The Simple Way To Use TikTok To Book More Weddings with Meagan Culkin

You’ve heard that you need to be on TikTok for your wedding business. You’ve heard that couples are there and it’s the best platform to reach them on.

But how do you do that without adding a ton of work onto your already full plate?

None of us want to add yet another platform to the things we need to do to book weddings, I get it. That’s why this episode is all about simple ways to use TikTok to book more weddings. You’ll learn ways you can market on TikTok without devoting a ton of time to it and still book weddings from it!

You don’t have to make your full-time job “TikTok Marketer” to get leads and bookings from the platform.

In this episode we’ll cover:

• How Meagan got started with Tiktok and how she teaches it
• How couples use TikTok
• Results Meagan has seen in her wedding business from marketing on TikTok
• How she uses it to build relationships with other vendors
• How TikTok speeds up the relationship-building process
• How TikTok differs from Instagram
• Types of content Meagan creates for TikTok
• How she makes creating TikTok videos simple
• How TikTok makes selling easier
• The hidden benefits of sharing behind-the-scenes content
• How people overthink their videos
• How to turn questions you get into TikTok content
• How Meagan weaves TikTok content creation into her day-to-day
• How she repurposes her TikTok content on Instagram and Pinterest
• Where most wedding professionals get stuck with TikTok
• What to post on TikTok
• How TikTok makes Meagan’s client work easier

The Simple Way To Use TikTok To Book More Weddings with Meagan Culkin

Hello my friend, welcome to the podcast. I am your host as always, Heidi Thompson. I am all about helping you as a wedding professional book more of the clients you really want to work with and also build a business that gives you the freedom and flexibility that you want.

And in today’s episode, we are going to be talking about TikTok, but we are going to be specifically talking about it through this lens of keeping it simple, keeping it easy, keeping it straightforward.

So I think you’re going to get a ton out of this. I know I did. I am not active on TikTok at the moment. I’m learning a little bit. I’m picking up things here and there. It’s not something I’ve really invested much time or. strategy into, but hearing the interview that I’m about to share with you has given me a ton of ideas that I can use, which really, really helps.

Cause I think the hardest part about getting any new platform off the ground for yourself is figuring out like, what the hell am I supposed to be doing here? How do I do this and not have it be, you know, like my full-time job? We’re not influencers. We’re not, you know, just selling products off of our TikTok accounts.

So we have to make this sustainable. And that’s a big part of what we are talking about today.

But before we get to that, you may have seen my email. I asked you if you’re on my email list, if you wanted to get more referrals, but you weren’t quite sure how. And you wanted me to pull together, you know, some step-by-step referral action plans that I created for The Wedding Business Collective.

And I said I would put them together if enough people said that they wanted them and offer them for under $20. Well, my inbox exploded with so many of you saying that you wanted this.

So it is ready and available for you. I pulled together the exact step-by-step referral strategies that I give clients when they want to bring in more referrals, but they’re not really sure what action to take because referrals are pretty straightforward.

They’re weird. They’re kind of squishy. They don’t have like a step-by-step as much. So I put these into a step-by-step format. There are seven step-by-step referral action plans. These are checklists, a step-by-step checklist that anyone can follow and they break down each of the referral strategies.

And you can go see exactly what those strategies are and see, uh, that you’re going to get a bonus of seven fill-in-the-blank email templates to help you take action on this when you go to https://www.theweddingbusinesscollective.com/rme. And that’s for referrals made easy.

For just $17. You’ll have Seven Step-by-Step Action Plans. You’ll never have to worry about what the hell you’re supposed to do to get more referrals. Again, if you can follow a checklist, you can get more referrals. So again, that link is https://www.theweddingbusinesscollective.com/rme and that’s for referrals made easy.

All right. Let’s get into our interview today with the fabulous Meagan Culkin.

Today I’m joined by Meagan Culkin of Magnolia Collective. She is a wedding planner and designer. She’s in her 13th year of business, and she has been talking an awful lot about TikTok lately. And today she’s joining us to dig into that because I know it’s something we all hear a lot about.

We all maybe feel like we should be doing something on TikTok, but how do we do it in a way that makes sense and in a way that is sustainable? So Meagan, thank you so much for joining me.

How did you get into really working with wedding pros on TikTok and talking about this topic?

I started on TikTok as a consumer. In COVID, like so many of us did, um, you know, just kind of sitting on my couch with a bunch of canceled weddings and needing a distraction from all of these rescheduled event emails that were happening. I really just started to notice that brides were showing up on TikTok and they were panicking and there were just a lot of people who were saying, you know, my venue has canceled and not now I have to move to a private residence or now I have to do this.

I have this problem and I don’t know what to do. And it was couples talking to each other and offering advice, which, you know, as a wedding pro, you know, is not inherently always the best, um, scenario if they are fueling fire or causing panic, um, to escalate. And so I found myself just kind of jumping into those conversations and inserting myself and saying, Hey, you know, like I’m a planner.

