Love it, or loathe it, Facebook is still a great place for you to build your network, you can access multiple communities for couples and wedding pros in just a couple of clicks. But in my experience, most of you are not using these communities to your full advantage. So in today's episode, I'm going to be sharing my insider tips to help you and your business get noticed online. I'm Becca Pountney wedding, business, marketing, expert, speaker, and blogger.
And you're listening to the wedding pros who are ready to grow podcast. I'm here to share with you actionable tips, strategies, and real life examples to help you take your wedding business to the next level. If you are an ambitious wedding business owner that wants to take your passion and use it to build a profitable, sustainable business, doing what you love, then you're in the right place. Let's get going with today's episode. As the owner of multiple communities on Facebook.
I see people joining my groups almost every single day, but only a few of them actually use them to their full advantage. And only a few of you actually make a difference to your wedding business by using those groups. I want that to change because these are great resources for you to grow your wedding.
So today I'm going to be sharing with you three different types of groups on Facebook that you can use and access, what the pros and cons are of all of them and how you can better use them to grow your wedding business and get in front of the right audience. So let's get straight into it and talk about the three different communities that are available. Now, most of you will be part of some Facebook communities. In fact, you may even be part of mine.
They're very easy to find you just search for groups on Facebook and you can find a group for almost anything I'm in all sorts of groups on Facebook groups, for people who love musical theater groups, for people planning trips to Disney, and of course, wedding communities as. The three types of groups that we're going to talk about today are these first of all, those couple communities. So these are the groups which are designed for couples who are planning their wedding.
These are potential clients. So the kind of groups where it's brides getting married in Hertfordshire or brides to be 2022. The idea of these communities is that brides and grooms can talk to each other and get help planning their wedding or find suppliers. The second kind of group is those free communities. So you may be part of mine is called wedding pros who are ready to grow, and it's a completely free community for wedding professionals.
Like you, who can come on there, meet each other talk and get some help growing their business. The third type of community we're going to talk about is a more private paid community. I have one of these as well, and maybe your're part of it. My wedding pro member's lounge is a paid community for wedding professionals where there's a smaller but more quality-based, uh, network of supplies to network with. And other additional benefits that we'll talk about more later.
So we're going to talk through each of these groups and how you can make the most of being part of them. The first set of groups we're going to talk about today is those couple communities. And if I'm honest, these are my least favorite groups out of all of them. However, they're kind of a little bit helpful. And so I'm going to talk about where you can make the most out of them.
They're going to be more useful to you if you're starting out probably rather than if you're more established, but take a listen and see whether these groups are right for you or not. So let's start with the pros and the cons. So the pros of these groups is well you're right in front of the right kinds of people.
So people say to me all the time that they want to get in front of more couples, how do they find more couples to get in front of rather than just other suppliers, and here is a place where couples are hanging out all of the time. So that's a great reason to use them. The other great thing about them is they're free to access, so you're not going to lose anything by being part of them. It's a little bit of free advertising and you never know what might come of it.
However, the cons may outweigh the pros. So for most of you, these people in these. Probably are not your ideal client. They often are, um, price hunting or looking for cheap offers and deals, which most of you probably aren't looking to do. And actually they can get quite annoying. They can be very spammy. Uh, most of the couples don't want to talk to each other, so they're just there for the information. So there's not much of a sense of community.
And quite often in these groups, you'll just find streams and streams and streams of suppliers. Advertising themselves. And they can come across looking a little bit desperate, however, it is the right kind of community. So how can we make the most of these groups if we're part of them? Well, first up, find some to join in your local area, search for your county search for your town. Look for the word wedding. They're probably more useful to you than joining some of the UK massive groups.
The second thing you need to do. As soon as you have joined the group is to read the rules. So you don't break any rules and then turn your notifications to off. Like I said, these groups can become very irritating very quickly, and actually you don't need to be seeing all of the posts all of the time, these groups aren't useful to you in terms of growing your business. I'll talk about why they're useful in a minute. So you don't need to see all the posts of people all the time.
Looking for photographers, florists, cheap deals on whatever it is that they're doing. Or more likely, just lots and lots of suppliers spamming the group with their own offers. Turn your notifications to off. You don't need the noise in your life. You don't need the spam, switch them off now. So why would we want to be using these. Well, what I don't want to see you doing is posting and being one of those spammy suppliers. You don't need to constantly post in the group looking for couples.
