blogging

Photography Credit: From Me to You (gives me goosebumps!)

On your wedding day the teeny tiny details really won’t put any bearing on how much you enjoy yourself…or your future happiness. So what if your colours don’t exactly match or your flowers wilt a little? What matters is that you’re getting married (yeeey!) Planner, Kelly, agrees with me,

“Remember the bigger picture. As much as the small details may seem important while planning the wedding, try and take a step back every now and again and remember why you are getting married. You can get so caught up with colour swatches and guest lists that you can often forget the whole reason why you are marring each other. Make sure you create date nights where you don’t talk about the wedding at all.”

From Kelly of Boho Weddings & Events

Starting and maintaining your own business is undoubtedly immensely difficult, but also hugely rewarding when all the hard work pays off.  It is also really difficult to know which steps to take to progress your idea from just a ‘bit of fun’ to a fully functioning business (if that’s your goal.)

However one way to give yourself a step up from the competition is to be a million percent passionate about your subject and always be thinking about different ways to approach your business and ideas. I strive to keep my blog content fresh, original and unique and I’m not afraid to be bold/different in my ideas. By doing this (I hope!) has made me stand out from the crowd.

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Photography Credit: via Creative Review

DIY is a great way to get creative, stamp your personality on your day and save some money. Reader Terri writes,

“I fell in love with the shoes from the GHD Cinderella advert that were covered in rhinestones! I thought they are perfect for my bridesmaids. I managed to find Benjamin Adams ones for around £275 and Perditas would customise your own for around £150. However I am having 11 bridesmaids so both options were way out my budget! I found some shoes in the Barratts sale for £15 each and snapped up 11 pairs! I brought 20,ooo crystals for approx £65 and some gemtac/E600 glue and got stuck in! And they have turned out amazing, I couldn’t be happier! If you set your heart on something that is out of your price range then have a go at a DIY version!”

Terri, TheBrideFairy

I can not claim this tip as my own, it’s an idea that is bashed around by pretty much ALL my favourite industry friends and so I think you need to know it too! I am a huge advocate that branding is one of the most important things to any business. Invest time and money into getting this right. Implementing the right branding, and one that is a true reflection of you and the type of client you want to attract, will make your business a hundred times more successful. A corporate, standard website will give the impression that your business is corporate and standard. Who you you want to be? Don’t be afraid to portray yourself in this way. Do you want to be corporate and standard or creative and stand out?

When thinking about how to brand yourself, you must must must watch this incredible video from my home-girl Jasmine Star. I seriously can’t recommend this enough for anyone in any line of business. She pretty much says everything I’d want to but don’t have the time to.

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Poster by MadeByGirl

Take each month at a time. If you look at all the jobs you need to do to within your wedding planning it can be completely overwhelming! Break down all your jobs in order of importance and then put each job into a set month. This way you just take each month at a time and you only need to look at a much smaller list of jobs.

From Kelly of Boho Weddings & Events

Install Analytics on your blog and website and use it to work out when your traffic is at it’s highest (which days and at what time of day.) Use this information to work out when is best for you to publish your next blog post/announce important news/connect with your readers or clients through your site. Do this regularly. For example, my most popular days on my blog are Tuesday & Wednesday lunchtimes and mid afternoons (about 3-4pm.) I use this info to make sure I post my best or favourite features at these times.

I also try to ‘cheat’ these stats and buffer up the less popular days with interesting posts to drive people to visit at different times. For example Thursday Treats is a popular post and has massively increased my traffic on a Thursday – a day that beforehand was a lot slower traffic wise.

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Styling Credit: Diana Ionescu via Beyond Beyond

If you’re having a destination wedding, get your guests to sign up to Groupon so they can look for discounted ways to explore the city or area. You can also use Groupon for pre-wedding pampering like nails, massages and beauty stuff.

From Alexis of OMG I’m Getting Married

Press Releases are a personal bug bear of mine. Blogs, like magazines, are run by busy individuals (or a small team of individuals)…often juggling lots of simultaneous projects and in order to ‘get in’ with editors, it is important to a) catch their attention, b) offer something new and c) offer something relevant. It’s easy to bash together a generic email and fire it out to as many media outlets as possible, but in the grand scheme of things, what that’s really going to achieve other than getting your emails automatically spammed?

A few tips for getting your press releases read…
♥ Keep them personal. Use the blogger/magazine editor’s name. It’s polite and it shows you’ve done your research.
♥ Make sure the layout of your press release is simple, clean and easy to read. Emails with large images or unattractive fonts that don’t automatically load are likely to end up in a trash folder.
♥ Be unique. If I receive another Royal wedding related press release I might just implode…and you know what? An ‘alternative’ Royal wedding project really isn’t that bloody original.
♥ Keep it relevant. Is teeth whitening, tattoo removal, personal trainers or car insurance Rock n Roll? Not to me it ain’t.

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