No doubt, social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have become the number one spot to advertise your services and your business, whether you are a wedding planner, wedding coördinator, wedding consultant or similar.

Yes, word-of-mouth is also a great strategy, but you cannot rely only on that anymore. More and more people are now looking to the internet and social media for products and services. That’s why we have come up with ways to promote your business on these platforms.

Most wedding and event planners start out as a one-person-show when they kick off their career. Which means that self-promotion might be the best way to go about promoting yourself and which services you offer.

How to Promote your Wedding Planning Services on Social Media

Promoting your wedding planning, wedding coördinator, or wedding consultant business for free

Obviously, when you first start out, you will not have a massive resource of funds lying around somewhere. That clearly means that you cannot invest a lot in advertising, marketing or promotional strategies. So doing this for free will be the best option at first. Locating these free resources might not be as difficult as you’d like to think…

First of all, you can easily join the correct Facebook groups and pages to promote yourself. Don’t just join every available self-promoting group out there – it has to be specific to what you’re advertising.

For instance, if you’re advertising your wedding or events planning business, you might want to join advertising groups in your area or any wedding related group in your area or country. Just search with the correct keywords such as ‘wedding’ or ‘event planning’ in the Facebook search bar.

Also, you should be well aware by now that creating a Facebook page is free. If you are serious about your wedding planning business, you should create a Facebook page immediately! Be sure to include as much detail on your page as possible so that your potential clients can be well informed of what you are offering to them. People can also contact you personally via Facebook messenger – which is great perk.

Another great strategy is by having a blog on your website – now this may not be a totally free option, but it is much cheaper to advertise your service online on your own blog, than buying ad space somewhere or printing out flyers and banners. You can interlink your blog posts and website with your social media, so that people can find a convenient way to contact you.

Choosing which social media platform works for your business

We can state the obvious and say: the more involved you are on social media, the more eyes will see it, the more conversions you will get… But, do not overkill by joining each and every platform and post everywhere. There are so many different platforms, each with its own posting schedule and different users. If you join all of them, you will burn out, and probably lose interest in your business, because you’re not sleeping enough…

Rather determine which social media platforms work the best for you, your schedule and your business. Also, determine which social media platform will be the most appealing to your business.

In the case of wedding or event planning, you may want to use more visual platforms such as Pinterest and Instagram for posting your events’ photos and to build a portfolio for yourself. Facebook is also a great way for text and visual posts. Also, if the funds provide it, you can use Facebook ads to reach the correct audience.

Creating social media accounts

Like we mentioned already, be sure to create a Facebook Page for your business, and make it attractive and user friendly. Include photos, regular posts, behind the scenes posts, happy clients’ testimonies, clear contact details and links to your other sites and social media accounts. Encourage people to like and share your page or use Facebook ads to reach the right people. The same goes for all your other social media accounts.

Instagram lets you add one URL in your profile’s description, so why not send people to your Facebook Page?

Pinterest also needs some thorough attention, and this can be where you showcase all of your hard work and build a sort of ‘digital portfolio’.

How to determine the best times to post

Determining when to post all comes down to who your niche, or target market is and where they are located.

For instance, we are situated in South Africa, but more than 80% of our readers and followers are from the US. So, we will have to work on their hours whenever we want something to go live and be seen by many eyes as possible. (4pm here, will be 9am in Florida!)

If you focus on locally situated couples, you will obviously post and promote your products and services during normal office hours, wherever you are located.

The platform you choose also determines the best time to post. Most people are active on Facebook during their lunch break and after 8pm at night. So your best bet will be to target those hours.

You will have to research which times are the most active in your area and on which platforms.

Also Read:

• How to become a wedding planner from home
• 7 Ideas to make your wedding planning business sparkle
• How to start a wedding blog + monetize it

Creating a social media schedule for your business

With all of the available social media platforms out there, it is wise to create a social media schedule for yourself. On this schedule, you should write on which platforms to post what, and when.