If anything, it can make your peer a little bit desperate. And like I've already said for most of you, your ideal couple are probably not hanging out in this. However, there are other things you can do in these groups to really get noticed. So instead of posting spammy offers post useful information that might resonate with an ideal client. If you write blog posts, for example, why not share some of your helpful tip blog posts in these groups?
If there are genuine couples in the group looking to get married, the blog post is going to be much more useful to them than any kind of sales post. You can also use these groups to share tips, tips, and advice in your area of expertise. This positions you as an expert and shows people, you know what you're talking about. If you see couples asking questions in the group and it's about something, you know, the answer to then reply to their questions and show that you're the expert.
Maybe even say, if you want to ask me more questions, you can find me on Instagram or here's my email address. I'm happy to speak with you. This could lead to more of a. The other way you can use these groups is if you have a very basic offer, most people in these groups, like I said, are looking for a bargain, they're not looking for a bespoke item. They don't have huge budgets to spend.
However, if you have a very basic offer that you offer, maybe in the winter or the off season, perhaps a simple version of one of the products that you offer, you could share. In that group, maybe once a month or something like that, but you don't want to be offering your bespoke services in there because chances are no one's interested and you're just wasting your time. We don't want to be putting loads of sales posts into these groups.
If you want to stand out from the crowd, share blog posts, share tips because not many other people are doing that. And that's much more useful to those couples than just getting bombarded with. Now the other thing I want to say to you is try and avoid promoting yourself in these groups, but to promote other people.
Now, this may seem a bit counter intuitive, but we've all seen those posts where someone, some poor bride or groom posts in the group to say, I'm getting married on the 22nd of July, 2023, and I need a photographer. Is anyone available? Now what happens is all of a sudden, every photographer from up and down the land starts posting and commenting and basically advertising themselves and their services. Pick me, pick me, pick me.
Not only is that massively overwhelming for the couple who probably are not doing their due diligence, if that's how they're looking for a supplier, but also it just makes you look a little bit desperate. If you're just jumping on the back of any single person. That's asking that question in the group. What is much more effective in these groups is when somebody else is tagging you.
So if someone's asking in a group for a videographer or a cake maker, and you're not tagging yourself, but other people in the industry are saying, you absolutely need to use this person, or you should definitely check out this person is so much better than when you tag yourself. Now, how do we achieve this?
Well, it's kind of organic is going to come out of the other things we're going to talk about today, but you can also get in the habit of tagging your own supply friends so that when they see a post that is relevant to you, they'll take you back. So for example, if you're a photographer and you see someone looking for a cake, Share the cake makers that you like working with on the thread, they'll be thankful for it. Tell them that you've done it.
If they're not in the group, screenshot it and show them so that when someone in that groups now looking for a photographer, they're likely to tag you back and it looks so much more impressive under one of those threads. When other people are all recommending the same person, rather than all the people saying, pick me, pick me and recommending them themselves. So to recap, if you're going to join these free groups on Facebook, join them, check the rules, and then turn the notifications off.
So you don't get bombarded with spam, try and avoid just sales posts actually post something that's useful to the couples in that community. Blog posts with helpful advice, share tips or reply to people and offer them help and advice, and then give them a call to action come to your Instagram or your website. Perhaps you've got a lead magnet that you could share with them that answers their question.
Share that in there, if it is within the group rules and try not to promote yourself, it's so much more impressive when other people are tagging you on threads. So if you see people looking for suppliers, get into the habit of tagging your supplier friends, because I promise you they'll start to return the. The second group we're going to talk about today is the one that probably most of you are already part of.
And if you're not already part of my free community wedding pros who are ready to grow on Facebook, go ahead and join it right now because it's a great resource and you get access to me as well. Most of you will be part of some or maybe many of these groups. So let's go through the pros and cons of these free wedding pro communitys. The first pro is once again, that it's a free to access. Most of these communities are free. You can just join them and answer the questions.
As long as you are a wedding business and keep to the rules, you can be part of them free of charge. They also give you access to usually a fairly large amount of people in the wedding industry. Again, sometimes you can find them by county or by country, or perhaps they are even world wide, you can also get some free tips and advice in these groups.
