Week 15 B: Wrapping Things Up & Looking Ahead

Change is Inevitable 

This class has significantly changed my outlook on social media both for my personal and business use. I can no longer look at my own personal posts without wondering "how many people saw this"? "why didn't more people comment on it"? It's also incredibly frustrating when I post something to the weddings Facebook and no one says anything, and I'm sitting there like "Hey! I put a lot of work into that, somebody like me!"

I think what's really difficult is finding the right "voice" to write in. As a company we don't really have a formal voice to follow so I'm trying to play around with finding one.  But finding one that really sticks out to brides to be is hard. I used to think figuring out what to say would be easy, I was wrong.


There has been significant growth on our social media likes and followers. On August 1st the weddings Facebook had 714 followers. As of today we have 960, that averages out to approximately 2-3 new likes a day. I'm pretty happy with that considering it's my first time working with business social media. As far as wedding bookings because of Facebook and Instagram go we won't know the results until people start booking and we find out how they found us about us. It was really cool though when my marketing director was talking to the company that runs our SEO and they said who ever is running the weddings social and website is doing a really good job, keep it up!

Facebook and Instagram Insights are really good for a basic idea of what is going on but I really like using google analytics and being able see how many times people click on our actual website and seeing where they came from. Pinterest Insights are a bit harder to understand, i feel like they are more-so all over the place.

Overall we have gained more likes and followers. I've been able to take what I have learned in this class and apply it to WeddingWire and TheKnot. This has lead to increased traffic to our cyber storefront. I have seen more leads come through on Google than I had when I first started.

Week 15 A: Wrapping Things Up & Looking Ahead

The social medias that integrate best with my business are Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. I prefer these because they are easy to use, show off our photos and have large followings. Facebook scheduler is easy to use. I'm still not a huge fan of Twitter and it's not something i want to focus on. I am able to post to twitter easily because I have linked a hashtag to my twitter account so whenever I write #weddingsattwinoaks it sends it to Twitter like an original post. But I am interested in following the wedding conversation on Twitter and what's trending.I like the idea of a blog but I'm also not a very good story teller so blogging is not my strong point. Besides that, I'm not passionate about weddings so it's hard to put passion into my righting.

In the next couple of months I'm going to make it a point to add more content to all of our Google+ pages so that it helps our placement and it seems like the content is always fresh. I don't think Google+ is time sensitive like the other platforms.

For weddings I think I need to spend about 4 hours a week figuring out what photos I am going to post that week. That can be anywhere from 7-14 photos on Instagram. But I need to find better things to post on Facebook besides photos. I will post my Monday-Friday posts between 8-9 p.m. and Saturday Sunday posts before 10 a.m. We are having our open house in a couple of months so that should give us plenty to write about.

Week 14 B: Optimizing Yourself and the Company

Insights

Actions on Page: 1 - Up 100%
Page Views: 45 Up 32%
Page Likes: 14 Down 30%
Reach: 9448 up 10%
Post Engagements: 887 Up 40%
Video Views: 4 down 43%

After looking at the past weeks analytics the best time for me to post is right around 8 p.m. On average the videos I post average a reach of 241 and have an post click of 52. Photos reach 204, but only have an engagement of 52. I need to post more videos, they seem to get the most traction.

Week 14 A: Optimizing Yourself and the Company

Some area's that I want to pay attention to on my analytic page is Behavior - New vs. Returning and Engagement. Most of our visitors are only with us for 0-10 seconds but we do have an average duration of 00:02:01 on our web page so that's good. I need to find a way to better engage them so they look around more on Facebook or just go straight to our website.  

Interests need to be constantly looked at and refreshed so i have an idea of what they like and how that could be trending. For example, a lot of our viewers are info apparel and accessories so think i should have "wedding ring" as one of my Facebook interests to reach those that are looking at engagement rings. Might be a good way to reach out to more men. 

I have gone through and liked all my classmates Facebook pages. 

WEEK 12 B: Analyzing Online Marketing

Driving traffic and Leads 

For facebook we use Driving traffic and Leads and currently spend $10 a day, which is around 10 clicks a day. I think this is fine right now because no one is really looking for venues in december. But I think we should look to spend more money maybe $15-$20 a day in February and March when people are starting to look for venues. Another good time to boost our posts is when there is a large deployment going out, when that happens we usually get a lot of last minute military weddings weddings. 