This is what we’re seeing in our experience and really using it as an opportunity to like switch the narrative a little bit. Um, and, you know, our personal platform grew from there, but, um, also now it’s grown into this scenario where so many vendors and wedding pro friends have just felt like, yeah, I can’t, I can’t deal with one more thing, right.

I can’t tackle TikTok. I’ve got too much going on and I don’t have time to do dances or transition videos or anything like that. Um, and so I just. Really like to be able to kind of bring it back and say like that’s not what you have to do you know, like we can all just kind of show up however we are and um, Bring our own unique take to the platform, which is something I love about it I think that’s really refreshing to hear because what we see of TikTok is, like you said, just people dancing around.

And I know me personally, I’m like, hell no, I’m not doing that. That’s not going to happen. Yes. But I totally understand that feeling of like, Of course, it’s one more thing that I have to do.

What kind of results are you seeing in your business?

Yeah, absolutely. It definitely has changed, um, from I would say 2020 to now. Um, and a lot of it has to do with kind of how I show up on the platform. But one of the things that we really started to track last year was just like the easiest target of, you know, everybody’s got this contact form on their website that is like, how did you find us?

And we added TikTok as an option of just like, let’s see who is really coming to us. From this platform. Um, and we had I think 13 couples who reached out to us last year from the platform. Six of those booked. And that is free advertising, you know, like those, those were six couples that came to us without a single advertising dollar spent and they were also essentially a warm lead, right?

Like, you know, maybe it was a venue tour that I took a video of, and then a couple reached out and said, Hey, I’m also getting married at that venue. And now I see that you’ve been there and you’ve got ideas for this space. Sign me up, you know, like they, people feel like they know who you are based on what you put out on the internet.

And so we just started kind of using that to our advantage a little bit. Um, and, and, you know, now that has also grown into relationships we have with vendors and venue partners and things like that as well.

Building Relationships On TikTok

That’s so cool that you’re seeing, obviously, the direct connection of having more bookings from what you are putting out there, but also the relationships with the other vendors.

I think that’s something that people don’t really think about, even though, you know, it is social media. Yep, absolutely. Um, I, we had a wedding. I had just thought about it this afternoon. I didn’t let her know I was going to talk about it. Um, but we had a wedding three weeks ago and the photographer was amazing.

Um, I followed her on Instagram for, you know, years and I’m super excited to work with her. And, you know, she had a much bigger following on Instagram than I did. And I, you know, you kind of feel like. You’re in the presence of a celebrity, right? Like, it’s just like, Oh, hi, how are you? Like, I hope you don’t think I’m weird.

Um, and she walked in and was like, you’re the girl from TikTok. And I was like, I don’t even know what that means, but yeah. Okay. And, um, within like 20 minutes, she was just like, Oh yeah, I saw that video. And that reminded me of this wedding. And I knew that you were my kind of person. And it felt like it sped up our process, right?

Like it made us automatically know that we were each other’s people. Whereas normally on a wedding day, you know, you get those little minutes here and there to be able to chat with vendors, but you don’t really have that time. And she felt like she had that time ahead of time. I felt like I knew who she was based on her Instagram.

And, you know, within the week afterward, she was like, this was great. Like. Let’s be friends in real life too. And I was like, Yes, thank you TikTok for making me look way cooler than I felt like I would have been in person talking to this photographer that I’d always wanted to work with, you know, like, um, and it was just such a cool way for, for people to kind of feel like they get to know you and have that, um, experience just day to day, which I just love.

That is really cool. And I love when you get to get a feel for who a person is through their social media, because it, you know, most of the connections I’ve made with people that I’ve collaborated with haven’t been made based on business things. They’ve been made based on. Hey, this thing you posted is hilarious or, oh my God, your dog is the cutest thing in the world or, you know, just being able to have those human conversations with people is so important.

Absolutely. And, you know, it is that relatable thing like where we’re in this industry where nobody gets it, but us, you know, and, and a lot of that is our work schedule and why we’re crazy enough to do stuff like this and, you know, whatever. And, um, sometimes you just look at an Instagram grid and say. Oh, my gosh, their work is so much better than mine or, you know, in this self-comparison game.

TikTok Allows You To Be Less Polished

And I think it’s those moments where you can say, oh, but they are also, you know, like, doing work in their pajamas on their couch on a Tuesday afternoon. Like, they’re just like me, you know, and so it’s just like. Breaks down that barrier a little bit more. Yeah. That’s a really good point. Cause you know, we all look around at what people put out there and everyone seems to have it.

So put together and it’s like, nobody has it. Not a single person. That’s my favorite thing about TikTok. So like, you know, Instagram, I feel like there is this pressure to have this totally curated feed and this curated life. And, um, Partially because of when I started on TikTok, where it was like, I am not dressing up to sit in my living room.

