ask” them to do something. In today’s highly competitive social landscape you have to be engaging, entertaining, and informative. It shouldn’t be a problem, considering the natural storytelling opportunities there are to be found in wedding and event marketing.

Our Recommendation

Tell couples’ stories, give away your best wedding planning advice, throw some love at your top vendors. Then, every once in a while, find a compelling way to make an “ask” that gets couples over to a landing page. Give, give, give, ask.

3. Attention is Everything

“Don’t be romantic!” Gary loves to proclaim. No, he’s not trashing on the idea of love – he’s referring to how you generate your revenue and attract attention. Don’t become too reliant on one or two social platforms because they’ve worked for you in the past.

There’s no hard and fast rule to measure success because every business has different goals. For you, your goal could be to increase followers, or engagement. Whatever it is, determine your method of measuring success, and check in every so often. Allocate your time proportionally according to the attention that your venue is getting on each platform. Digital channels in general tend to have an expiration date, so never get lulled into a false sense of security or think you can “set it and forget it.”

Our Recommendation

Put your social media strategy down on paper (this helps with delegation, too!) and revisit it every six months to make sure your priorities are still right.

4. Experiment with New Platforms

Poke around a bit in social’s next frontier – wherever that may be. For every Instagram, there are dozens of social media platforms such as Meerkats, Peach, and Google+ that showed early promise but ultimately flamed out. Gary took an early interest in each and you should, too. Many of your couples are in their early- to mid-20s, and keep up with every turn of social media. Sure, it’s entirely practical to wait for the winners to shake out and then figure out where to allocate your time. But, by jumping in early and figuring out what the fuss is about, you may discover ways to harness the platform for your business and benefit from the attention early adopters get.

Many of these platforms won’t work out, but you’ll learn a little more each time, and you’ll benefit when one does hit. By understanding the functionality and features of each platform, you’ll be able to identify those that are a great fit for your business. Couples will also be impressed by venues who can stay abreast of social trends.

Our Recommendation

If you’re not a social maven, find someone on your staff, or in your personal network, who is. Check in with them once a month to have them tell you about what’s popping up. Then, you can be the one to translate that opportunity into success for your business.

5. Realize That No Marketing Channel Is Dead

While social media is eating a larger and larger slice of the global ad spend, it’s not wise to write off older mediums like radio, print, or TV. While the attention they command may be fading, there are still audiences tuning-in. Plus, if the price is right, it can still be a worthwhile investment for your venue. The same thing is true of other forms of digital marketing, like search engine marketing, email, etc. Remember that there are opportunities others may be overlooking as marketers as they re-allocate the majority of their resources to digital and take advantage of that gap.

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