After further research and listening to WeddingWires podcasts I would want to turn most of our attention to instagram ads and spend about $15 dollars a day. I haven't really seen a lot of wedding venues do instagram ads, so if we could get there before the others do that would be great. But before I can suggest doing that to my company I need to gain more followers on Instagram in order for marketing to give me the go ahead. When looking at Instagram insights I Have noticed that we do have a higher reach and engagements. But, the total impressions are still not the same high numbers that facebook has. Facebook also has a longer post life than Instagram. 

Google Analytics - Extra credit

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I added google analytics to my blog

Week 13: Advertising & Marketing

 The reason I chose the book now photo is because it was for a larger wedding and WeddingWire said that brides to be want to see full pictures of people at a wedding not just the bride and groom. This helps them envision their wedding a little better. 

 I created another ad for instagram because people in my age group turn to instagram a lot. The instagram photo is also more updated than the "book now" photo. This is also one of my favorite photos because its intimate, romantic and rustic. All of which are styles our brides like about our venue.  

My company is still throwing a lot of money towards facebook for advertising. This is our old ad. I like this photo, the course is in great shape, it is a warm spring photo with a light breeze. It's an overall great picture. But in my opinion its a bit dated because not many of our current brides wear long veils. This ad has been a success and that is why we keep it the way it is. I personally think it needs a little more detail.   

I feel like I'm not very creative when it comes to advertising verbiage and that's why I kept our headline the same in all of our ads minus the Instagram ad. The demographic for these ads are for Southern California, have two requirements. I placed these in campaign looking for the website clicks

WEEK 12 A: Analyzing Online Marketing

Facebook Ads

As far as ads that pop up on my Facebook home screen on my personal account I see the Ad that I have for Weddings all the time. I don’t click on it or like it because we pay for that, so there’s no reason for me to like it. Ads that I see usually have to do with fitness and fitness clothing. These call to actions are to purchase goods at a discounted rate. I look at the reviews that others have left before I click on the ads because I don’t want to continue to see them. I only follow the ad if it’s something I’m truly interested in. I’m more likely to click on a Facebook ad than I am with an Instagram ad.

With traditional advertising I feel like you don't really have a choice on whether or not you are going to see it, it's just stuck on your screen for a few days until the algorithm takes the hint that you are not interested. With facebook it stays in front of you until their campaign is over but they give you just enough information that you have to click on the add to find out more. I think facebook is slightly more effective for me. 

Businesses similar to mine.. 

I viewed the Grand Traditions Estate and their Instagram has a lot of really pretty wedding photos of both the venue and wedding party. Their pictures are top notch, but they are also a higher price point than we are so I assume their couples can afford better photos. 

The Inn at Rancho Santa Fe has really elaborate weddings but their weddings were not highlighted at all on Facebook or Instagram.The ad that they were currently running is for a christmas dinner the call to action button is "Interested". I found that to be interesting, they do more posts about what is happening around their property and spa specials. May be they don’t need to advertise as much on social media platforms and focus more on wedding sites so they can market to a higher price point. But if I was a bride looking for a place The Inn would not jump out at me. The photo’s they have on their actual website are quite stunning though.

San Diego Ranch Wedding- The Bradford Ranch has a pretty good face book it starts with photos, reviews, videos, events and posts. The posts are all neat and not too cluttered. They do a nice job of posting every two weeks or more frequent. Only downfall is that they do not have much traction on their comments. Their call to action button was "Learn More".

The Park Hyatt Aviara on Twitter does not have a wedding call to action. The hotel itself has an overall call to action that is “Join us for…”. I would say this is a photographic advertisement site but they do a decent job of keeping up with twitter and having really nice photos, which they should because they are a chain. I don’t think their twitter account is terribly effective. But it’s pretty!

Week 11 B

 After further research Linked In is not something that Twin Oaks Weddings is going to look into for the time being. Our golf course has a Yelp page that we do not pay for so we have limited access to what we can post on there. We have a few wedding reviews, but from our experiance getting reviews on WeddingWire and the Knot are more important. These sites generate more leads than Yelp. For golf though - Yelp is very helpful. I can't post any deals for weddings on Yelp but I did post one in WeddingWire - 

I have been better about posting on Google+ and getting involved with various wedding communities. The communities are so massive that it's a bit of a turn off and not many of our prefered vendors or local competitors really use Google+. I know it's good to use for SEO and good placement, it's just kind of confusing. 

