Members of the WeddingWire team gathered at Bayard’s Events and Catering in New York City along with local Wedding Pros for a Happy Hour. Similar to our past WeddingWire Happy Hour events in South Florida, North Jersey, Philadelphia, San Diego and Richmond, New York City Wedding Pros had the opportunity to mix and mingle with other local Pros across all service categories and meet members of the WeddingWire team.

A special thanks to Bayard’s Events and Catering for the welcome hospitality, beautiful event space and delicious food and drinks!

Please find below some photos from the event, and thanks to all the New Yorkers who attended!

We would like to take a moment to thank the wonderful partners who helped make the event possible:

• The gorgeous event space, hors d’oeuvres and cocktails provided by the InterContinental Tampa
• Music and entertainment provided by Music and More Entertainment Service
• Stunning floral arrangements provided by Flowers by Fudgie
• Delicious assortment of cakes and treats provided by A Special Touch – Cakes by Carolyn
• Beautiful photographs of the event (seen below) taken by Richard Harrell Photography
  

Congratulations to our drawing winner, Lisa Dahlberg from Event Sisters, LLC! Lisa will receive a WeddingWire prize pack and touch-screen Android mini tablet PC!

From organization and social sharing to analytics and design, these tools will help you take your business to the next level and make your work life a bit easier, while saving you valuable time!

Evernote

Evernote is a virtual notepad service that enables you to save, organize and share notes, images and ideas for future use. You can keep your notes in organized categories, and they can be shared with others. You quickly and easily can access Evernote from your computer, internet browser, and mobile application from your smartphone or tablet.

Wunderlist

Wunderlist is a free, easy to use, collaborative task manager. Keep your personal and professional life on track with this tool, which is able to sync both “to do” lists, and gives the ability to share individual tasks and full lists with other – making collaborating easy!  In additional to accessing the task manager from a PC or Mac, Wunderlist works across popular mobile platforms, including iPhone, Android and iPad, so you can access all your items on the go!

99 Designs

99 Designs is the #1 marketplace for graphic design, and is a resource for basic design needs that you would like to outsource. This is a great tool for logo design, web design and collateral items. You simply create a contest for your design needs and budget, and designers compete to win your business, with your input.

Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg provides web analytics and usability tools that allow you to visually understand your website. A heatmap is an easy way to understand what users do on your site through a visual representation of where users click and actions they take. Crazy Egg’s Confetti feature allows you to distinguish all the clicks you get on your site segmented by referral sources, search terms and more.

This post was written by Sonny Ganguly, CMO of WeddingWire, you can follow him on Twitter @sonnyg. Sonny leads WeddingWire’s marketing strategy, customer acquisition, and business development.

In today’s fast-paced, technology-driven world, it is often difficult for wedding professionals to find enough hours in the day to catch their breath, let alone stay on top of all the latest trends. The good news is that there are many online tools available to make your work life a little easier!

We’ve gathered some of the top WeddingWire tested tools that we use at our offices.  These services will help you effectively market, run and grow various elements of your business, including your website, social media, emails, analytics and organization. It’s time to work smarter, not harder!

Website

With tech-savvy brides, it is crucial to have a strong online presence. The following tools will help you find new sources of traffic, while making sure there are no issues!

• Domize
  • Looking for new url’s for your business?  Domize is the quickest way to see if the domains you want are available.  Instead of doing one search at a time, you will see all available url’s.

• Google Keyword Tool 
  • Google provides a free Keyword Tool to help you research the best keywords for your business and improve your SEO. Simply enter some keywords and Google will tell you how competitive it is and how many people search for the keyword.

• SEO for Firefox
  • Want to be an SEO expert, but find it too complicating?  Install the free SEO for Firefox extension to your Firefox browser.  As you browse the web this tool will give you all the SEO details a professional would, from page rank to the number of links a site has.

• Google Webmaster
  • This free tool tells you how the world’s largest search engine views your site, analyzes search data and where links to your site are coming from.  Most importantly, Google Webmaster will alert you via email if any issues or malware arise on your website.

Check back soon for more ways to work smarter, not harder including top tools for social media, email, insights and analytics, and organization and meetings!

We would like to take a moment to thank the wonderful partners who helped make the event possible:

• The gorgeous event space, hors d’oeuvres and cocktails provided by the Inspirador
• Music and entertainment provided by Desert House Productions
• Stunning floral arrangements provided by LUX Wedding Florist
• Lovely event rentals provided by Classic Party Rentals
• Delicious assortment of cakes and cupcakes provided by My Goodness Cakes
• Photo fun provided by Clique Photo Station
• Beautiful photographs of the event (seen below) taken by About Love. Inspired Photography
  

Congratulations to our drawing winner, Cameron Carpenter from Three Oceans Entertainment! Cameron will receive a WeddingWire prize pack and touch-screen Android mini tablet PC!

Learn more about Lee’s favorite things when he was five, along with his reflections on WeddingWire’s growth over the past five years.

When you were five….

What did you want to be when you grew up?

An Astronaut.

Who was your role model?

My grandfather was my role model.

What was your favorite food?

Homegrown sugarcane (yum!)

Now that WeddingWire is five…

Who has had the biggest impact in your success thus far?

The founding partners of CourseInfo LLC (later Blackboard Inc.); a group of really smart guys who journeyed as entrepreneurs together.

What has been your favorite moment so far at WeddingWire?

My favorite moment was having lunch with Martha Stewart and having her call me out for using dessert plates instead of entrée plates… I should have responded that I was using “portion control!”

What do you look forward to most in the next five years?

I look forward to being able to continue to innovate in the mission to help our local businesses grow their businesses.

Have you read Timothy Chi, CEO’s When We Were Five Q&A? Be sure to check back for more “When We Were Five”  from our Executive team and other birthday celebrations!

We are excited to announce a new addition to our WeddingWire Pro Blog: Featured Pro Tweets!

In this new series, we will highlight tweets from Wedding Pros like you that we have received to @WeddingWireEDU. We receive many great tweets, and would love to share your wedding industry tips, insights, feedback and thoughts with other Wedding Pros!

If you have questions, tips, WeddingWire feedback or interesting industry or education articles to share, please send us a note by tagging @WeddingWireEDU. If you are not yet on twitter, now is the perfect time to get started! Check out our Social Media Checklist to help you get your social media accounts set up.

Find below our first round of Featured Pro Tweets, and check back often for insight from your peers!