Big wedding experts like me, or like Kelly Mortimer, uh, all sorts of different people have these groups and you can get a little bit of access and a taster of what they're like to work with. Now. What are the cons of being part of these groups? Well, the first con is that they are large so it does make having any kind of community within the group, quite difficult. People join them to make connections, but then there's so many people in there and so many posts and so many different things.
It's actually quite hard to make genuine connections. Although I am going to give you some tips and advice about how to do that. Also in these groups have a real mixture of people. Some people join them because they're just starting out in the industry. Some people join them because they're brand new. Some people join them as students because they're dreaming about being a wedding planner. Some people in these groups are really well established. Some people want to take their businesses.
Seriously. Some people just want to offer stuff for free. So you have a real range of people, and it's quite hard to know which of those people are the most beneficial to connect with. So you have to do a little bit more work. But, like I said, they're great spaces and I definitely recommend being part of them. I would recommend limiting how many are part of it can be quite overwhelming if you're in loads of them.
So join one, see if you like the vibe of it, take a look at the leader, find out who they are, what their credentials are and whether they're worth listening to and whether or not you like the vibe of the group. These groups can be wildly different depending on who's leading them and how the culture of the group and the community is, for me. I like my communitys to be positive spaces, to be places where people can feel very welcome and can ask their questions and not feel stupid.
I have been part of some wedding communities where people can be quite nasty to each other in the comments, or quite rude to people who are starting out. And I absolutely don't tolerate that. So when you join these free groups, if you don't like the vibe of the group, that's absolutely fine. It's free. Just leave it and find another one that you've get on with better.
Don't feel like you've got to stick around in all of them is better to just have a few that you engage with regularly rather than being part of loads and loads of them. So once you found the group that you like, how on earth do you engage with it? And how do you make the most of it for your business? The first thing to do is to make sure you read the group rules. I cannot tell you how many times people join my group and then start posting spam in it because they think it's a couples group.
Even though it's got the word wedding pros in the. That is the fastest way to get evicted from a group or to just frustrate the other group members. So make sure you're reading the rules. What can you do in that group? And what can't you do in the group? Some groups won't allow links. For example, others will, some groups won't allow you to go live.
Others will so make sure you're taking a look at the group rules and sticking to them because you want to make a good impression on the group leader and the other people in the community. So if you break the rules, as soon as you join well, it's probably not going to work out so well. The second thing is as long as it's within the rules on the whole is a really good idea to make an intro post. As soon as you join the group, you can't do promotional posts in groups on the whole.
However, when you first join a community, there's that little window of opportunity to say, Hey, I've just joined this community. I'm really excited to be here. This is who I am. I'd love to connect with some of you. Thank you to whoever owns the group for letting me be part of it. Tell me how I can make the most of being in this group or something like that. You have a short window of opportunity to do that. If you wait a few weeks, then it suddenly looks a bit spammy.
However, if you're genuinely excited, you've just joined the group. It's a great opportunity to introduce yourselves and make yourself visible to. People tell people what you do, who you are, where you're based and the kind of people you're looking to connect with. And I promise you not many people do this. I'm an owner of many of these groups and people join them and then they just stay silent. It will really stand out.
If you do the intro post, when you first join, the second tip for you is when you're part of these communities is just, don't be invisible. Just because you're in there showing up, looking at things doesn't mean anyone else knows you're there. If you join the community and never say anything, you're effectively invisible. Now that may be fine if you're just there to try and soak up some of the free advice. But if you genuinely want to build community, build a network, find people that you.
Uh, have to promote you or to work with or to work with on styled shoots. Then you've got to show up. You cannot be invisible. Being invisible is never commenting, never posting, never replying to comments, never showing up to live videos. And just being a lurker is very easy for us to just lurk around and not actually do anything proactive, but it's not going to benefit your business to be that way. So what can we do to be proactive and to start showing up?
So people start to notice us while the basic way is to ask questions, use the group to ask questions, ask questions that seem really obvious to you, but you just need a bit of help with ask questions about where people are based. Ask questions about who might be based locally to you perhaps say I'm based. Hampshire. And I'd love to meet up with some people.
Is anyone based there and want to go for a coffee, give people a reason to respond to you and to notice you ask questions, no question is too silly in my group. I always say that because I want it to be a safe space where you can ask anything if you're brand new and you don't know where to get a contract from asking the group, because I guarantee there'll be someone with more experience who can help you out with that kind of.