We have had several Groupon deals for our golf side and it's great because everyone knows about groupon. It's called Intro2Golf, that gets a lot of traction. The down fall of groupon is that they take a large chunk of the money from the sale. Another thing that is bad about Groupon from our experience is that it is hard to get a coupon taken down. Until recently we did not know that we had a deal floating around in New Mexico for a course that had already closed for the season. I had to tell the guest the bad news that we were already closed and that the coupon was old but we would still honor it of course. It took about a month to get through to Groupon and have them remove the deal. We had already requested for it to be taken down the previous year but that never happened. Not sure if we just had terrible luck with them or if this is a common experience. On a personal level when I see good groupons to salons i just call and ask if I should buy the groupon or if they will honor the deal so they get the full amount of money. 

I attempted to post a deal on RetailMeNot for the Golf Course about our 20/30 club, but it looks like it did not make it. I need to further research how to get an add on there.  

Twitter Week 8 Post B

The two lists that I created are Wedding Planners and San Diego photographers. I picked the wedding planners because they are well known in the area and have a large following if I can see what they are tweeting about then I can have a better idea of what is trending. I follow the photographers to also see what is trending and hope that they have posted some of the pictures they have taken at our venue. It’s surprisingly hard to get photographers to send photo’s of events they have done.

My tweets are most viewed on Wednesday and Saturdays, I thought they would have a higher following on Fridays. I linked my instagram to Twitter so whenever I use #weddingsattwinoaks the photos automatically go to Twitter as an original post and the picture looks nice. I do this so my twitter is updating as often as instagram. 

The words I used to find my list members were “weddings, at twin oaks, san diego photographers, san marcos weddings, san diego wedding planners, wedding planners” for the most part these were all very helpful key terms. Unfortunately people have not really tweeted about us, but I also just set up this Twitter account when I enrolled in this class so we had no activity on this platform.

  

Week 11: Tapping into the Other Medias A

The marketing tools that I believe are important for my business are Yelp, Google+, LinkedIn and coupons.

We currently use Yelp, but it's a shared account with our golf course so we don't have a dedicated wedding yelp page.Having a dedicated Yelp wedding page would not do a hole lot for us because there are already websites out there like weddingwire.com and theknot.com.

I will start putting more effort in to Google+ because I think if could help boost publicity. If we get more of a presence and build an alliance with photographers then that could bring a lot of brides in. If brides see amazing pictures then they may contact that photographer inquiring about the photographer and what the venue is. It would also be good to see how other wedding venues sell and market their venue.
This is our google+ site https://plus.google.com/114182860726320774798

We advertise on various websites and use coupons when we need to boost weddings on certain weekends. Sometimes they work other times not so much. They usually don't work that well because they are geared towards couples that are having last minute weddings and we don't have to many of those.

If we use a LinkedIn account that could possibly be a way for wedding coordinators to find use and have their clients tour our site. But LinkedIn is geared towards 45+ and most of our couples are between 23-35. But I plan to look into LinkedIn and see whether or not other venues use it.

Week 10 B: Blog comments

I was able to send out my wedding open house invite flyer.

I commented on
Derek Kendall Holmes
Jennifer York 
Sophia Ludyjan

Week 10: Email Marketing

I don't think that having a news letter for the wedding site would really do much to grow business. Mainly because in theory people only get married once. Because it's a one time event they are only our customer for six months to a year. What we have to say at this moment in time may not matter to half of our email list in a month.

The only way I could see a news letter being some what helpful is if wedding planners subscribed to us. But even then the wedding market is so saturated with other blogs and market monsters such as theknot.com and weddingwire.com that I don't know how we could compete. Maybe we could send out seasonal advertisements, but then that gets tricky because people that have already booked with us will want to know why they are not receiving the same deal. Other than that we could possibly send out an extension of our wedding blog and post wedding success stories and how their wedding was different.

While email blasts don't work for the wedding side of our business, the golf side sends out weekly and monthly email blasts. These emails contain information about discounts, course of the month, tournaments and various golf information. It's good that the golf courses do this because it keeps golfers coming back and paying attention to their email.