It’s just not happening. You know? Um, but I think that people don’t want that. They don’t want to see you with your phone on a tripod in a blazer sitting at your desk, talking about your day. They want to see what it’s really like, you know? And for me, like some of my highest performing videos are stuff that I.

Just took like 30 seconds of footage when I’m like, this is what I used to out of my emergency kit on a wedding day where people don’t think about that, you know, like, or I’m like, oh, raging Friday night and it’s me sitting at the dining room table folding napkins for a wedding the next day, you know, like.

It’s just that and that’s our life. And like, as industry people, we take that for granted, but clients don’t know that, you know, they don’t see that, um, they don’t see photographers editing processes or anything. So it kind of pulls back the curtain a little bit. Helps them get it a bit more.

Types Of Content Meagan Creates On TikTok

And how do you see that as different from what you’re doing elsewhere? Or maybe it’s not. I don’t know. Maybe it’s the exact same thing. Yeah. Um, So I always it’s a couple different things, right? Like I always create content on a wedding day, but not in the way that people would say, Oh, my gosh, how do you have time to do that?

Right? Like, I am used to going around on a wedding day and snapping photos of the first dance and the cake cutting and, you know, all the stuff that’s going to be on your Instagram stories.

And so what I do, in addition to that is I just kind of toggle over on my phone and also take short-form videos, you know, so it’s like maybe a before and after of the, um, What do you call it of the ballroom or behind the scenes of what we do if a boot near breaks and we’ve got to fix it, you know, just kind of those little moments that are not always the prettiest things, but they’re just the real life.

I capture all of that and then I just kind of bank it and some of that stuff. I turn into a video right away and others, it’s like, maybe I’m just going to save this and have an idea to use it later. Um, and so that is kind of 1 whole section of the demographic of, you know, 1 bucket of things that I do the other thing that I’ll do is anytime I’m doing, like, creative.

Behind-the-scenes moments throughout a wedding week, like in preparation. So, for example, we’ve got a wedding this weekend and all of the signage is very, like, Pinterest-inspired. Right? So everything she sent us had. Tie on tassels and die-cut beautiful corners and gold gilded edges. And like, that’s all great, but someone has to do that.

You know, like you can bring that to your printer and say, I want this. And they say, yeah, that’s adorable. Not going to happen. So that becomes my job, right? And so I will share those types of videos as well.

My 3rd bucket is going to be things like venue tours or site visits for a private residence wedding, you know, like, behind the scenes of a tasting or a DJ meeting stuff like that.

And it, like, just kind of gets people thinking, um, of, oh yeah, I didn’t know that all of this went into your job. And it really just makes your sale easier at the end of the day, because it becomes this kind of living portfolio that, you know, if you’ve got your price on your website and they’re all going to price shop based on, you know, oh, well, you’re a hundred dollars more 300 more than your competitor.

But you’re showing every day all that you also do, they see that inherent added value. That’s a really good point. And I’ve never really thought about that. I think we look at behind-the-scenes things as, you know, giving people a sneak peek, showing a little bit behind the curtain, being relatable, but we on’t necessarily think about it in terms of like, educating the client on everything that actually goes into their wedding.

And I could see that. You know, seeing what you’re doing for a client, making the person watching be like, damn, she is really going to take care of me. Absolutely. And you know, like that is the other thing that I say. Not only as it’s not really even about putting it out there to get in front of new couples. That is absolutely important.

However, in the same way that if you have a client that comes in and say you’re a florist and they’re like, I really want, um, greenery on the chandeliers in the ballroom. And I want these modern centerpieces and you can pull from a gallery or a couple of galleries of work you’ve done in the past and say, Yep.

I have this and I have this. And what about this idea, you know, and, and the proof is in the pudding right there in front of them of like, wow, they can absolutely deliver on this abstract idea in my brain in the same way, you know, like, if we have a TikTok video that we. Create from, you know, a speakeasy event that we did.

Or this huge balloon installation that we did on a ceiling somewhere and somebody comes up and is like, Hey, I had an idea about this. I’m going to go on Pinterest and find someone else’s idea. I’m going to go on my TikTok and find what we’ve done and say, Oh, you mean like this? And then I’m like, how tall are the ceilings?

Because for this event, we needed a 20-foot ladder, or we needed this, or we needed that. And they’re like, their two thoughts are, she’s already solved this problem for me. You know, like she’s reinvented the wheel and they see something real. It’s Pinterest versus reality, but it’s working in your favor.

Yeah. And I mean, you think about anybody we work with and whether it’s our life or in our business, anyone that we hire to do something, seeing that they have done something similar, that they have the experience. It just makes you feel so much more confident in the money that you’re spending.

And you know, it gets them already excited that they made the right choice. Yeah. You know, um, we have a friend that is a wonderful, wonderful florist and, um, her, her work is always exquisite.