Happy Tweeting; we can’t wait to hear from you!

Let’s get started with a look at Timothy Chi, WeddingWire CEO, at age five!

When you were five….

What did you want to be when you grew up?

Superman.Obvi.

Who was your role model?

My dad, and Big Bird.

What was your favorite food?

I  consumed a lot of Apple Jacks back then. Pretty certain it was Apple Jacks.

Now that WeddingWire is five…

Who has had the biggest impact in your success thus far?

Every single WeddingWire employee who believes good enough is not good enough.  They strive to make our company great.

What has been your favorite moment so far at WeddingWire?

Three way tie between 1) closing our first round of capital, 2) partnering with industry leaders like Martha Stewart, Conde Nast (Brides.com), and WeddingBee and 3) The annual WeddingWire chicken wing eating competition. 

What do you look forward to most in the next five years?

Continuing to innovate and bring new products to market with THE most talented team in the DC area.

Be sure to check back for more “When We Were Five” (and photos) from our Executive team along with other fun birthday celebrations throughout this month!

WeddingWire is growing up so fast; we can’t believe it’s already been 5 years and we’ve accomplished so much, thanks to Wedding Pros like you! We have so much to share with you in celebration of this great milestone. Stay tuned for:

• WeddingWire Through the Years – a trip down memory lane with an infographic of our favorite milestones and memories over the past 5 years

• When We Were Five – a spotlight on WeddingWire’s stellar Executive Team, here’s a sneak preview: (Can you guess who’s who?)

• WeddingWire Turns 5: Top Lessons Learned – a webinar, featuring CMO Sonny Ganguly, highlighting the main lessons we have learned as a young startup company and how it can help your business

• And much more fun and surprises!

But, for now it’s time to cut the cake and pop the bubbly in celebration of our big day. We look forward to celebrating with you!

Tim, along with Shane Green, Co-founder and CEO of Personal, provided insight on their journeys to building successful start-ups, and the lessons they learned as entrepreneurs. The event was hosted at The Water Street Project, a unique temporary arts space and gallery created by local arts and design group, No Kings Collective, showcasing the original works of 13 featured visual artists.

Tech Cocktail is a media company that covers the latest tech innovations across the globe. Tech Cocktail hosts mixer events around the country; check out the upcoming event schedule to see if they will be in a city near you!

Check out a photo from the event below, thanks to Frank Gruber of Tech Cocktail!

The ISS Experience is bringing the 2012 tour to the beaches of the Dominican Republic! Experience 4 days full of exciting networking opportunities and inspirational and educational seminars designed specifically for wedding industry entrepreneurs at a luxury resort in the Dominican Republic from May 6-9^th!

WeddingWire understands the power of education, and so we’re eager to share the opportunity to learn proven tips and techniques for growing a successful business from a dozen successful entrepreneurs in the wedding industry, including leaders in everything from event design to bridal gowns, blogging and photography.

Register today and you will have the opportunity to learn from experts like Preston Bailey, Stacie Francombe and more! Sessions include:

• Effective Goal Setting & Selling Your Value
• Defining your Identity and Perfecting Your Brand
• Embracing Entrepreneurship & Creating that Work/Life Balance
• Staying Relevant through Social Media & Mobile Outreach
• Elements and Designs for Stylized Photography
• Behind the Scenes of Wedding Planning
• The Secrets of Successful Blogging

Registration closes tomorrow, so be sure to sign up today!

Click here to learn more!

We would like to take a moment to thank the wonderful partners who helped make the event possible:

• The gorgeous event space provided by the Willow Ridge Manor
• Delicious hors d’oeuvres and cocktails provided by Lifestyles Catering 
• Music and entertainment provided by Amore DJ Entertainment, Wedding Lighting & Décor
• Beautiful floral arrangements provided by Pink Posey Design
• Delicious assortment of cake cups provided by The Makery Cake Company
• Colorful linens provided by Butler Rents
• Photographs of the event (seen below) taken by Candid Wedding Photographers

Congratulations to our drawing winner, Cate Malone from the Little White Dress Bridal Shop! Cate will receive a WeddingWire prize pack and HD flip video camera.

Exclusively for WeddingWire members, attendees will have the opportunity to join the WeddingWire team and guest speakers for a full day of education, networking and fun on July 23rd at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC!

Please stay tuned for more details!

Facebook Insights allow you to:

• Understand the performance of your business page
• Optimize how you publish to your audience so that your followers will share with their friends
• Learn more about who you audience is, and how to best connect with them!

To view your Insights page, click on the Insights tab on the top left hand side of your page. The four metrics at the top of your Insights tab allow you to quickly understand the size and engagement of your audience through the following:

• Total Likes: number of unique people who Like your page
• Friends of Fans: number of unique people who are friends with your current fans
• People Talking About This: number of unique people who have created a story about your Page in the last week
• Total Reach: number of unique people who have seen any content associated with your page

Keep in mind that posting to your page regularly with engaging content encourages more people to talk about your business and share it with their friends, which means you will reach more people! Need ideas for content that will interest your audience and encourage sharing? Post unique wedding ideas, links to industry events in your area, photos from a recent event, inspiration you love, or wedding tips and advice for your audience!

Optimize how you publish to your audience by evaluating engagement level of each post in your Insights tab, which gives valuable feedback to content that is popular with your audience, and what type of content is less engaging. Evaluate your most engaged posts, which provides insight into the type of information you can use moving forward to enhance sharing! This section provides specific reach, engaged users, sharing and virality about each individual post.

Facebook Insights also allows you to gain demographics about your audience. You can check Total Visits to Your Page and see your overall page traffic on a weekly basis. By clicking on the Fans, Reach and Talking About This tabs on the left-hand side of your page, you can learn more about:

• Who is Visiting: gender, age, city, country and language of your audience
• How you Reached Them: how visitors were driven to your page, and unique visitors frequency

Need help? Page tips, located at the bottom right-hand corner of your Admin Panel make it easy to develop your page! Also, check out the new Resources tab to help you further develop your page.

For a full overview of Facebook Insights, check out Facebook’s guide. Happy posting!