If you're looking to open a new bank account or use a new piece of software and want some feedback on it, asking the group, because there may be people who've already used it. And by showing up and asking questions, you are starting to become visible. People are starting to see who you are and to recognize your face. And it's going to be much easier for you to then carry on building connections with those people.
The second way you can stop being invisible is to answer people's questions in the group. So if you see people asking questions and you know the answer to them again, don't stay silent. Don't wait for someone else to answer it. But just say, in my opinion, X, Y, Z or I use this piece of software and this is why. Or I used to use that. I didn't really get on with it very well, but now I use that, however, please try and be polite, be responsible. So don't answer questions.
You don't know the answer to and be real, be human, be kind. I've seen people answer questions in a really kind of condescending way. Thankfully not in my groups because I'm very protective about my community. Just because you think a question silly doesn't mean that you should answer it in a rude tone. Be kind. If you want to build connections, you've got to be kind to people.
You've got to help people out, but go ahead and answer questions because it helps your face to become visible and it shows, you know, what you're talking about and that you're worth connecting. The next piece of advice I have for you is to start taking some of these conversations offline. And by offline, I don't mean off the internet. I mean, out of the groups. So for example, why not drop into someone's DMS on Instagram?
If you've been chatting to them over some comments, just say like, oh, it was great to chat with you on Becca's group. Um, I know you wanted some help with contracts. Here's the contact that I use. It'd be great to connect with you and start having a more in-depth conversation. Or perhaps try and meet someone for coffee or go to a networking event and meet them there, carry on those conversations.
If you want to build true lasting relationships that can lead to promoting each other, working together on styled shoots. or just having a great industry friend, you have to start taking some of these conversations offline. Now I mentioned Instagram DMS because we all know that Facebook DMS are just a nightmare. Messages go into my messenger that I don't find for weeks because they just seem to disappear off the face of the earth.
Whereas on Instagram, they definitely seem to pop up more frequently. So if you're looking to connect with someone and take that conversation offline, then why not drop into their DMS? The final tip I have for you is to make sure your personal profile is up to date with your business details. Often we join these groups as our personal account, which I absolutely think you should be doing, not your business.
And then we start answering questions and commenting, showing up on those conversations and people want to know who we are. So what do they do? They click through to our personal profile, to kind of stalk us and to look at who we are. I have lost count of the amount of you that do not have your business details on your personal profile, visible to people. So when they click on you, they have no idea who you are and what you do, make sure your profile is updated.
Your personal profile should be updated with who you are, what you do, links to your Facebook group links to your community, links to your Instagram links to your website, so that if someone's curious and comes across you in the group and wants to connect with you or work with you, they can just click on your face, go to your profile. Then head over to your business website or your Instagram page, if you haven't updated your personal profile, go ahead and do that.
Now, before you start being really visible in these groups, because it's kind of hampering how successful you can be if you don't have this information updated and it will literally take you three minutes. So go ahead, get that updated and start showing up in the free groups. And like I said, if you're not yet part of mine, wedding pros who are ready to grow. Do come along? Show up is a safe space to be where you can be vulnerable. Ask questions, answer questions, and make industry.
We've talked about those bride and groom, Facebook groups. We talked about the free communities for wedding pros on Facebook, which now brings me on to the third category of group that I want to talk to you about. And that's paid for membership communities. Now, these paid for communities for wedding professionals are usually not just on Facebook. So you'll have a Facebook group community, but you will also have more of a membership community or members portal that you can.
As well, however, I think the Facebook group or wherever your group is meeting is a place where you're going to build the most genuine connections, which is why I'm talking about that here today. Now, what are the pros and cons of these membership communities? Well, the pros is definitely that they're much smaller communities full of committed people. I see that in my own members' lounge.
If I look at my members lounge group versus my free group, guess what everyone's showing up and being real and sharing their questions in the membership space. Why? Because it's a smaller group of really committed people. Whereas the free group has people from all over the spectrum. Brand-new or, or not really interested in business or just a hobby or just dipping their toe in. If you're paying to be part of a membership community, it shows that you're really serious about growing your business.
