A picture says a thousand words: Five top content marketing tips for the wedding industry

If you’ve got your website and brochures cracked (bursting with ‘loves young dream’ images), don’t stop there. Today I’m talking about content marketing and below are five tips for bringing more imagery into your online content. For the wedding industry, it’s imperative to be leveraging content marketing.

Put more simply – this could be a blog or news page on your website, full of blog articles and case studies about the services you offer. Let’s be clear, this shouldn’t be sales material, this should be useful and inviting content that will draw potential brides and grooms towards your website (and ultimately to contacting you with a sales inquiry)

But don’t go to the effort of writing a beautiful article about rustic themed table decorations, or the perfect dress for your body shape, or a case study of an autumn wedding, if you’re not going to fill it with photos. Brides in particular, are online searching for ideas and inspiration – and in the main they are looking for that in image form – so don’t disappoint, get to it!

Five tips for injecting images into your content

1. Write a case study – and ask brides for their photos

Sometimes you just know a particular wedding is going to be a fabulous affair, perhaps with an interesting theme, or stunning food. If so, why not ask the bride and groom in advance if they’d be happy for you to do a case study of their day and share on your website? Most brides and grooms are happy to share some of their photos with you after the event, which will give your case study a real ‘in the moment’ feel. Consider making a gallery of the photos, or even a video collage of them for brides to watch.

2. Get friendly with photographers

The wedding industry folks are a friendly bunch, and you’ll generally find wedding suppliers will do each other favours. So, the photographer gets a free delicious meal, and the caterers get a set of professional photos of their food from the day (with a credit to the photographer, of course). You see what I mean though? Photos taken on a tablet or phone are getting better and better, and there are filters and apps to improve them (see more below) but nothing beats a photo by a professional photographer. If you can get some, then use those. They’ll really make your content and marketing stand-out.

3. Use free apps and software to improve images

If the above isn’t possible then photos taken on your phone are fine, but try using some apps to improve the images, or make infographics, collages and graphics. One of my favourites, and the best of the free apps, is Canva. This app, which can be used on your phone or computer, allows you to create fantastic graphics – you can overlay text onto photos, create collages and it also offers the option of creating the images in the exact size dimensions for all the social media platforms. If you’re posting to Instagram it will create the exact Instagram sized graphic. Whatever you do, be sure to tweak your images before you use them so they don’t look like amateur phone photos, by enhancing the colour and light or putting filters on.

4. Make it a video

It doesn’t just have to be an image, it can be a video. Again, you can go the whole hog and create your own videos from scratch with people and talking heads. But equally, you can make simple, quick videos with software (some that’s available on the phones already) by just piecing together a collection of images and putting a sound track over it. Moreover video is great to share over social media.

5. Make it relevant

It seems obvious, but this can be over-looked on occasions. Make sure the images are relevant not only to the blog article, but also to your business. Sometimes people get carried away taking photos of everything at the event, instead of concentrating on the service or product they sell. So if you’re a wedding caterer, make sure there are photos of food, if you’re a wedding venue ensure you get the venue in shot wherever possible (no close-ups for you!), if you’re a florist there should be plenty of flowers – you get the idea!

By the way, if you’re reading this and you’re a photographer – you have no excuses!

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