On Tuesday, WeddingWire CMO, Sonny Ganguly, presented ‘Top Tools to Help You Work Less’ as part of our monthly webinar series. Each one hour webinar for upgraded WeddingWire Pros is designed to inform you about the latest industry trends and give you the tools you need to grow your business. This week Sonny helped listeners learn:

• Top online tools to help businesses stay organized, engaged with audiences and working effectively
• Website tips, small business insight and analytics, social media management tools, and more to market your business’ services and maximize online exposure
• Insight into WeddingWire’s New Appointment Scheduler ^beta tool

All of our past webinars are available in our Education Center for upgraded Pros. Register for May’s webinar, ‘WeddingWire Turns 5: Our Lessons Learned‘ today!

Members of the WeddingWire team gathered at Morton’s The Steakhouse in Fort Lauderdale with Wedding Pros from the South Florida area for a Happy Hour. Similar to our past WeddingWire Happy Hour events in North Jersey, Philadelphia, San Diego and Richmond, South Florida Wedding Pros had the opportunity to mix and mingle with other local Pros across all service categories and meet members of the WeddingWire team.

A special thanks to Morton’s The Steakhouse for the hospitality, and UDS Photo for capturing wonderful photo highlights from the evening, as seen below!

Google+ Page/Profile Button

What It’s For: This is Google+’s version of other social networks’ follow buttons. The only caveat is that it’s not a slick, one-click follow button. Rather, users have to click to your Google+ business page and then manually add your page to one of their Circles in order to follow you. However, displaying this button on your website is a great way to promote your business’ presence on Google+ and generate more followers for your page, increasing the reach of the content you promote there.

How to Implement It: To create a Google+ Page Button, visit http://www.google.com/webmasters/profilebutton/, enter your Google+ Page’s URL, choose an image size, and copy/paste the HTML code onto your website where you’d like the button to appear.

+1 Button

What It’s For: The +1 Button is Google’s version of Facebook’s Like Button. Adding this button to your website and content provides an easy way for visitors to +1 (or vote for/endorse) your content, recommend it in search results, and share it with their connections on Google+, expanding the reach of your content and increasing traffic back to your business’ website. Hubspot’s research shows that websites that use Google’s +1 button generate 3.5x more website visits from Google+ than websites that don’t use the +1 button.

How to Implement It: Visit http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/ to customize your +1 button and generate its embed code.

Google+ Share Link

What It’s For: Like Facebook’s share links, you can easily generate a link that visitors can click to share content to their Google+ page. The only difference between this link and the +1 button is that it appears as a link rather than a button, similar to the way a ‘Tweet This’ link works for Twitter. The benefit of using this is to enable visitors to share a specific piece of content within a larger piece of content, as exemplified in this blog post.

How to Implement It: To create a Google+ share link, replace the red highlighted URL with the URL you want people to share. Then hyperlink your desired anchor text using the full link.

https://plusone.google.com/_/+1/confirm?hl=en&url=http%3A%2F%2F%20http://bit.ly/vOKpgC

When a visitor clicks the link, they will have automatically +1′ed the content. In addition, like the +1 button, they will have the opportunity to click “Add a comment” to customize a message and share the content with their Google+ connections.

Read all entries in the Social Media Button Guide series and check out previous posts: follow vs. share buttons, twitter, facebook and LinkedIn.

This great new tool allows you to get appointments via your WeddingWire Storefront and business website, manage your schedule online from any location with a web browser and book more clients! We wanted to do a quick recap of the exciting new updates in case you missed it, so check out all the details below:

	Receive Local Inquiries Easily manage incoming inquiries from potential clients, schedule appointments, move to your booked events, access your personalized Contact Us button, and more!
	Schedule an Appointment Easily schedule appointments, manage your appointment calendar online, and even let clients book appointments directly from your own website!
	Connect with Your Clients For each inquiry you will get the essential details – event type, date, time, location, etc. – and contact information so it easy for you to connect with them!

We invite you to login to your WeddingWire account to check out these exciting new updates or click here for more information!

Bonus: Here’s a quick video to check out how to set up an appointment with our new Appointment Scheduler^beta tool!

We are very excited to announce that WeddingWire has been selected as an Official Honoree of the 16^th Annual Webby Awards in the Guides/Ratings/Reviews category for the 2^nd year in a row!

The Webby Awards were named “the Internet’s highest honor” by the New York Times, and is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet.

WeddingWire is honored to be part of the Official Honoree distinction, which is awarded to the top 10% of all 10,000 entries submitted to the 16^th Annual Webby Awards from all 50 states and 60 countries.

The Webbys is presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a global organization whose newest members include CEO of Skype, Tony Bates, shft.com co-founder Adrian Grenier, CEO of Rovio Mikael Hed, and co-founder of Instagram Kevin Systrom, as well as director Darren Aronofsky, Martha Stewart, Huffington Post Media Group President Arianna Huffington, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, musician David Bowie, Internet co-creator Vint Cerf, Virgin Group Chairman Richard Branson, and R/GA Chairman and CEO Bob Greenberg.

Winners are selected for recognition based on excellence in the following criteria for Websites & Mobile: content, structure and navigation, visual design, functionality, interactivity and overall experience.

Past winners include Twitter, Google, eBay, Yahoo!, iTunes, Skype, FedEx, BBC News, CNN, The Guardian, The New York Times, Aol, Tumblr, Wikipedia, ESPN, Funny or Die, Comedy Central, PBS, The Huffington Post, the Sundance Channel, and The Onion.

WeddingWire was thrilled to have members of our Executive, Sales and Marketing teams attend, and to have the opportunity to sponsor this kick-off event! It was great to meet other local entrepreneurs, startup employees, journalists and members of the tech community in DC!

Similar TechCrunch Mini Meet-Ups will be taking place in other cities in the near future including Richmond, Raleigh, Durham, Chicago, Atlanta and more.

Read more about the event on TechCrunch here, and check out some photos below!

Recently, we held our annual Quarter 1 party at Cafe Asia in downtown Washington, DC, which has become our traditional location over the years. Check out some photos below of the WeddingWire team celebrating the end of an excellent start to the year!

Photo by Harley Bonham Photographer

The team here at WeddingWire is always looking for new ways to expand our education (EDU) program to bring you the latest and greatest information to grow your business.  We have featured well known industry experts and leaders, along with our executives here at WeddingWire, to build a valuable resource for you.

We are excited to announce that WeddingWire EDU will feature Alan Berg as one of our Education Experts! Alan has more than 20 years in wedding and event related sales and marketing experience, ranging from selling wedding advertising, to publishing two wedding magazines, to serving as an executive in the wedding industry. Alan is uniquely qualified to help event professionals achieve their goals and we are delighted to include him in our education program.