But for me, what I love, love, love about her is that she’s, All of her packaging is exquisite, you know, like rather than when she sends brides and bridal parties, their bouquets, rather than like leaving a handful of paper towels, she has like a monogrammed tea towel that she leaves for them to blot their bouquets, you know, like all of the mother and grandmother’s corsages come on like a gold cuff bracelet that they can you know, so everything is just a little bit more and I always post that.

When I’m working with her and say like, look how amazing this is. Look how great, how beautiful this is. This experience from start to finish is so lovely. And then, you know, when a couple gets two side-by-side inquiries and they’re like, wow. Maybe she’s more expensive than this other florist. She, they also already know, but look at all of these other ways that she serves us, you know, and, and so they’re not as upset about spending that money.

Yeah. The experience is so much better and it’s not you telling them the experience is going to be great, which we can all do. They have seen it for themselves.

And they, you know, a lot of them too will come in. What I’ve found now is they will come in and, and say like, we want that, you know, like whatever, whatever that great, big, beautiful wedding was that you did. What does it take to get us that experience?

And it’s, like, okay, well, let’s work with this team of curated professionals that are just going to bring that to life for you, you know, and, um, being able to kind of share some of those behind the scenes also of like on a wedding day when we’re friends with those vendors and just how much fun you can be having.

They want that energy, you know, like, and, and that’s contagious.

That’s a really good point. And I think these are benefits that most of us don’t think about. We think about it like any other platform, you know, okay, I have some stuff out there. Maybe somebody finds it and they inquire, but there is a lot more to it than that.

And when you think about approaching your marketing with that, being a priority, you’re going to create different content. Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah.

Dealing With Booking Slow Downs

It’s interesting this year. I’m sure so many people have seen that the difference in the booking calendar has changed. We don’t, I know in our experience, we are not having couples that are reaching out like two years in advance or 18 months in advance because they’re saying like, there are no, there are no available dates.

So this is how far out we have to go. They’re pumping the brakes a little bit more, you know, and maybe they are booking in like six months or nine months, which we just haven’t seen since before COVID. Um, but these couples that, that I, my team personally is getting, if they’re booking in six months, but they’re saying, we trust you and we are ready for you to like, But this whole team together, based on all of these people that, you know, trust and love, then that can be executed in half the time, you know, like, we don’t need a year to do any of these events.

If you’re allowed to kind of work with all of those people that you want to. And I, I definitely attribute that a lot to them getting to see that relationship we have with, you know, one venue versus another or a photography team, a hair and makeup team, a rental company, you know, so, um, it, it definitely pays out in multiple dividends.

Yeah, there’s a lot of hidden benefits to, you know, really showcasing your work, sharing that behind-the-scenes content.

Making Marketing On TikTok Sustainable & Easy

Now, something I’ve noticed from the way you talk about creating this content is you’re not treating it as a separate to-do item. You’re not like, okay, got to like sit down and, you know, create all of my TikTok content.

It seems like you’re really weaving this into your normal workflows so that you always have something to pull out, which I think is really smart. A hundred percent. Yeah. Um, it is something that I will, um, If there is a skill that I’m working on, whether I mean, it’s even kind of going through and checking meals for a plated dinner, you know, to make sure.

Oh, well, somebody’s got to organize this. Or steaming linens or doing just kind of any of those little mundane things that in the planner world are my day-to-day. I’ll turn on the video. The other thing that I’ll do is honestly, like once a week, maybe once every two weeks, I take like a 15-second video of me just typing on the computer.

And I just like list out, maybe like, this is my to-do list for the day, or, you know, have some kind of text on it about like, wedding emails made better when you’re at a brewery or, you know, something like that. And it’s those videos performed sometimes better than, you know, any of the things that you take all of this time to edit and crop and create.

Because people just want to see what that looks like. Yeah. I think a lot of people overthink. Video content and think it has to be this complex thing with all these edits and all these like, you know, different bells and whistles that you’re including and then it has to be like the most entertaining thing in the world and that’s really not the case.

Yeah, 100%. Um, I definitely was able to. TikTok was a platform that helped me get out of the feeling of like, I just need to be perfect, or I need to not show up unless I look or act a certain way, because that’s not my brand, you know, like, that’s not who I am in everyday life. So why would the couples that I really want to be attracting be looking for that anyways, you know, like, um, so it is more of that, like, I’m going, yep, here I am at a sweatshirt or I’m walking out of the gym, but let’s be real. It’s probably the second time all month.

Turning Questions Into TikTok Content

I actually went there, you know, like, it’s just showing up and then also make yourself available if people have questions.

So, you know, like that’s something that is big too, is like, if anyone ever has a question that they directly ask me or, um, you know, slide into a private message and ask, the great thing about TikTok is like, that can just be an entirely separate post is, you know, just replying to that comment.