Therefore, the quality of people within that group is much, much higher. They're really committed and they're all there for the same reason that they want to build genuine connections. So it's a great place to get started. The second pro is that you get really high quality business training. You will find sporadic business training in these free communities, but it is just that, it's sporadic. I will occasionally do training videos or little tips and hints in my free Facebook group.
But if you want the full training, the guest experts the full information about how to make reels or how to do email marketing. Be at wedding shows, then that's where you're going to be in the paid community to get that it's a higher quality level of training on a regular basis. And the other pro of these is that you get really good access to the group leader. If I have a member of my group, I will go above and beyond to do as much as I can to help them in their wedding business.
Whereas if they're just in my free. I just don't have the time, energy or resource to give them the kind of attention I want to, so I'm much more likely to work closely with my members than I am to people in my free group, just because they're committed and they're there to be helped and I'm there to serve. What are the cons of these groups then? Well, obviously the biggest con is that it's not free.
The other groups I've mentioned so far today are free, but like anything, if you want really good quality service, you've got to pay for it. We can't expect to get everything for free all of the time. So the con of being part of the membership.
Is that you have to pay for it and they can range my membership community is 20 pounds a month, but they could be anywhere from 10 pounds a month, right up to a hundred pounds a month, depending on who the group leader is, what you get from being part of the group and what kind of client you're trying to attract. If you're part of one of these paid communities, then how do you make the most of it? How do you make sure you're making the most of that investment?
Because now you are putting money on the line. You want to make sure you're getting a good return on investment. Now, the first thing to note is actually these groups could be very, very affordable. 20 pounds a month may feel like a big amount of money.
But when you think about that, that's five pounds a week, which is kind of only a bit more than you might pay on a coffee in a week and you get really good quality training and access to professionals and most importantly, a place to build contacts and ask each other for really high quality advice. There's nothing more lonely than being in the wedding industry or owning your own business and just being on your own all the time, your friends and the family don't really get it.
They don't know the ins and outs of the industry. So having a really good community of people that you can ask when you get stuck or, you know, are there to support you or cheer you on when you're doing something new is really, really vital to help you grow your. So how can we make the most of it? Well, the first thing is to do that introduction posts, like I talked about before, and this is even more crucial in the membership.
I would encourage anyone who joins my membership community to do exactly this. And again, I see a lot of people not making the most of it. I had a new member the other day who was absolutely refreshing in the way that he introduced himself to the group. And he got loads out of it because lots of people are replying to him. And then he was replying back to them and engaging with the community. So he'd only been part of the community a few minutes and he'd already started building connections.
Why? Because he made the most of that introduction post. Building real relationships with the people in the community, following them on Instagram. And I guarantee they will remember him now because he really interacted with them on a personal detail.
So do make sure you do go ahead and put an introduction post into the group as soon as you join, or if the group leader introduces you, make sure you're then introducing yourself underneath their post and replying to the comments and talking to people who say hello to. Secondly, if you're in a membership community, ask all the questions. The whole point of being in this community is so that you can get help in growing your business. So don't be embarrassed. Don't be shy. Ask the questions.
That's why you're there. That's why everyone else is there. We're there to learn and to grow. So whatever question you've got, make sure you are asking the question just like in the free group, but I guarantee you'll get a much better quality of response in the membership community. Why? Because it's full of those people are really committed to being there and wanting to make good connections. The next thing in these groups is they're really safe spaces to be very vulnerable.
Now we don't like being vulnerable. We like to pretend that everything's fine, but actually we can get the most out of these spaces when we are vulnerable. When we say we're struggling with something, when we say we're not sure how to do something, when we've got a really difficult client. Uh, subtly talk about it so we can get some help in how to deal with it. So we have the confidence to deal with some of these issues in a professional way, but with professional help, so do be vulnerable.
If you're struggling with something, that's the time to really utilize these groups and memberships to get the help and support and encouragement. Absolutely need. And it's a much safer space to do it in these paid for communities, because like I said, everyone's there for one reason it's a much smaller group of people in the group is not full of hundreds of other people as well. So it's a great place to be. The next tip I have for you is to make the most of the training.
There is some really high level training. If you look in my wedding pro members group, I have high-level experts every single month. And the great thing about these membership communities is it allows you to access really great levels of training for a really affordable price. Why? Because. Benefit from my connections in the industry. And from the fact that there's lots of you putting into that group to make it work.