If you don’t know Alan already, he is the founder of the Wedding Industry Leaders Conference, an organization dedicated to educating and consulting highly motivated individuals and businesses.  In addition, he is an author of numerous books, including “If your website was an employee, would you fire it?,” the mini-book “Don’t Paint the House” and his new book, “Your Attitude for Success.” As a member of the National Speakers Association, Alan speaks to thousands of local business professionals every year through webinars, live presentations, DVDs and online videos.

WeddingWire is committed to providing wedding professionals with educational resources to help grow their business, by way of the WeddingWire Pro Blog, Education Center, webinars, and more. WeddingWire EDU is powered by numerous Education Experts, including Jayne Hallock from Wedlock, Kathryn Hamm of GayWeddings.com and Stacie Francombe of Inspire Smart Success. As an Education Expert, Alan Berg will share articles, lead webinars and provide advice to local wedding professionals.  Alan is a leading industry expert that has a wealth of knowledge across business practices, sales techniques, marketing and more.

Please join us in welcoming Alan as an Education Expert!

We would like to take a moment to thank the wonderful partners who helped make the event possible:

• The stunning event space, delicious hors d’oeuvres and cocktails provided by the Historic Dubsdread Ballroom
• Music and entertainment provided by Tagas Event and Production Services
• Beautiful floral arrangements provided by Lee Forrest Design LLC
• Delicious assortment of cupcakes provided by Party Flavors
• Flipbooks to capture memories of the event provided by The Flipbook People
• Photographs of the event (seen below) taken by Brian Pepper & Associates Photography
• Lovely event rentals and lighting services provided by Orlando Wedding and Party Rentals
• Colorful linens provided by Kirby Rentals, LLC

Congratulations to our drawing winner, Jennifer Sharpe from The Ritz-Carlton and JW Marriott Orlando, Grande Lakes! Jennifer will receive a WeddingWire prize pack and HD flip video camera.

Generating reviews is a very valuable small business tool for gaining word of mouth notoriety by sharing personal accounts for the quality of your work and raising awareness for your local business. Also, reviews serve as a helpful tool to the public, and allow for the best business matches to be made for clients and vendors.

We understand that this platform can be seen as an open tool, which can sometimes draw in less than perfect reviews and individual’s unique perceptions of situations.

In addition to WeddingWire’s protection for the validity of claims, there are several key ways to manage your review sites, and work to build a strong, well-balanced review portfolio—ultimately leading to more storefront activity and exposure to potential clients!

Keep up-to-date with your reviews. The best way to stay on top of your reviews is to be aware of all the comments that are being associated with your business. Regularly log in to your WeddingWire account, and be sure to review your recent activities. If you have any reviews from clients that you never had a contract with, flag the review for our team to follow up. Don’t stress if you receive a less than perfect review, not all reviews can always be perfect! Having a large amount of reviews typically generates better activity for your account, and engaged couples appreciate reading a variety of responses and experiences. Also, reviews are great feedback tools for your business.  If you have consistent compliments or complaints about one aspect of your business, you can identify areas of particular strength that resonate with your clients, or areas of  improvement that can help improve your business.

Review your options. When you come upon a negative review, take a moment to consider what is really prompting it. Weigh each complaint equally and look for an opportunity to resolve the issue.

Decide your response. Decide if you would like to respond to the reviewee, and the best way to address them. Clients like to feel that their questions and feedback is vindicated, so if appropriate you can acknowledge their feedback. If you would like to resolve any issue, it is best to take the conversation off line, and follow up via phone or email. If you did not do business with the client, flag the review to the WeddingWire team, and we will work to resolve the issue, and  will consequently remove any invalid reviews.

Generate more reviews. The best way to improve your rating (and combat those negative reviews) is to get more reviews. Reach out to previous clients, and let them know you would really appreciate their feedback. After account log in, visit your My Reviews tab, and you can quickly send out emails to your clients to request their reviews.

For more information on how to get WeddingWire reviews, read here!

A special thanks to:

The Chart House for the gorgeous space with amazing views!
SCE Event Group for the wonderful music, entertainment and lighting!
My Daughter’s Cakes for their delicious treats!
Daniel J Photography for capturing the highlights from the event seen below!

Want to keep the conversation going? Visit this thread on our Pro Forums to connect with those you met or missed at the event!

LinkedIn Company Profile Plugin

What It’s For: Like Facebook’s one-click Like Box and Twitter’s one-click Follow Button, LinkedIn’s Company Profile Plugin serves as a follow button for your business’ LinkedIn Company Page. Installing it on your website will allow visitors to follow your company on LinkedIn with just one click, enabling you to generate more followers for your LinkedIn Company Page and expand the reach of the content you share through your LinkedIn Company Status Updates.

How to Implement It: Build your Company Profile Plugin by visiting https://developer.linkedin.com/plugins/company-profile-plugin, entering your company name, and selecting your desired display mode. Further customize based on your preferences, and grab the code to embed the plugin onto your site.

LinkedIn Share Button

What It’s For: Adding LinkedIn’s Share Button to your website, blog, and landing page content enables visitors to easily share it with their connections on LinkedIn. Like Facebook’s Like Button and Twitter’s Tweet Button, incorporating this button can help extend the reach of your content to the LinkedIn audience and drive traffic back to your site.

How to Implement It: To create and install this button, visit https://developer.linkedin.com/plugins/share-button, specify the URL you want to generate traffic to, and choose your button’s style. Then generate your code and add the HTML to your site where you want the button to display.

To view all of LinkedIn’s official social media plugins in one place, visit:  https://developer.linkedin.com/plugins.

Check out our previous entries in the Social Media Button Guide series: follow vs. share buttons, twitter and Facebook.

See the examples below of fusing online and offline marketing techniques to improve your business’ visibility, and read more about the topic on Hubspot.

Create a Call-To-Action

Give your client a reason to interact with your business with a compelling call-to-action. A great tool to connect from print or an in-person interaction at industry events to your web presence is the use of QR (Quick Response) codes. QR codes give mobile users instant access to your business and client reviews.

QR Codes

Clients and the public can learn more about your business through QR codes. Easily scan QR codes by using a downloaded QR code Reader App for your mobile phone, and taking a screenshot of the QR code image. It will then lead directly to the website or information linked to the QR code.