Week 9: B Categories

The categories that we typically write about on our blog are about engagement stories and vendors we love. Engagement stories allow us to show our personal side of the story writing. Most couples just give us a very basic story of how they met, their not typically bloggers so they don't give it that spice we can. By having up to date engagement stories this shows that we are continuously getting new business.
Another category that we write about are vendors we love. By advertising for our vendors and the wonderful services they provide at our venue they recommend us in return, or at least that's the hope.
 

I responded to:
Skylar Hunter, Katie Nolte and Sherri Moore

Week 9: A Time and Place for Opinions

And How Did That Make You Feel...? 

When blogging about personal experiences, it’s important for the writer to add their own personal touch if it’s an informative opinion piece. As bloggers, we want to paint a picture for our readers and connect with them. If we can connect with them we are likely to gain their trust, when trust is gained the reader is more likely to return. In this instance, we want to sell our opinion and product. As a reader when I’m reading blogs about something I’m interested in I want to be able to relate to the writer. Example, I was just reading about American Eagle Jeans and the writer said something along the lines of “I’m so excited to be blogging about American Eagle Outfitters the place that stole acquired so much of my money in high school” when I read that I had an instant connection and thought “oh girl, I feel you!” because I too spent way too much money there as a teen. I connected with the writer because we shared a commonality and it was something only someone who shopped there would understand. I continued to read her blog. Overall the writing felt genuine and convinced me that maybe this high school favorite may be worth considering again.

Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man. - The Big Libowski

Times when a personal touch is not necessary and can hurt your reviews is when the writer is blogging about something they don’t know about. When the connection between the reader and writer does not feel real, it feels forced and the reader can feel it. Know what you’re writing about. Other times when a personal touch is not needed is when comparing technology and new gadgets. When I was shopping for a new phone I compared Apple and Samsung, I specifically looked at blogs that stated facts and did not provide the writers opinion. I wanted to know which one was better and for x,y,z reasons and why this phone took better pictures because of a,b,c. I (other readers too) want the facts, not the writers opinion, I want to form my own opinion. Other times is during certain tutorials just write about the procedure and specific steps, not how you felt while you were going through the steps, we’re not here for your opinion. We’re here for the information.

Week 8: Using Twitter A

Carmel Mountain Ranch Country Club @clubcmr

I checked out our sister venue @clubcmr. Their tweet account is very dated. The cover photo is an ad that they used for Easter Brunch. This should be updated with golf tournaments, wedding photos or their Thursday afternoon club. This stands out because they have other tweets newer than their cover photo. The did do a good job with having colors that match their website and the photos they tweet are spectacular.

Next was Rancho Bernardo Inn @RBernardoInn

I thought that they would have a very detailed impressive twitter but they don’t. Their Facebook is really where it’s at. But, to their credit they do post often, have twice as many followers than they are following and are always promoting their deals. Their colors match their main page. With as many followers as they have, they have not tweeted anyone or sent out replies. They don’t have many wedding photos which is surprising because they are our companies biggest wedding producer. Most venues share wedding photos and bring attention to the photographer, but this is not the case this time.

Temecula Creek Inn @TCreekInn

Hmmm... this handle looks familiar. It is the same format as @RBernardoInn, clever. TCreekInn has a much warmer feel to their account, they are business but then also have funny posts. It seems like many staff members oversee their site because it’s just more diverse with weddings, golf and food. They take the cake in our company for having the most followers (1,346) and only following 121. Whatever it is that they’re doing, maybe it’s the humor in the page, its working wonders. Out of all our companies twitter accounts its doing the best, up to date and diverse. I’ll look to this one for some inspiration.

Our arch rival…

I could not find Twin Oaks House and Garden on twitter. But I did see that their website is our twitter handle name…maybe we can take back some of the traffic they take away from us, muahahaha!

Overall

 None of these twitters are pulling from their Facebook or Instagram accounts. I was really hoping that one of them would use the side wigits or have groups so I could see what they were looking into and try to copy them. TCI gave me some good idea's on how to add my own voice and creativity into our twitter site. I'm going to try engaging with clients and figuring out how to join the conversation. I was thinking thought that maybe we should combine Twin Oaks weddings with Twin oaks golf like our sister sites do. This way weddings could get more followers. The only downside to that is people (in theory) only get married once, so they are only looking for a venue once. It's a high follower turn over. But at the same time, I don't think the average golfer wants to see wedding stuff on a golf page.