So for a small, monthly fee, you get access to trainers that would usually spend or charge you hundreds of pounds to go on their courses and to access them. But through your connection with me, you get access to them and they are real people that you can interact with. So make sure you're putting those dates in your diary, turning up. Asking the questions to those leaders, you can get your personal questions answered within the community because it's a small group of people.
So make sure you're making the most of those training sessions showing up to them or putting them in your diary and rewatching them at a later date. You also get access to whole libraries of previous training sessions as well. So do make the most of those before you go ahead and buy other courses, because there may be a session in there that can help you.
So if you're stuck with something like email marketing, accounting, Instagram reels, Facebook advertising, SEO, Google keywords, Google analytics. Well, ask your group leader, or go into your member's portal and see if there's already a training session on it. That's part of your membership and therefore free for you to access. Don't go ahead and stop buying additional training when you've got access to all of this training as part of your membership price.
And if you're in my community, one thing I always say is if there's something you need training on, tell me about it. And I will go ahead and find the best experts for you. Bring them into the group again, using my connections. So you get access to that training for free as part of your. If you don't ask, you don't get. And whenever someone asks in my group, I will always do my best to find a great expert, to bring in, to talk to them about whatever subject it is.
The other great thing about showing up to that training is that you're always getting up-to-date training things like Instagram and Facebook and SEO change all of the time. So every few months you can get a new expert into one of those membership communities and you can make sure you have the latest information. The next thing you need to be doing. If you're part of these membership communities is showing up and commenting.
If you're watching the weekly live videos or you're watching the training, don't watch them in silence. Make sure you're interacting, commenting, talking to each other. So people start to recognize your name. Although we're online when we're all watching the same video at the same time and talking to each other, we start to feel like we're building relationships with people and we start to remember them.
So interact in the comments, reply to other people's comments, be friendly, say hello to each other, help people out and answer their questions. This is a sure fire way to stand out and to start being noticed. If you never show up and you never comment, no one's ever going to know you exist. The final thing I want you to do if you're part of these membership communities or part of mine is to make sure you're looking for opportunities to help other people out. We love to help other people out.
And when other people help us out, we want to then help them in return. So if you see people asking questions or feeling vulnerable, or being stuck with something, Offered to help them. And again, in the paid for membership communities, you know, that everyone's there for the right reason. And therefore it's a less scary prospect to offer to help because they're not going to bite your head off they're there because they want the help. So go ahead and offer them help.
You can share resources with them. You can share ideas with them. You can offer to jump on a call with them and, and walk them through something and guess what? You'll build a relationship with them so that then they will want to start recommending you to other people. And this is when we go full circle. Remember right back when I talked about those free bride and groom wedding communities, and how you want other people to be commenting your name rather than talking about yourself.
Well, this is how it happens. I see this happen all the time with my membership groups. They're all in the membership together. They start to get to know each other and they know what each other does. And then when those posts come up in those bride and groom's communities, guess what? They're all promoting each other because they're all part of the same community.
Whichever groups you're part of on Facebook, whether it's the bride and groom groups, the free groups, or the pay for membership community, it's really important that you don't be invisible and you make the, most of the opportunities start implementing some of these ideas that I shared with you, whether it's the introduction post.
Asking a question, being vulnerable, even going live in the group and talking about something, talk about an experience you've had and how it can help other people start taking those conversations, offline, meet people for coffee. That's how you're going to get the most of these communities. If you're interested in being part of my paid for for membership community, the wedding pro members lounge, I would absolutely love to have you.
So I've created a special offer just for you, the podcast listeners. If you go to the link in the show notes and use the code podcast, you can try the one month for free for one pound. That means you can see if you like the community. See what I'm talking about and for just one pound. You can access all of those trainings as well. So go ahead, go to the show notes and use the code podcast to get that special.
If you've enjoyed the tips in today's episode, why not go ahead and share it with a wedding industry, friend, or colleague. So it helps them out too. And if you love the show, please go and help me out by rating or reviewing it. I'll see you. Next time. One thing I love about the wedding industry is the other amazing people you get to work with. If you want to meet like-minded wedding pros, just like you, then why not join my free Facebook? Wedding pros who are ready to grow.
Come to meet some new connections, hang out with me and hopefully learn some new things too just search for us on Facebook.