WeddingWire creates a free, personalized QR code for all vendors, located on the My Dashboard and My Reviews section of your WeddingWire account.  This personalized QR Code lets potential customers instantly learn more about your business and read your reviews by visiting a mobile version of your WeddingWire Storefront using their mobile phone.

Display this QR code on your website or blog so customers can use their phones to quickly access your Storefront and read your reviews!  To access your QR code:

• Log In to your WeddingWire account
• Locate your personalized QR code on the My Dashboard or My Reviews section of your WeddingWire account
• Right click on your personalized bar code and save the image to your computer
• Place the image in the desired location of your blog or website

Additionally, you can print your personalized QR code poster to display at your business and special events for an easily scan-able display piece!

Let Offline Lead to Online

Be sure to leave a clear connection from your in-person experience to your online presence. On any promotional materials, include clear links to your business social media accounts, QR codes and websites and blogs.

Directing clients to your online marketing tools will encourage them to check out your online brand, and give them direct access to contact you, while easily sharing your professional expertise.

Connect with a Blog Post

Blogs are a great way to create new content to your website, and share your personality and accomplishments with your audience. Blog posts can be as simple as providing a re-cap of a recent event, sharing some inspiration or industry knowledge, or giving a personal look into your business.

With all new posts, be sure to share through your social media accounts and encourage reader responses and communication! Blogs can be great networking tools to generate more business connections and potential clients.

This post was written by Sonny Ganguly, CMO of WeddingWire, you can follow him on Twitter @sonnyg. A full version of this article is available in the Education Center. Sonny leads WeddingWire’s marketing strategy, customer acquisition, and business development.

Google+

If you haven’t already created a Google+ profile, now is the time to do it! Released in June 2011, Google+ is the driving force behind these new search results. While the growth of Google+ has been slow up to this point, their new social network will continue to play a role in the future of the world’s largest search engine.

To create a Google+ profile, first sign up for a Google Mail (Gmail) or a Google account and sync your social networks with Google search for a more personalized search experience and recommendations. As Google continues the rollout of these changes to users, we will continue to see growth and personalization of search results. Don’t be surprised if you see Facebook launch their own search results in the future to compete more directly with Google.

As a wedding professional, if a client reviewed your services or liked your website, when their friends or acquaintances search your business may be pulled to the top of their personalized search! Even if your business website may not be listed in traditional search results until page 3 or 4, you could bump up to the top based on these personal connections.  That makes “Search Plus Your World” potentially very powerful, but we’ll have to wait and see how it plays out.

Google is constantly working to review your site, optimize its search, and discover new avenues to connect its users with the best content on the web. By understanding how Google Search works, maintaining fresh content on your website and recognizing the importance of social activity, your business will be well prepared for the future of search!

Read more about Google’s recent Panda update focused on new ways to determine search rankings based on the quality of content, and the future of personalized search!

WeddingWire understands the power of education so we’re eager to share this special opportunity coming to North Carolina! The ISS Experience is kicking off the 2012 Tour in Durham, NC on April 23-24, 2012. Come and experience 2 days full of exciting networking opportunities and inspirational and educational seminars designed specifically for wedding industry entrepreneurs.

Register today and you will have the opportunity to learn from experts like Preston Bailey, Stacie Francombe and more! Details include:

• How to make money during A Conversation with Preston Bailey
• How to brand or rebrand your business
• Proven techniques for getting published
• How to get on TV and its effect on your brand
• How to use social media to book more business
• Key strategies for running a successful business

Register by tomorrow to save $100! Space is limited so sign up today!

Click here to learn more!

• How to effectively reach your desired customers
• What are recent trends and statistics about the virtual bride
• How to stand out among your competition
• What tools you can leverage to maximize your business

All of our past webinars are available in our Education Center for upgraded Pros. Stay tuned for our next webinar in April!

This post was written by Sonny Ganguly, CMO of WeddingWire, you can follow him on Twitter @sonnyg. A full version of this article is available in the Education Center. Sonny leads WeddingWire’s marketing strategy, customer acquisition, and business development.

Search Gets Personal

Google recently unveiled its newest endeavor called “Search Plus Your World” this January.  This new adjustment focuses on personalizing search results to include a mixture of personal results along with standard search results. “Search Plus Your World” represents quite possibly the largest change ever made to how Google’s search results are displayed.  It is a strong indicator of the future of search engines, with the big idea being that People Matter. 

The update is focused around four primary features:

• Includes photos from you and your friends in search results
• Content from your connections on Google+, Google’s social network
• People’s profiles in search results, which is similar to Facebook people search
• Related people and pages as you search, which bears some resemblance to twitter

“Search Plus Your World” provides users with a toggle to see results that are based on Google’s algorithm as before or a new button to shift to personalized results. Based on your previous interests and friends’ interests, Google will provide personalized results for whatever you may search for. For example, if you were to type in “best restaurants in Miami” your typical search results will pull back popular restaurants with their ratings and reviews.  With the new changes, you will have the ability to get personalized results for the “best restaurants in Miami,” which would include any reviews from your friends or pictures from when they dined at a restaurant.

In the future, when you ask a search engine to tell you the “best movie playing”, it won’t give you an answer based on popularity or box office results.  Rather, you will get recommendations that are more based on your social graph and what movies your friends, family and like-minded people enjoyed.  “Search Plus Your World” combines Google’s algorithm with the social world, and it has taken some of those cues from Facebook and twitter.  In the next two years, expect search results to become more tied to social networks and activity.  Why? Because people and their connections matter!

Read more about Google’s recent Panda update focused on new ways to determine search rankings based on the quality of content, and check back soon to for insight on the impact and future of Google+!

This post was written by Sonny Ganguly, CMO of WeddingWire, you can follow him on Twitter @sonnyg. A full version of this article is available in the Education Center. Sonny leads WeddingWire’s marketing strategy, customer acquisition, and business development.

It’s no surprise that Google is the largest search engine in the world, with approximately 65% of the US Search Engine Market Share.  It leads the other “big three” search engines by a large majority, with Bing and Yahoo! having roughly 15% market share each. Getting top ranking on Google search has to be a priority for your business.

What you may not know is that Google is constantly updating its search algorithm to screen for the best search results for its users. So even if you have strong SEO rankings, your results may vary over time based on these updates.  Over the past year Google has made significant changes to its search algorithm that changes how results are displayed.  In order to improve your SEO rankings in the future, you need to be aware of two recent updates called “Panda” and “Search Plus Your World.”