And somebody asked me a question the other day and it was about the size of a tent and they were like, if I’m having a wedding of 150 people, what should that tent size be? And I was like, well, I mean, honestly, I would want to ask you 50 other questions to be able to determine that answer. But it spawned all of these other people asking questions, you know, because they’re like, oh, I didn’t know that.

I’ve never thought of that. I love just being able to take questions that people ask into something because it’s so easy. You’re going to answer them anyway. You may as well, like, answer it publicly because chances are if 1 person has that question, like you found many, many others do as well. Absolutely.

One of the things, honestly, that I see as kind of the biggest pillars of education for my company is we do a ton of private residence weddings. I grew up in Eastern North Carolina, especially when we started, there were not a lot of venues. So the amount of people who say, I’m just going to throw up a tent in my backyard, you know, like That’s all well and good, but a private residence wedding is two, sometimes three times more expensive than going to get married at a venue.

So having that education of like, this is going to take time and resources and, you know, like, you have to, before you get overwhelmed, these are things you should have to know, um, that has been a huge thing. For me, it’s like it’s second nature to me, but I feel like that lesson can be applied to everyone.

You know, there is something that you do that is commonplace for you and it makes sense for you, but a couple doesn’t know that, or even another wedding vendor might not know that. Um, but if they, if you’re able to teach it to them, They’re able to kind of spread that message for you. Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense.

And I think we all undervalue the expertise we have because we assume everybody else knows this. No, pretty much nobody knows this. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Um, kind of one of the things also that, um, just to note on the idea of like capturing information or capturing video and, and weaving it into like my day to day.

Coming Up With Ideas For TikTok Videos

The one thing that I also do is I have like a running note on my phone of just ideas, you know, like maybe I don’t have time to do it right now because it’s wedding season and you know, whatever, but. You know how these, even if you’re just a consumer of TikTok, you hear these audios again and again. And so, you know, like, I should find a way to use this or just in passing and you’re like, oh, well, I don’t have time to edit this video now, but this could be a really good idea, you know, and just to be able to write some of those things down, um, when you’re in the moment, so that if you do have time.

And you’re sitting on a Sunday afternoon and you’re like, oh, maybe I could make some of these and stay, save them in a draft folder. You have a running list of ideas and you’re not being like, what was I thinking in the middle of that wedding last weekend? You know, like, it’s already there for you.

You just have to kind of pull it up again. I love that. It just makes it easy to do.

How Much Time Meagan Spents On TikTok

I would say I probably don’t create more than an hour or an absolute max two hours in a week. Um, I always have a bank of like drafted videos.

I will try to post two to three times a day, you know, kind of like a morning, noon and night type thing, but they can be, it’s not an app that I put in there. Like it’s going to auto generate kind of like, you know, Planoly or anything like that. I just have the draft and I’m like, okay, well, you know, maybe I’m going to, I haven’t answered a question in a while.

So this is one I saved two days ago. I’m going to drop that in there, you know, um, and it’s just really quick and, and easy. Um, the most time that I ever spend actually creating the videos for me is going to be like the day after a wedding, if I was like, okay, I want to go ahead and get these like videos.

Banked and saved and ready to go to certain things like the bride walking down the aisle always, you know, you can always record it. Same thing with a cake cutting or a bouquet toss. And they don’t require a lot of work on your part. It’s just a matter of showing it. Um, so I just grab those, save them in drafts.

And then those other videos I took on the wedding day, I just don’t delete them because. Eventually I might want to use them. Um, but that’s probably the only time that I really am sitting down and knocking out a lot all at one time. That is not bad at all for the results you’re getting from it.

Definitely not. Um, especially considering that comparatively, if I am posting, TikTok’s definitely my priority. I will post. 2 to 3 times a day on tick tock. I probably am posting, like, 4, maybe 5 times a week on Instagram.

But the algorithms are different and you don’t really get penalized in the same way on Instagram for not posting every day. So generally, I just kind of ranked my priorities a little bit like, all right, well, I see more of a direct ROI over here. So that’s where I’m going to make sure that I’m showing up every day. And that makes sense.

I think sometimes we don’t really think about that and we’re just like, Hey, this is my to do list, but you have to look at what is actually getting you the return because that is going to be worth your time.

How Meagan Repurposes Content

So the biggest thing with repurposing content is you just want to make sure that your watermarks are not on the videos from one video to the next. I don’t know if you’ve got a resource page, but I can definitely send you, I’ve just got like a quick cheat sheet for optimizing your content.

We can put that in the show notes. Save Tick is the name of the app that I use to take my TikToks and remove the watermarks and put those over on Instagram or on Pinterest. They just remove it so it doesn’t slow down your traction at all.

And that’s the other thing like, that is really powerful about just video content in general, you know, like, we have this 1 video that I took in October of last year. It was a bridal party where there were like 12 bridesmaids and 12 groomsmen. So they all got introduced as a big group rather than like couples or groupings.

