Episode 226: How to Stay Consistent With Your Social Media (Even When You’re Busy!) with Brandee Gaar

Do you ever feel overwhelmed by social media? Do you find yourself wondering how on earth can you remain consistent with social media when it feels like you’re falling off the treadmill?

You’re not alone! Many wedding professionals struggle to stay consistent on social media with the million other things they need to do, especially during their busy season. Many wedding pros also overcomplicate social media so, in this episode, Brandee Gaar and I are breaking down how to stay consistent on social media even when you’re busy by making it easy and simple. Yes, there are shortcuts and easy ways to get clients from social media. It doesn’t have to be hard, time-consuming, or a slog all the time.

By the end of this podcast episode, you’ll have a clear way to stay consistent with your social media that’s so simple you’ll feel like you’re cheating.

In this episode we’ll cover:

• The mindset shift required to be successful on social media
• 82% of couples research vendors on social media before contacting them so you need to make a good impression with your social media
• Why consistency matters on social media
• The role social media has in getting your potential client to trust you
• How to use social media as part of your sales funnel
• The right types of content for each part of your sales funnel
• How to outline your content
• How to use content themes in your social media planning
• How to use anchor content
• How to repurpose your blog content into social media posts
• How we overcomplicate blogging & social media
• Why repeating yourself on social media is good
• How to use your slow season to get ahead with social media
• How to avoid outsourcing mistakes
• Ways to stay consistent with your marketing when you’re super busy
• How to create Instagram Stories when you don’t want to be on camera
• Quick and easy Instagram Story ideas
• How to fit social media engagement into your busy schedule
• How to be successful with social media in just 1 hour per week

How to Stay Consistent With Your Social Media (Even When You’re Busy!)

Time For A Mindset Shift

Social media is no longer something you should do if you have time, it’s an essential part of our businesses. According to WeddingWire, 82% of engaged couples are researching vendors on social media before they ever contact them. Not having a consistent presence on social media means you’re missing out on a lot of bookings.

Not being consistent on social media or with your blog can make it look like you’ve gone out of business or can’t handle what’s on your plate which makes couples hesitant to work with you. We need to get in the mindset that this is now the front door for our clients and it needs to make a good impression.

Staying consistent on social media allows couples to discover you and get in touch with you while they’re excited about what you provide. Brandee’s planning company close so many sales in their Instagram DMs. Social media is a great place to capitalize on hot leads. People are looking for vendors on social media and they want to reach out to you but if your last post was several months ago, they’re going to feel like you can’t be trusted.

Instagram allows you to engage with your leads as human beings and connect with them on a personal level. This allows for instant rapport building and connection between you and your lead. That’s not something that other communication methods make readily available. People buy from people they know, like, and trust and social media is great for being able to show behind the scenes and make real connections with people.

Why Staying Consistent With Social Media Matters

You can show up however you like on social media but the most important thing is to remain consistent. That’s a struggle for a lot of us when we have a million other things to do! In order to stay consistent and get results from social media, you need a strategy. It isn’t enough to show up and post random things.

Brandee used to outsource her social media to anyone who would do it but the result of that was random social media posts without any intention. Your social media posts have to serve as a way to move people to the next step in your sales funnel.

On Instagram, reels are top of the funnel because they can be discovered by people who don’t follow you. Your grid is middle of the funnel where you try to get them to follow you. In your Instagram grid posts, you’re trying to move them to your website, blog posts, or into your DMs.

When you think about it this way, it’s less daunting because you know what result you want to create and it narrows your focus. Giving yourself an outline allows you to never have to start from scratch and create very intentional social media posts. Maybe you post a reel on Thursday or a real wedding on Monday but having that structure helps you actually create social media content.

Creating Strategic Social Media Content That Sells

Brandee and I are both big fans of treating your blog posts as anchor content and repurposing them into multiple social media posts. You can take a single blog post and create an entire week’s work of content for social media. On Instagram, you can do a reel or two, a graphic post, an image post, a carousel, and create Instagram Stories about it.

There are so many ways you can take that single original piece of content and break it down into multiple social media posts so you don’t have to always come up with something new to talk about. In fact, if you’re repeating yourself that means you’ve nailed down your messaging. That’s a good thing! Chances are, people haven’t seen it before and even if they have, it shows that you’re consistent and known for something.

Inside The Wedding Business Collective, we have a course called Blogging & Repurposing Content Made Simple that goes over how to do this in a very step-by-step way. You can join The Wedding Business Collective here and dive right into it!

Don’t just blog for the sake of blogging, make sure there is a clear strategy behind it to make your blog posts into client magnets and make them very easy for you to create consistently. The same goes for any sort of marketing. Don’t market without a strategy and don’t create something like an educational blog post or a real wedding and only post about it on social media once.