The Giant Panda

Google released a large update called “Panda” in 2011, which focused largely on new ways to determine search rankings based on the quality of content. Many sites with dated content saw their results decline sharply soon after the updates, while sites with high quality content saw strong improvement.  The Panda update emphasized 3 key elements:

1. Freshness of content
2. Content depth and corresponding traffic
3. Quantity of advertisements on websites

As wedding professionals, it is important to understand how Google rates your websites and how you can improve rankings over time.  Remember: Content Matters!

Freshness of Content

The more frequently your content is updated, the more interesting Google finds your site! Updating the content on your website or blog reminds Google’s robots to crawl your site often and subsequently boost your search results listing. When content is stagnant, Google returns less frequently, and your site may lose relevance.  In essence, the search engine robots are a bit lazy!  It takes frequent content updates to remind them to come back and visit your site.

Content updates do not have to be a large undertaking.  You don’t have to re-design your site or adjust the basic web copy. What we want to do is create an area on your site where content is more dynamic vs. static.  In fact, creating fresh content can be easy! Here are some of the ways we create content:

• Creating a blog and posting at least a couple times per week, preferably once per day.  We suggest using WordPress to build your blog.
• Adding your blog as a navigation item on your main website.  This will give your main website a big boost in freshness!
• Adding social media buttons and enabling sharing of content from your site.
• Adding photos and videos to your site from your recent weddings.
• Creating press releases to highlight new accomplishments.
• Getting new ratings and reviews from past clients.

Content Depth and Corresponding Traffic

Search engines don’t like websites with limited content or blank pages.  So you don’t want to create a lot of new pages on your site without a purpose for them.  In addition, Google looks at the amount of traffic to these content sections.  The search engine gives a high priority to places on the web that mix good content with strong traffic to those sections. Ultimately, Google is trying to find content that is interesting and valuable to users, so make sure that each page or post has something valuable for consumers and search engines alike.

Tip: Aim to have roughly 500 words per page to optimize your content sections for the search engines. Make sure you create new content for every page on your site rather than repeating the same content across several pages. Also, don’t copy content from other sources on the web. Unique and fresh content always wins!

Quantity of Advertisements

With the Panda search update, Google also screens for the quantity of advertisements on websites. For most wedding professionals this is typically less of an issue, since most businesses focus on selling their services versus showcasing third party ads. In any case, try to avoid excessive advertisements since a large ratio of ads may be considered a negative experience for users.

Check back soon to read more on Google Plus Your World and the impact and future of Google+!

We would like to take a minute to thank the wonderful Wedding Pros who helped make the event possible:

• The stunning event space, passed hors d’voeres and cocktails were provided by the Lakeway Resort & Spa
• Delicious assortment of cake shots provided by Amazing Kakes
• Music and entertainment was provided by ATX DJ
• Photobooth to capture memories of the event by Live Oak Photobooth
• Photographs of the event (seen below) were taken by Matt Montalvo Photography
• A/V provided by VAE

Congratulations to our drawing winner, Jason Buck from Spinning Leaf Films! Jason will receive a WeddingWire prize pack and HD flip video camera. 

Facebook Like Box

What It’s For: Like Twitter’s Official Follow Button, the Facebook Like Box enables your business to promote its Facebook business page on your website/blog, highlight other users who have already liked your page, and feature recent posts on your page. The box also allows visitors to become a fan of (AKA ‘like’) your Facebook business page with just one simple click without leaving your site, enabling you to promote your Facebook presence and easily increase your page’s fan count.

How to Implement It: To generate a Facebook Like Box for your website, visit https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like-box/. Include the URL for your Facebook business page as well as your customization preferences. Then generate the HTML code, and place it on your website where you want it to appear.

Facebook Like Button

What It’s For: Facebook’s Like button is basically a button that enables visitors to easily give a virtual thumbs up to your content. By clicking the Like button, a story also appears on the user’s Facebook profile and in their friends’ News Feed with a link back to your web page, whether it’s a blog post or a specific landing page. Use this button to make it easy for visitors to endorse your content and share it with their Facebook connections.

How to Implement It: Visit https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/ to customize your Like button and grab the code to place on your website.

Facebook Share Link

What It’s For: While Facebook no longer supports its official Facebook Share button and has officially replaced it with the Like button, there are still some valuable use cases for implementing a Facebook share link on your content, and it’s not difficult to do. While the Like button does automatically share content to the user’s profile and get displayed in their friends’ News Feeds, the button still doesn’t enable users to add a comment or message to the content they’re liking. Creating your own Facebook share links provides your visitors with the option to customize their messaging around the content they’re sharing. These links can then be added to web pages, blog articles, landing pages, or within content like ebooks/whitepapers.

How to Implement It: To create your own Facebook share link, replace the red highlighted URL with the URL of the content you want to promote. Then link the full URL to the anchor text you want to appear in your content.

http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http://bit.ly/vOKpgC

Interested in learning more about what Facebook offers? Review all of Facebook’s official social media plugins in one place: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/.

For additional posts in our Social Media Button Guide series, we gave an overview of follow vs. share buttons, and twitter. Also, be sure to check back for overviews of LinkedIn and Google+!

Kim has joined the WeddingWire team as an editor, bringing years of wedding editorial experience and industry passion to our team. As an editor, Kim will be creating content for WeddingWire and EventWire, with a particular focus on bridal fashion and Real Weddings.

After her first week at WeddingWire, this self-described “wedding nerd” reports that she loves the high-energy and helpful team, our huge computer monitors, and the ample supplies of food wherever she turns (I have to admit, I agree with all three)! She is particularly excited about covering bridal markets in Chicago and New York and reporting back on all the newest wedding dress trends to our WeddingWire communities.

Before joining WeddingWire, Kim worked for our network partner, Brides.com as well as Brides Local Magazines where she specialized in bridal fashion and covered leading bridal markets. Kim has also served as the associate bridal editor at Washingtonian Bride & Groom Magazine and Washingtonian.com. This New York native attended Williams College and has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.

Kim is obsessed with reading and writing about weddings. In fact, she has almost 200 blogs on her Google Reader! She loves talking to both brides and vendors from all over the country about what’s new in the industry, and is particularly passionate about the creative aspect of wedding planning. If any Wedding Pros have an idea of a blog post or topic for WeddingWire, she would love to hear from you!

Welcome, Kim!