Literally all I did, it was like a 15 second video of just them all coming in all at one time. I think it got 3 million views on TikTok, but it has like 12 million views on Pinterest. So it’s the exact same video, but it is performed completely differently from one platform to the next. So, and I think that the nature of that comes from, it is an idea, save this for later and Pinterest is a save this for later platform, right?

So they’re going to push something like that out because they want people to go back to your page. And Pinterest is something that I like. Literally have to put it up on my to-do list like every other month, like, please, for the love of all that is holy update your pins, you know, but I certainly do not do it like every day or weekly.

And yet sometimes those videos just take off and, you know, so it’s kind of using that same idea of if you’re going to go 90 percent go that extra 10 percent and do yourself the favor of like, really giving yourself the opportunity to be in front of as many people as possible. Yeah, because really, I mean, how much time does it actually take you to refurbish this content?

It sounds like a very quick process. It’s super fast. And it’s really, I mean, not every video works in every scenario, you know, like, um, things like that CapCut app. If you’ve got, you know, a gif of Kevin Hart in the bottom and then there’s like a picture that you’ve uploaded in the background or some of those things that you kind of see going around.

I know there was one about Mrs. Doubtfire a while ago that was going viral. Those work really well on TikTok. But Instagram Isn’t really using that kind of stuff right now so I would not repurpose that video. But I had a video that we used a couple from a wedding a couple weeks ago, and the favors that the bride did were sunglasses with, like, a packet of Advil tied onto them.

And it was just like, drinks are on us. Hangovers are on yourself was like, it was like, a 5 second video. I posted it on TikTok. It’s got like 13 million views on Instagram. I posted it like a week later and it got like 9 million views. And it was just like, there’s probably some people who have seen it in both avenues, but in both of those platforms, everyone likes to see a good idea.

So again, I haven’t gotten around to putting it on Pinterest, but that would be one I would put on Pinterest because it’s transient to different seasons and different styles of weddings. You know, like the majority of our weddings have a lot of alcohol at them and everyone can relate to, you know, like this being a cute idea for a favor.

Yeah, I love that. And I love just the simplicity of it, too. A hundred percent.

Where wedding pros get hung up when it comes to TikTok

The biggest pushback that I tend to hear is, you know, I’m trying to run a business. I don’t need to be TikTok famous. And you know, like I totally get that, but also nobody’s asking you to be TikTok famous.

You don’t have to be, you know, you do not have to adopt an influencer lifestyle where you’re like doing live reviews or doing any, anything like that product partnerships, whatever you can take whatever you want from this platform and you can use it.

However, it makes sense for you. There’s a wedding planner friend that I have and literally all she does is record videos sitting in her car, talking about like, essentially dumb stuff that people have done that she’s like. I’m sure you wouldn’t make this mistake, but it gives her the opportunity to say all the things that she wants to say.

Right. My first video that went viral on TikTok was not me doing a wedding. It was like a DIY craft for my office. My next video that went viral was like a venue tour. And my next video that went viral, like they were just all over the place. They were soup to nuts.

There was no rhyme or reason to it, but like my goal was never to get like 30,000 followers or, you know, whatever it was. Just to put information out there and then for it to maybe make my life a little bit easier and to also at the time kind of tamp down potential bridezillas, right? Now I use it just as a messaging platform really. I know a lot of my couples follow me.

I also know a lot of their moms follow me and I am not the planner. To be best friends with your mom, like If your mom is hiring me, I’m probably not the planner for you, you know, cause it’s not my job to do mom’s wedding too. It is my job to do the couple’s wedding. Right. And so I put that out there that I’m like, if you know, this is my Kool Aid and if you’re going to drink it here, you know, here it is.

And I can say it joking around and it comes across a lot better than like putting it in a contract and they’re like, wow, she kind of sounds like a bitch. I don’t know if I’m allowed to cuss, but I just, by all means, but, you know, so it’s just kind of that way to like, show a little bit more of yourself or like what you wish you could show them.

How To Make TikTok Easy For Your Wedding Business

And I think the other thing is really just that feeling of, of it being Everest, right? Like just, I don’t have time to learn one massive new thing. I don’t have time to spend hours of my week doing all of this stuff. And, you know, certainly there are plenty of people who approach it, but it has not been that way for me.

I feel like we are getting to a point as things like AI becomes so much more popular and like this younger generation getting married that it’s like. We almost can’t afford not to, you know, like if we’re not, if we’re going to dig our heels in and just not show up in the way that couples are asking us to show up, we’re going to become irrelevant.

That is a very, very good point. You have to, and you know, you can do it in a way that is easy. That is simple. That doesn’t require a ton of your time.

And I think that is such a common objection that I hear to trying anything new and. What I always tell people, you know, when I’m working with people in my membership to help them create marketing plans, it’s like, okay, we need to choose, you know, three marketing channels that you want to focus on.

