Top 10 Social Media Marketing Tips for Wedding Venue Professionals

Feeling overwhelmed by marketing your venue to new potential couples on social media? Christina Barker, Wedding Planner for Chantilly Rose and wedding marketing professional has honed her skills and educational talent within the industry through years of experience and research. Now she shares her top tips for #winning in social media marketing and boosting the awareness of your wedding venue below.

Whether you like it or not, your potential clients are all on social media. 2 billion of those are on Facebook alone.

You want to attract couples to your wedding venue so why not utilise those popular social media channels.

Facebook is still by far the biggest social networking channel in the world and will probably continue to be so for a long time.  

With YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter also on the rise you need to ensure your wedding venue is being visible and standing out from the crowd. We’ve put together 10 top social media tips for your wedding venue to increase bookings.  

1. Post consistently. 

Post engaging content and videos which will entice your audience to interact with your accounts. When they do this it also increases the chance of being shown in their news feeds. When we say post consistently, this doesn’t mean that you suddenly remember you’ve not posted in a while and so instead post 5 things on Facebook in one go. Spread your posts out. For example, we recommend you post on Facebook 1-2 times a day. Even if you are only posting something twice a week. Keep it consistent. Your followers will be expecting to see new content at the same time each week from you. Use a scheduling tool to help you so you can plan all your posts in advance. This saves heaps of time and frees you up to do other tasks.

 2. Share content from other businesses.  

Popular wedding magazines and blogs are full of wedding inspiration for couples to peruse. You might have some recommended suppliers on your list, so keep an eye on what they are posting on their pages and help them out by sharing what they do. They will be thankful for it and doing this will help you form relationships with suppliers and other people in the industry. If you are sharing good content, couples will be coming to your account to look for more. 

3. Host regular competitions. 

Think about what you want to promote and have fun with this. It could be a simple like and share. It doesn’t have to be anything massive, just something that will help your page get the engagement it needs. There’s no point having a page with lots of likes but no one is interacting with it. This will also give you a chance to reach new people. 

Do be sure to keep an eye on Facebook’s ever changing guidelines and rules when it comes to what you can and can’t do. 

4. Advertise on Facebook. 

This is a HUGE one. If you aren’t using Facebook ads you are definitely missing out on a massive market. Using Facebook ads you can target specific people. For example, newly engaged couples within a certain radius of your venue. You can spend as little as £1 a day on these ads. Obviously the more money you budget though, the more people you will be able to reach so I would always invest in these ads. Using Facebook ads you can also link it with Instagram so your ad will show on Instagram at the same time!

Unlike something like a magazine advert which you can’t track, with Facebook ads you are able to see exactly how many people have seen it and how many people clicked on it. They can take a while to get your head around but this is something you can definitely outsource to a digital marketing company like us. 

5. Utilise your cover photo. 

This is one people always seem not to bother with or not know about. If your wedding venue has simply uploaded a photo, thought that will do and left it, you are missing a trick! This is one of the first things a person sees when visiting your page. You could advertise your wedding packages here or maybe your next wedding fayre. Don’t forget to add in the details in the description along with any links for them to find out more information. Always be thinking about your sales funnel! 

6. Check your page insights. 

Look at what is working and what isn’t. What posts are getting the most likes and comments? Continue similar posts and stop posting the things that aren’t getting any engagement. Insights are there for you to check how your page is doing, so be sure to check back regularly. Have your social media manager produce a monthly report for you.

At White Heart Marketing, our team is able to manage your page and do this all for you. 

7. Use LOTS of visuals. 

Couples love to see lots of photos. Be it on Instagram, Pinterest or another image based platform, they like to imagine themselves getting married at that place. They imagine all of their ideas coming together. If you are seen to be posting different styles, there’s a strong chance that one of those styles is perfect for them. If they can see that your venue is able to cater for this then they’ve pretty much already decided they want to book your venue before they’ve even contacted you! 

8. Hashtag, hashtag, hashtag. 

Hashtags are widely used on both Instagram and Twitter. A hashtag can be used to find other people talking about the same subject. If you search for #yourweddingvenue (insert name), you can then engage with everyone that has used it. For example, a couple may have taken a romantic photo in the grounds of your venue after visiting for a show round. You could comment, ‘congratulations on your engagement, thank you for visiting us at your show round earlier, we hope your visit was everything you wished for.’ 

When posting your own photo to showcase your venue, make sure you are including all the relevant hashtags so people can search for you. Hashtags like #WeddingWednesday are great ones to include! On Instagram add your hashtags in the first comment after posting your photo and description. This keeps your feed tidy and hides your hashtags once you get a good amount of comments. You can use up to 30 hashtags on your Instagram posts so make sure you are taking advantage of that so even more people can find you!

9. Keep your information up to date. 

When was the last time you checked your ‘about’ section on all of your accounts? Have you made sure everything is completed? Do you have any additional services you can add on? Are your wedding brochures current with all the correct pricing? Your potential clients want to be able to see the information they need without having to go off to another site or clicking on too many other links. If you have everything where it should be then they are more likely to spend time on your account as oppose to someone else’s. 

10. Don’t be a slave to social media. 

Just because your clients are on social media, doesn’t mean to say you should be on every single platform. Although it’s great for SEO, if they click on a social media channel and see its not been active for months it doesn’t give your company a great first impression. Try and stick to two that work really well for your ideal client. Usually for wedding venues these platforms are Facebook and Instagram. Do those two platforms really well and you could be booking out couples for years to come!

Happy couple hunting! If you feel this is all totally overwhelming, just know that you are not alone. I hope these tips have given you a little insight into what type of social media you should be doing for your wedding venue. 

If you have any questions you would like to ask or you are interested in us managing any aspect of your social media, please contact us. We would love to hear from you!