Facebook, JuggleMedia Wichita, MailChimp, Social Media Strategy, Twitter, Ustream, wedding, Wichita Social Media, YouTube

Usually, I try to keep the blog posting here on JuggleMedia.com about social media and how it pertains to companies in and around Wichita, Kansas. Today, however, I’m going completely off the reservation.

IT’S MY WEDDING WEEK!

Yep. It is. Boo-yah! I thought this day would never come!

So what does this mean to you, and more important, why am I writing about this here and not on my Facebook Page? Well, simply put there are some things that even businesses can learn about social media when it comes to the social channels we’ve set-up for our wedding

First, let’s start with our Wedding Website. If you go to ryanandkelsi.com, you’ll see it looks a lot like another site somewhere out there, say, oh, JuggleMedia. That’s because we use WordPress.org and the Mystique theme. Being that I know the Mystique theme pretty well, I didn’t want to spend hours and hours creating a site from scratch. WordPress gives you the tools to get online and pretty fast.

Instead of going for a “Save the Date” card, about 80% of our guests are on Facebook, so we opted for an event called “Ryan & Kelsi Save-The-Date.” We were going to call it Ryan & Kelsi Wedding, but we wanted our audience to know that this was something they were getting and it needs to be written down. That and Facebook Events offers some pretty sweet calendar export tools that allows our guest to click one button and they’ve got it down.

Now that the event is FINALLY here, we are using different channels to continue to promote how we’re doing. For example, our personal Facebook Pages have been an excellent place for our audience to interact with us. Also, we use our personal Twitter accounts to keep the wedding party up to date. We’ve even used GoogleDocs to capture our RSVPs and then we can send an email blast to all of our guest using MailChimp to update them on where they need to be and when. Finally, we’re still kicking around the idea of using my UStream channel to stream our wedding live to a few guests that can’t make it, like my cousin who is on the no-fly list because she is so pregnant she is about to pop. We’re still deciding for personal reasons if we want to do that. I’ll let you know.

All of these different channels connect a different segment of the audience that we need to communicate. It’s about overlap and not just picking one and saying that’s it. Not all of our guest are on Facebook (although that’s by far the largest portion) and not even there are they guarenteed to connect. Social Media is about using these channels together to get your message across while understanding your audience and who they are.

In business, it’s the same way. Setting up all of these different channels like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, UStream, GoogleDocs, MailChimp and the thousand other channels is important ONLY IF that’s where your audience hangs out. I still had to send my Grandma a paper invitation, but was able to talk to her over Skype about it. (Funny side-note- She did say that if she knew she was going to be on TV she would have put on more make-up. Pretty funny stuff!)

So when you are thinking about events, business meetings and marketing in general think about these different social channels and the audience. When you need help call me at JuggleMedia, Wichita’s Social Media Company after Labor Day. We help Wichita companies understand these channels, how to connect people and how to transfer the audience into actual customers. We have a proven track-record of successful campaigns and pages including one currently running that has gained an average of 40 new followers a day on Facebook. Enjoy your day!

Cancun, here we come!

Ryan