Social Media and Copywriting Tips for Wedding Pros
Today I’m excited to introduce you to Tayler and Christy from Sourced Co, a styled stock company providing gorgeous images for the wedding industr. They recently took part in our Trend Report Live Summit as speakers. And when they offered to give an overview of their fabulous presentation I snapped their hand off.
Oh and I should also say I’ve used images from one of their collections from last year throughout this post – a little beach styling to cheer us all up.
So over to you ladies. The floor is yours…
There’s a lot of pressure on wedding pros to be masters of social media—especially in a time where more traditional means of marketing just aren’t in the cards. But, with that pressure comes questions about how to make the most of it and feel confident about the precious time you do spend combing through your portfolio and cranking out captions.
So today, we thought it would be fun to share some of the tips we touched on in our Wedding Trend Report Live presentation with you! Read on for some social media and copywriting tips to help you do a rock star job on this important marketing channel for your business.
What role does social media (and social media captions) play in generating business and booking clients?
Social media plays an incredible role in generating leads for almost every wedding pro—and for good reason! Marketing your business on social media is an important channel for most people because it is low cost and (potentially) very high impact.
But, in addition to being one of the easiest marketing channels to turn up, it is also valuable to your business because of it’s unique ability to repeatedly put your business in front of lots of potential customers.
There is an unsexy but important rule in marketing—that people need to see something upwards of 7 times before they finally buy. And, while there are lots of ways you can work towards that magical number by blogging, pinning on Pinterest, and having listings on marketplaces like The Knot, the truth is that it is much harder to get someone to revisit those channels as compared to social media.
Plus, it’s also a great place to start conversations with potential clients—and once you do, they are officially in your sales funnel!
What are some key ingredients to an eye-catching and engaging social media post?
Perhaps the biggest key to engaging social media posts is something to avoid—and that is long walls of text! You have likely heard this before, but people like to skim (especially when they are reading on a device).
So, long walls of text turn people off and keep them scrolling right past you. That’s because a wall of text looks longer that it is, feels harder to read, and doesn’t entice people “come and stay a while.”
So, one of the best ways to make sure your posts are eye-catching and engaging (in addition to have a strong image, video or graphic) is to play with the formatting of your captions.
Pre-writing your captions in a social media scheduler (we use Later) makes it really easy to play with these ingredients:
- All caps to a word or two to emphasize it
- Emojis to add personality
- Line breaks to create white space (making it feel less intimidating)
- Questions to draw people in
How can I write captions in a way that helps me market my services and gets people to inquire?
An important marketing tactic to remember is to give more than you ask. And, when it comes to writing captions for social media, you have lots to give! From helpful advice, top tips, and honest opinions about best practices, you sit on a wealth of knowledge that you can turn into free value and (in turn) inquiries.
The other great thing to do is to brag a bit! If your past clients are obsessed with you and the work you do, share what they have to say because hearing how great you are from someone other than yourself is always an effective tact to take.
How can I make sure my captions don’t sound repetitive?
In the world of weddings, it can feel like you are saying and sharing the same thing over and over again—and, technically you might be since you have to fill your book of business from scratch year after year. But remember, it takes people 7 times to finally be moved to action so if you feel like a broken record, you are probably doing the right thing!
If you are concerned about coming off as repetitive (or just plain tired of saying the same thing) here are two tips to keep in mind:
- Don’t always rely on what is in the photo to drive your caption. You don’t have to be literal with making sure your caption is about the photo! Instead, think about how the caption can compliment the photo or vice versa. And, don’t be afraid to lean on the mood of the photo or how it makes you feel for inspiration.
- Create content themes for specific blocks of time (think sales cycles) to keep your captions fresh and timely. Mark down when your wedding season, booking season, and slow seasons are as well as what the most important messages are for each. Then, you can tailor your overall strategy (captions included) to make sure you are hitting what you need from a marketing perspective.
What I am supposed to do when I seriously have writer’s block?
Is every post you read life changing? We didn’t think so—and, yours don’t need to be either! So, take the pressure to be profound off and we bet those fingers will start moving across your keyword. You can also reuse content that you have already invested in writing! Don’t hesitate to copy and paste a paragraph of copy from your website or blog. Hell, you can even completely reuse older captions!
By Tayler Cusick Hollman and Christy Johnson | Sourced Co.