Even if you just write one educational blog post and one real wedding blog post a month, that gives you a ton of content you can break down and reuse on social media. You only really create one piece of content and reuse it in different ways.

Reposting the same content on social media isn’t just allowed, it’s a really good idea. People forget the things they’ve seen and in the wedding industry, you’re dealing with new people every year. They have the same problems, concerns, and objections and you can repurpose old social media posts instead of creating entirely new ones. I do this on a regular basis and the old posts that I tweak slightly and reuse always do well.

How To Stay Consistent On Social Media When You Get Busy

Use your slow season to create your outline for your social media content. Brandee’s team uses the summer (their slow season) to create all of their blog posts for the next 5 months because they know they’ll be busy. Don’t try to keep up with social media on a weekly basis, create your content in batches and get it scheduled on a monthly basis. This will make your life so much easier! You could spend a single day each month on social media and be done creating content for the month.

Brandee and I both agree that entirely outsourcing your social media to someone else is dangerous and shouldn’t be something you do without really thinking about it and making sure the person you’re hiring has a clear strategy. If you can outsource parts of it like scheduling the posts or creating the images/graphics, that’s fantastic.

Try not to hand over all of the keys to the kingdom to someone else to communicate in your voice. Too often this winds up in generic content that doesn’t make you stand out. You do have to be involved in your marketing even if you have a team because it’s your voice and your brand. Look for parts of your social media process you can outsource instead of outsourcing all of your social media.

It’s important to remember that consistency is more important than frequency so don’t overcommit to creating weekly blog posts and 3 reels a week and 2 image posts a week if you won’t be able to maintain that in your busy season. Many wedding pros post daily during their quiet season and totally fall off the wagon during the busy season. When you commit to only doing what you can handle, this doesn’t happen.

Brandee recommends posting 3 times per week on Instagram. One post can be a reel, one can be a carousel, and one can be an image post. This utilizes the different features of Instagram which is something they reward. If you then feel like you can add on another post each week, go ahead but don’t overload yourself.

You teach Instagram how often to expect you to post something and when you don’t stay consistent, your reach and engagement plummet and you have to rebuild. You can avoid this by not overloading yourself, to begin with. Don’t put yourself on a treadmill that you can’t keep up with!

It’s definitely harder to stay consistent with the more on-the-fly elements of social media like responding to messages and comments or posting Instagram Stories. If you don’t want to be on camera and you’re just not feeling it, think about what else you could post to your stories that could be relevant or helpful. Is there an old post you could re-share? Could you share something from someone else and credit them? There are ways to stay relevant without having to always be on camera.

Using the engagement stickers on Instagram Stories is great for engagement so make use of the polls, questions, and slider options. You can add any of these to a photo of a real wedding to show up, remain top of mind, and stay engaged with your audience. You can also create Instagram Story drafts to use on days you’re super busy.

Again, this can be really simple so don’t overthink it!

We tend to neglect the social part of social media but engaging with people is the whole point of social media. You can quickly respond to DMs in short bursts when you’re waiting for your coffee or standing in line at the bank. You don’t have to be tied to your social media but set aside a short amount of time each day to engage. Brandee does 30-minute segments twice a day during school drop-offs because there’s nothing else she can do during those weird pockets of time. I spend about 15 minutes each day usually when I need a bit of a break or when I’m waiting for something.

The most important thing you can do to set yourself up to be consistent is by outlining your posts. Set up a Google Doc or Sheet and spend an hour laying out what type of post you’re going to post and when. The next week, spend an hour dropping the topics into your outline. The following week, spend an hour fleshing out the content so it’s ready to go. That’s just 3 hours over the course of 3 weeks and in that short time, you will have already created the bulk of your content schedule for the month!

About Brandee

Brandee Gaar is a luxury event planner, thought leader, educational speaker and host of the “”She Who Dares”” Podcast. As a lifelong lover of all things events, Brandee spent 7 years as a corporate event planner with the prestigious Gaylord Hotels brand before opening her own event consulting firm. Blush by Brandee Gaar and Eleven Events by Blush have quickly become known for their over the top events and high touch standard of customer service.

Brandee Gaar is the go-to business coach and resource for wedding professionals and creative business owners who want to transform their small business from an expensive hobby into a thriving and successful career that gives them the financial and time freedom they deserve.

Website: www.brandeegaar.com
Instagram: @brandeegaar

Links & Resources:

Join us inside The Wedding Business Collective!
37 Practical Blog Post Ideas For Wedding Professionals
Episode 156: 3 Tips for Blogging for SEO (Even if You Hate Writing!) with Sara Dunn
Episode 216: Making Social Media Fun Again with Serena Waller
Episode 206: How To Convert Social Media Relationships Into Sales with Aleya Harris

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