You can find a free downloadable social media schedule in this post.

Why is it important to have a social media schedule?

First of all, if you gain plenty of followers on a certain platform, you will most likely gain dedicated followers, too. This means that they get used to when you post or promote something from your business. If you decide to do a competition or giveaway every Wednesday to promote your business, then they will be waiting for you on your social media, every Wednesday.

Another reason for having a social media schedule is because you should make the effort to post frequently and keep your social media accounts active. Once people see that your last post on your Facebook page is more than 6 months old, they might wonder if your business still exists…

Branding your business on social media

We can go into so much detail here, because branding, in itself, is a massive topic to discuss. But, essentially, there are a few basic rules that apply to each and every business out there when it comes to branding:

1. Keep your branding consistent

If you use the same designs, color schemes and branding throughout all of your social media accounts, website and business stationery, people will start to recognize your brand from anywhere. Also, cohesive branding gives your business a polished, professional look.

2. Re-brand only when it is needed

Most business owners are never happy with their branding and will always be inspired to change it to something else. However, you should be careful with constant re-branding, because it might look as if your business is disorganized.

3. Your brand needs to fit your niche

Any business that tries to create a memorable brand, should appeal to its customers. This is especially true if you are just starting out with your new wedding planning business.

However, there are some cases where a very old company can use any branding they wish, because people already know who they are. Let’s use General Electric as an example: Have you seen their logo? Would you have guessed that they are an electronics based company just by looking at that curly-wurly logo? No. But, they are well-known, because the company was started by Thomas Edison.

4. The power of color psychology

Color is the strongest feature of any company’s branding – even if we mostly register this feature subconsciously. Blue, for example, can mean safety and security. Red, Yellow, Orange and sometime Purple, can all be associated with food. Green is synonymous to recycling and the environment.

Be sure to choose the appropriate colors to portray your branding to your ideal niche.

Consistency throughout your social media actions

We have already mentioned that you should have a social media schedule in place, and why you should have one.

Remember, the more active and frequent you are on social media, the more followers you will gain.

And more followers mean more potential clients!

Networking

It’s already a known fact that networking helps a business to grow, no matter how big or how small that business may be. Networking with other wedding planners and suppliers, for example, will potentially open new doors with you, and might help you to work with other professionals in the wedding planning industry.

However, since social media is the topic being discussed, let’s move it there. The principle of social media networking remains the same as normal networking. The great advantage to networking on social media, however, is that you can meet and engage with much more people than you would have with regular networking.

Using Facebook groups to have discussions, or virtually meeting with other wedding planning industry professionals can help you to get your business out there, faster.

You can also use MeetUp.com – a nifty platform for seeing what’s happening where, when and in which niche. MeetUp.com lets you choose your interests and it locates events that fit into that. You can then see the time, date and location of these events, who is hosting it and how many people might potentially go. This is a great way for real life networking, if you don’t know where to start looking.

Also, be sure to make good use of wedding expo’s wherever you can. There are many brides at these events who go with the single goal of gaining a few suppliers for their wedding.

Helpful resources for your business

Scheduling

For scheduling important dates, appointments and meetings, we recommend that you use Google Calendar, which you can access from your Gmail account. They have created an app for Android phones, as well as iPhones, and you can easily access your calendar through desktop as well.

Organizing

Trello.com and Asana.com are currently the two top platforms to use to organize all of your projects, tasks and events in one place. You can create checklists, or boards, to suit all of your organizational needs. We simply love Asana’s app for Android phones!

Website

We are a huge fan of WordPress – even though it is more tricky to learn than other popular web building platforms. However, it is so quick to master and the list of things you can do with a WordPress site are endless. If you are interested in starting your own wedding blog or website, then we suggest you read this post on how to start a wedding blog.

Also Read:

• 13 Tips to skyrocket your wedding planning business
• 4 Expert tips for wedding planners that will get you more clients
• How to write a business plan for your wedding blog