Twitter Follow Button

What It’s For: Create this button to promote your business’ Twitter account. Once generated, visitors to your site can follow your account with just one click, enabling you to easily increase your business’ Twitter following.

How to Implement It: Visit https://twitter.com/about/resources/followbutton to customize your button’s featured account. You can customize the button color, language, and whether you want the button to feature your business’ Twitter follower count. Then copy and paste the HTML code it generates where you want the button to appear on your website.

Tweet Button

What It’s For: Use this button to enable site visitors to easily share your content with their networks on Twitter, extending the reach of your content to connections in visitors’ Twitter networks. In fact, research shows that including a Tweet Button increases Twitter mentions sevenfold!

How to Implement It: Visit https://twitter.com/about/resources/tweetbutton to customize the look of the button, the text and URL it generates, its language, and optionally add an @mention for a specific Twitter account. Adding your company’s Twitter username will work to increase your account’s reach and generate new followers. Once customized, copy the HTML code for your new button and place it on your website where you want the button to appear.

‘Tweet This’ Link

What It’s For: Have you ever wanted to create a link that pre-populates a specific Twitter message for your visitors to share? Usually, these tweet links are used on landing pages to promote offers using specific messaging. A ‘Tweet This’ link enables marketers to have more control over the message a visitor shares about their content on Twitter.

How to Implement It: Hubspot created a helpful tool to help you easily create ‘Tweet This’ links for your content. Visit http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/17589/default.aspx, enter the message you want to populate the tweet, and copy/paste the generated URL into your anchor text (e.g. “Tweet This!). As a best practice, include a shortened URL in the tweet message that will direct people back to the original piece of content you’re trying to promote. It’s also a great idea to include your business’ Twitter username in the tweet to help increase reach.

Twitter Website Widgets

What They’re For: Twitter also enables you to create dynamic widgets to showcase your Twitter activity on your website. For example, create a Profile Widget to show your most recent Twitter updates.

How to Implement Them: Visit https://twitter.com/about/resources/widgets, choose “My Website,” select the type of widget you’d like to create, and customize your widget’s settings, preferences, appearance, and dimensions. Then copythe HTML code and place it on your website where you want the widget to display.

For reference, all of Twitter’s official social media buttons/widgets can be found at here.

Be sure to check out the next post in our series, highlighting social media buttons for Facebook!

Wondering how to stand out in the crowd? Follow these creative ways to use social media and see your contacts grow as you solidify yourself as a local business leader in a competitive field:

Information

One basic but important element of social media success is to make sure you’ve filled all your social media outlets out with adequate information about your business and what you do, where people can find your business, what you offer, and how to contact you (also, be sure you have completed as much information as possible on your WeddingWire storefront)! This will help to ensure that your company is easily searchable, build your SEO, and help current and potential clients to access your business easily and efficiently.

Management

To effectively use social media as business tools, it is important to spend a bit of time daily managing your accounts, pushing out interesting, relevant information, and interacting with your audiences. If you get a comment or tweet, take the time to acknowledge the user. This will help to build a relationship, and can generate positive conversation and content. If faced with a negative comment, you can acknowledge them and work to take the conversation to a private space to solve any issues.

Become a Resource

Keep engaged in your local market and industry on upcoming events, both online and live and spread awareness for events that your audience may want to attend. Sharing information on valuable events establishes you as an indispensable resource. Also, be sure to attend the events in order to keep updated on industry happenings, provide relevant event feedback and network to meet your potential clients!

Connect with other local businesses and consumers

Create an active presence online through conversations and social media. Connect with people that live locally, other wedding industry professionals, and businesses that are doing interesting things in your city or field. Keep in mind it’s important to stay locally connected and network with people even if they’re not directly related to your industry or are a potential client at this time. Check out our Pro Forums if you would like to connect with other WeddingWire Pros, pose a question to peers, or share your expertise!

For additional advice on how to creatively use social media for your business, read the full article here.

Social media is a great tool for marketing your small business. With the growing number of platforms, and the ever-changing layout and tools, it can be difficult to differentiate when to use which of the networks, and how to best share content and connect with your audience.

Hubspot created a great, comprehensive guide to understand the differences between the share and follow buttons and links for four of the top social media sites, and how to implement them on your business website and blog, which we will share with our Wedding Pro Community over the next few posts!

Follow Buttons vs. Share Buttons

The first step in understanding the nuances of all the various social media buttons is being able to differentiate between social sharing buttons/links and social media follow buttons, and identify which type of button to use.

Social Media Follow Buttons:
These buttons serve to promote your business’ presence on various social media sites and help you generate fans/followers for those particular accounts. By placing these buttons on your business’ website, you can help to create visibility for your social media accounts and easily extend your reach on the sites. You can place these buttons on your website, and we recommend at least placing these buttons on your website’s main homepage, your ‘About Us’ page, and your blog’s homepage. Buttons of note include the “Official Twitter Follow Button,” “Facebook Like Box,” “LinkedIn Company Profile Plugin,” and “Google+ Page Button”, which will be individually covered in upcoming posts in more detail.

Social Media Share Links/Buttons:
These links and buttons enable your website visitors and content viewers to easily share content that is on your site with their social media connections and networks. Adding these buttons to your content allows you to expand the reach of your content to a larger, new audience, and can generate new visitors back to your website. You should add social media sharing links/buttons to every piece of content you create, including landing pages, web pages, individual blog articles, and email content. The “Official Tweet Button,” “Tweet This Link,” “Facebook Like Button,” “Facebook Share Link,” “LinkedIn Share Button,” “+1 Button,” and “Google+ Share Link” all serve as social media sharing buttons.

Next post, we will share the social media button breakdown specifically for twitter!

Interested in learning more? Access the Pro Forums and take a look around by following these simple steps:

• Login to your account
• Click on the Pro Forums tab
• Review forums by clicking Recent Posts, New Discussions or Most Popular tabs directly under the Pro Forums tab in the top left-hand corner
• To start a conversation, click the Start a Discussion button on the top right-hand corner

Forums are organized so you can easily browse by category or use the search option on the right to find discussions about a specific topic.

Additionally, you can browse Wedding Forums by clicking the tab on the left of the screen, and leave comments and advice to engaged couples’ questions.

You can keep track of your participation in forums by clicking the My Activity tab to the left of the Pro Forums tab. Here, your discussions, comments and any comments that you have left in the Wedding Forums are tracked.

Forums great way to stay up to date on industry news, make connections with other professionals, ask questions to get an outside point of view and share your own expertise!