You get one experiment that you can run for a 90 day period. It sounds like this would be a great experiment and a great mindset to approach TikTok with of, you know, I’m just going to start working this into my day-to-day, like how you have described, and I am going to start posting and I’m going to see what happens and you can always decide at a later date, you know, post.

This isn’t working. This isn’t for me. Like you said, you’ve prioritized TikTok over Instagram because you’re getting a much better ROI. You get to make that decision. It’s not like when you start doing something to see if it’s going to work, you have to commit to it for the rest of your life.

Oh, absolutely. And I mean, like, I feel like people know that, like, I mean, you know, if I were doing all of the same things that I did 13 years ago when I started this business, you know, like. It would, well, it wouldn’t be working, you know, but we get to make the decisions and we get to figure it out.

And, you know, like it’s okay, just because, you know, I remember when TikTok first came out. My now ex-husband was like, you need to get on TikTok. And I mean, it was like 2018, right? And I looked at it and I was like, this is, if you think it’s all people dancing now, you know, like it was literally teenagers dancing in front of their bathroom mirrors and like, that was it. And I was like, there’s no, there’s no place for me here.

Right. Because like, that was all I saw and there were no wedding industry people. There was no one doing what I was doing, but it piqued my interest. Right. Of like, okay, but if there’s a way that I can just show up in my own way, I can see your point, but I’m just not gonna have time to, you know, chalk out all of this time on a wedding day to be like, okay, bridal party, just real quick, can we film 20 videos?

Like, absolutely not, you know, like, it’s just not gonna happen, but when I just started kind of showing up and showing what my life was like, and people responded to that. I was like, oh, okay, that’ll work. Then, you know, like. We can work with that. Yeah, I think sometimes it’s hard to see the use case of certain things, especially when they’re newer, but how does that apply to what I do?

And we are in such an amazing visual industry. There’s so much you can do with it. Like I’m jealous. I don’t get to go to weddings. You have so much that you can tap into and just like snap here and there and just make it really, really easy for yourself, like you said, and then just sit down and say, okay, I’m going to post this and see how it goes.

I am a big proponent of having a strategy when you do things, but when you’re experimenting with something, part of that strategy is, let’s see what happens. Like, I don’t know how this is going to work out. I don’t know how this platform even works yet. So part of the experiment is I don’t know. Let’s mix some stuff together and see if it explodes or not. And then we learn.

No, a hundred percent. And I, you know, I think there’s that old adage of like, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? Right. So it’s like, you’re not going to show up. Nobody’s expecting you to show up on day one, the day you download the app and be like, I know everything there is to know, or I’m going to be an overnight sensation, right?

But there’s something to be said for just saying, okay, I’m going to take 20 minutes a day and consume this content because we all know we’re on our phones for at least 20 minutes a day anyways. So if you’re just intentional about like search for wedding through the wedding TikTok. Search instead of, you know, just what comes up on your for you page, but actually going through and then writing down notes.

That reminded me of this wedding that I did, or that gave me an idea for this. And it just kind of spawns that a little bit. Or go on, put yourself in front of viewing all of the engaged couples and see what they’re talking about. You know, like, is there a problem that you can solve or question you can answer for them? Um, and just doing that a little bit at a time, I think gives you the confidence and reminder of like, just because you’re new on this platform, doesn’t mean you’re new to the industry.

You know, you know what you’re doing. You just have to figure out how to make it work. You know, I have always been very reluctant about TikTok for all of these reasons, for all these very same reasons we’re talking about here. Like, it’s another thing to do. You have made this sound so damn easy that I might just do it.

You should. You totally should. I hope that this has shown people how easy it can be. Like you said, you’re already doing this like 90 percent. If you can just go 10 more percent, which is such a small, small thing to add. Like you said, you’re doing one, maybe two hours a week at this point. And it’s a very active thing in your business when you’re getting started.

You know, if you can spend 30 minutes, if you can spend an hour, I love you can spend 15 minutes. It’s a start. And I think that is so much more palatable than learning this whole new platform and, you know, investing all this time and energy into something that may or may not work.

What was in the back of my head, like, when I first started was. I’m not doing the fun part of my job, right? We were not producing events. We were not getting to show what we actually did. And so was just a lot of that monotonous, like kind of the, we were in this perpetual January or February season, right? Where we’re just like, okay, we’ll wait and see what we’ve got in store.

And so like, I got really excited that first season where I was like, able to actually show people what we could do. But then it was sitting in the back of my head too of like, all right, well, January is coming and we go from having, you know, 30 events from September to December to like, three in quarter one, you know, so it was like, what am I going to put out on the internet then?

And you know, I mean, it’s still, it’s always trial and error for me, but something as simple as literally getting a gallery back and making a slideshow of like a highlight reel from somebody’s wedding goes pretty far. And honestly, when couples see that their wedding is on your social media, they share it and they tag their friends in it.