• Details about recent Google search algorithm changes
• Why Google+ does or doesn’t matter
• How to optimize your business’ content and social interaction
• What you need to do to ensure potential clients easily find them online

All of our past webinars are available in our Education Center for upgraded Pros. Stay tuned for our next webinar in March!

Mint.com

Mint.com is a great online tool for financial management. You can sync your expenses, bank accounts, credit cards, loans and more to keep track of your spending, funds and budgets. Mint automatically categorizes your transactions and keeps you updated on how you are spending, as well as providing assistance to set your budget and savings goals.

Evernote

Evernote is a virtual notepad service that enables you to save, organize and share notes, images and ideas for future use. You can keep your notes in organized categories,  and they can be shared  with others. You quickly and easily can access Evernote from your computer, internet browser, and mobile application from your smartphone or tablet.

HootSuite

HootSuite is a tool designed to help you manage your social networks including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Simultaneously, you can track your followers, mentions and personal accounts all in one place, in real time. Multiple team members can manage the social media accounts, without having to share passwords and login information. You can also tweet and post directly from HootSuite, so no need to go back and forth between your accounts or miss any important mentions! HootSuite conveniently allows you to schedule outgoing messages, so you don’t always have to be online to be posting relevant information and connecting with your audience.

Prezi

Prezi is a dynamic web-based powerpoint presentation tool designed to create a more engaging presentation experience. Self described as “a cloud-based presentation software that opens up a new world between whiteboards and slides,” this tool is perfect for a creative presentation. You are able to add in multimedia features to highlight your business or show video from a recent event which adds color and personality to your presentation. Prezi is an “idea” based blank canvas, so you are not limited to traditional slides. The tool compiles all your ideas, which enables you to organize and control the direction of the slideshow.

SurveyMonkey

Looking for quick feedback on a recent event or interested in conducting business research from your clients? SurveyMonkey is an easy to use tool that enables you to create quick, customized surveys online that you can distribute and track results in real time. SurveyMonkey also provides convenient tools to help you analyze your results such as charts and filters.

Have you used any of these tools for your business? Are there any other free online tools that you would suggest? We would love to hear from you!

If you struggle with time management, check out our helpful tips and feel free to comment with any feedback or recommendations of your own to share with the Wedding Pro community!

Take Time to Reflect

No matter how busy you may be at any given time, it is important to set aside time both daily and weekly to reflect on your goals, workload and priorities. Spending one hour at a designated time a week can help you lay out your strategic plan to move your projects and business forward. Spending 10 minutes daily to review your weekly priorities and projects can help to give focus to your day, and avoid falling behind by simply reacting to items that will undoubtedly arise. Allowing yourself this “quiet time” will help to keep you organized, focused and can help calm workload stress. We recommend setting the time reoccurring on your work calendar every week so it doesn’t get overlooked.

Personalize Your Schedule

Notice when you are most productive and try to plan your schedule accordingly. What is the most effective time of the day for you to do your creative work, meet clients and respond to emails? This is not the same for everyone, so try different approaches to see what works best for you and create a schedule. If you do your best work in the morning, set that time aside for your daily tasks and projects. If you need afternoon breaks, use that time to meet with clients. Do you enjoy looking for inspiration when you finally have some time to relax? Sundays can be the perfect time to catch up on your favorite blogs and boards while enjoying your morning coffee. Also, setting aside specific times daily to reply to email helps to avoid your time getting caught up in the reactive. Work to use these designated times to respond to all non-urgent emails.

Delegate

Sometimes, there are simply not enough hours in the day to get done all your tasks. As difficult as it can be at times, it is important to delegate projects when you are able. As you are outlining your daily “to do” lists, examine which projects someone else may be able to assist with or take over. This will help to both ensure the items are taken care of, and will allow your team to learn and grow.

Say No 

Remember that it’s okay to say no sometimes! If you feel overwhelmed, express your concerns to get all your commitments done on time and completed in your high professional standards. Examine if you are able to change the timeline, and don’t over extend yourself beyond your professional commitment. While clients appreciate personal touches and the demonstrated commitment to their wedding, you have to lay out guidelines. To make saying no easier, be very clear about expectations in your initial consultations and outline specifics on your contracts. This will avoid any misconceptions and make expectations clear for all parties.

Images
Photos, pictures and video clips are popular with followers and fans! Additionally, the wedding community loves to see creative and inspiring examples of your work, and what better way to display your talent and promote your business?

Ask Questions or Play a “Game”
Popular ways to increase community engagement include posing a question to your followers or a fill-in-the-blank “game.” For example, you could ask “What is your favorite part of a wedding?” or “My best piece advice to newlyweds is ______.” You may be surprised by your number of responses and the interesting conversation that stems from these games! Participate by sharing your opinions, driving conversation to the next level and, of course, and thanking your followers for their thoughts.

Personality
Humanize your business page to your followers! Work to generate interest by sharing event or style tips, favorite things, emerging trends and industry news. Show the person behind the brand by sending messages of thanks when you reach milestone goals, wishing your followers happy holidays and replying to people who post. This interaction builds a friendship with your community while providing valuable content. It is important to not use your page to purely push marketing and sales, as followers are quick to disengage with social media sites if they feel the brands are being overly promotional.

For additional creative Facebook positing ideas, read more here.

 “We don’t encourage failure. We discourage the fear of failure.”

-  Dr. Regina Dugan,  Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)

“Try very hard to say ‘yes’.”

- Alfred Spector, Google

“And if you’re going to fail, fail fast.”

-  Timothy Chi, WeddingWire

While there were many takeaways from such an intelligent and experienced panel of speakers, some key things to consider and apply to your business:

1. Urgency inspires greater innovation.

2. A team increases the likelihood of success.

3. Innovation isn’t always a linear process.

Photos thanks to Ralph Alswang Photography

We are pleased to announce our most recent WeddingWire Pro winner: Stephen Cihanek of Stephen Cihanek Photography!

Congratulations to Stephen for winning a free Kindle Fire as the lucky winner from our giveaway as thank you for  participation in our Business Insight survey, featured in the January WeddingWire Pros newsletter.

As the leading wedding technology company, we want to better understand your business needs! The Business Insight Survey was designed to address the following questions: What are the top areas where you need assistance? How do you convert your prospects to booked clients? How do you get photos of your work?

Thank you to all who participated; we appreciate your time and feedback!