And, you know, they’re excited to be represented there. And it’s work that’s already been done, you know, like that. You’re just saying, Hey, look at look at this that we’ve done, but maybe it puts it in front of someone who’s getting married at that venue or worked with that photographer or something.

And it, it gives them that mental correlation between you and this other vendor, which in turn also makes them feel a little bit safer with you. Yeah. And I love just what you’re saying. Like you get to do all of this. You get to engage with couples. Now you get to make them feel this way. You get to stand out and you get to do it with old stuff.

That’s like the best thing ever. Absolutely. Don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Yeah. There’s a lot of this job that’s not fun. And this gets to be something that is, you know, so like it does not have to be this, you know, like headache or a chore. It’s a thing that you get to, you get to educate people that will then hopefully turn around and either become a client or at least make your job easier in the future.

That’s definitely a good way of looking at it because if they know more coming in, you just have so much less work to do on the front end. I see that a lot with couples that are like, if they’ve followed us already, even if they didn’t totally like, that’s not innately where they inquired, but, you know, they realize after booking, like that we’re on TikTok and then they kind of go down the rabbit hole by the time we get to their rental meeting or we get to their tasting, they’re like, Oh, I know what this is. I know what this is like in this process because I’ve been watching how it goes.

And I’ve got the answers to those questions that you’re about to ask me and stuff like that. And they might not read that packet, that welcome packet that we sent them, but. they’re going to spend their time on TikTok so we might as well make it worth our time.

That’s a really good point. And I’m sure it’s not a super common use that people would think of, but, you know, taking those things that people don’t know, they don’t know and turning them into content is just priceless.

Absolutely. So Meagan, this has been a fantastic conversation. I love the way you’re looking at this as something that you get to do, something that can be fun, something that isn’t a ton of work and something that is benefiting your business. So if people want to connect with you, if they want to learn from you, work with you on their own TikTok, how can they do that?

Yeah. So we’re Magnolia Collective on TikTok and then on Instagram, we’re Magnolia Collective LLC. My website is www.idomagnolia.com. So like, I do like your wedding vows and then Magnolia, like the flower.

We’ve got resources on the shop that are quick and easy downloads for, you know and we’re always updating them like ways to build out a content calendar and, you know, just fun things like that that are like, just a bite size resource.

If you’re like, all right, I do not want to sign up for a coaching sessions, but I do want to just kind of have this. On the radar to, you know, be able to work on this a little bit on my own time. So we’ve got those kinds of things and then we’ll do one on one coaching, um, with anybody from just one session.

If you just want a strategy call all the way up to like working together for six months of just the people who are like, I need a little bit more accountability, you know, just to make sure I’m actually doing my homework. I totally know how that goes. I am that person. That is, that is me. Otherwise, I download the thing and I’m like, yeah, I’m definitely going to do this.

And then I never do it.

So I always have to go that extra mile. It’s like, I need someone in my back pocket to be like, are you really doing this? So, hey, accountability is powerful. I’m the same way. If I know I have to report back to someone, I’m like, oh, I better get this done. I’m like, okay. Yeah, for sure.

For sure. Well, thank you so much. This has been awesome. I will be sure to link to everything, including that cheat sheet in the show notes and definitely go find Magnolia Collective on TikTok. Go connect with Meagan there.

And thank you so much for being my guest today. Oh, you’re so welcome. Thank you for having me. It was great.

I hope you got a lot out of that. It definitely changed my mindset because there is this overwhelm that comes with yet another platform, right? I really liked the way Meagan approaches this in a work smarter, not harder sort of approach and just makes it fit seamlessly into her business.

And I think that is something that all of us I will include all the links to everything we spoke about in the show notes for this episode, which will be over at www.evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/276.

And of course, I always love hearing from you. So hop on over to Instagram, send me a DM. I am @evolveyourweddingbusiness. I would love to hear what you learned from this, what you are going to implement. Maybe what changed in the way you were thinking about using TikTok. And hey, maybe we can start using this thing together.

So I would love to hear from you over there. Thank you so much for taking the time to tune in today. And I will speak to you again very soon.

About Meagan Culkin

Meagan is the owner of Magnolia Collective, a wedding planning and design company in its 13th year of business, with teams serving both North Carolina and Virginia. She is the Director of Programming for the NACE Richmond chapter, as well as the Design Chair for the NACEYs gala. She is currently working towards her CPCE certification and has developed a training course for newly engaged couples to better prepare them for the process of wedding planning.

When not designing event spaces, Meagan spends her time offering consulting for wedding businesses, discovering foodie haunts and searching for the perfect gin cocktail, and trying to get her dogs to cooperate for TikTok videos.

Website: www.idomagnolia.com
TikTok: @magnolia.collective
Instagram: @magnolia.collectivellc

 

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Links & Resources:

The Wedding Business Collective
Referrals Made Easy
Meagan’s Get Started With TikTok Basics
Optimize Your TikTok Content

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