Blue Helm

In the last Brain Storm I highlighted some social media content ideas for a jeweler. A friend of mine that runs an online wedding resource website read the post and asked me to write another one with content ideas for wedding planners.

Being the manly man that I am, I don’t really understand the whole wedding thing. I have four sisters and still don’t get why women like the things they do. My idea of a perfect wedding includes the following: family, friends, water balloons, fighting robots, football, American Gladiator events and medium-rare steaks. Alas, what I want at a wedding doesn’t really matter. In an effort to understand what a woman thinks about in planning her wedding, I turned to my Facebook friends. I asked what was important to a woman in planning a wedding. The responses I got were all fairly similar. It seems the number one thing that is important in planning a wedding is keeping the event as inexpensive as possible without sacrificing quality or elegance. After cost, important elements in planning a wedding are location, food, flowers, music and a myriad of other things.

Keeping these insights from my Facebook friends in mind, here are nine social media content ideas for a wedding planner:

1. Promote your vendors – Write a blog post explaining who your favorite vendors are and why. Tweet or post Facebook links to their sites. Not only will these links strengthen relationships with your vendors, but they will be very helpful for your customers.
2. Guest posts – Have an expert from another related industry write a guest post. For example, you could invite a jeweler to write a post about different diamond cuts or what the most popular metals are. This will help strengthen relationships with local shops that can refer business to you, plus it provides useful information for people who may need your services soon.
3. Cost reduction advice – Give tips on how to reduce the cost of a wedding without sacrificing too much elegance. These can be short Twitter-like tips or complete blog posts.
4. General tips – Give advice on what colors are best during which seasons. What types of food do most wedding guests like? Are photos always better than videos, or are they both important? Give tips that your readers will value.
5. Finding a sponsor – According to my sister (who is planning her own wedding right now) there exist people or businesses that will sponsor weddings. Give advice on how to procure a sponsor. How-to posts are great; they provide helpful information to people who are searching for answers.
6. Share pictures – Some wedding blogs I looked over do a great job of this. It helps to show genuine examples of successful and beautiful weddings. Sites like Facebook and Twitter are other great ways to share pictures. Ask your Twitter followers to send you their favorite wedding pictures and have your Facebook fans post pictures on your page. Remember, getting people to interact is key.
7. The Honeymoon – Share links to great honeymoon spots.
8. Weddings gone wrong – Ask fans or followers to share stories of weddings they’ve attended where something funny, embarrassing or unusual happened. Share your own experiences.
9. Tell a story – Tell a story from start to finish of a customer who planned a wedding. Get quotes from your customers and put what they say in the story. Make your pages, posts and tweets as human as possible. The more your readers identify with what you post, the more they will return.

What comes to mind when you think of a jeweler? A snobby rich man laden with gold and diamonds? A savvy business woman whose sole purpose is to take your money? Or that Saved by the Bell episode where Zack is swindled into buying fake class rings that turn everyone’s finger green?

Maybe you think of an impersonal company that doesn’t care about developing relationships with its customers. If you live in the New England area and know of Day’s Jewelers, you’d be wrong. “Jewelers are a misunderstood commodity,” says Jeff Corey, owner and president of Day’s Jewelers. “We’re real people.”

So how does a business that’s been around for nearly a century dispel misconceptions about itself and increase its business in hard economic times?

The answer: social media. Social media has opened new doors for companies like Day’s Jewelers. Jeff maintains that social media “presents us as real people” and gives jewelers an opportunity to “build a community.”

For this Brain Storm post I want to focus on content ideas for a jeweler. If you want additional ideas look at Day’s Jewelers blog, Facebook page, Twitter page and MySpace page. Remember, the main purpose of this series is to get your creative juices flowing by recognizing the many ways social media can positively impact your business.

So if I were the owner of a jewelry store, I might implement the following content ideas:

1. Run a contest: Ask customers to share their wedding proposal stories or the worst story involving a lost engagement ring. You can choose the best stories and give the winners a discount on their next purchase at your store.
2. Ask customers to post pictures: They can post pictures of their favorite ring, of their wedding or a photo of the beautiful piece of jewelry they recently purchased for their significant other.
3. Ask “real people” questions: This is something Day’s Jewelers does really well. They ask questions like What are you doing for the long 4-day weekend? or What fun things did you do this summer? These questions encourage communication with customers. As they respond to your questions, be sure to respond back. They’ll appreciate knowing that you care.
4. Share employee stories: Get your employees to share great experiences they’ve had working with customers. Did one of your employees recently help a young couple pick out the perfect wedding ring? Or perhaps someone has a funny story about helping a repentant guy find the perfect necklace for his offended wife. These stories will help customers see that your employees really do care about their jobs and the people they work with.
5. Write ‘how-to’ articles or posts: How do you properly polish a ring? What do you do when your ring accidentally goes down the drain? ‘How-to’ articles can be really useful for your customers. People love (and share) content that is valuable!
6. Educate with history: Post content that explains the unique history or geology of a certain metal, gem or rock. Maybe you could post a feature about a famous piece of jewelry like the Hope Diamond.
7. Create a video: Post a how-to video. Or make a video tour of your store. Create a ‘getting to know you and your employees’ video. Videos are a good way to show your personality on camera. Customers will be more comfortable coming into your store when they see an interesting video of you and your employees.

So what are your content ideas for a jeweler? Any requests for the next Brain Strom?

Related Posts: The Brain Storm: Ten social media content ideas for an Auto Repair Shop

Photo By:Graeme Weatherston

If you follow social media blogs, you read time and time again that content is king. You’ll continually see statements like, “You must provide interesting content your customers will value!” This is all well and good, but how do you come up with content that’s worth publishing? I see so many individuals and businesses that open a Twitter account, start a Facebook Page or publish a blog, but post content that is really dumb, boring or, worst of all, disingenuous.

So what do you do? You own a business or you’re in charge of marketing and you keep hearing that you need to be a part of this huge social media craze, but you just can’t think of anything great to post.

Never fear! Blue Helm is here to help. We decided to create The Brain Storm, a blog series that illustrates ideas and suggestions we hope will enhance the quality of the content on your social media sites. The ideas will be wide-ranging and can be applied to a blog, Facebook, Twitter, Friend Feed, Flicker, YouTube or any other social media account. Each week we’ll come up with a number of content ideas for a new type of business. We’re open to requests and hope you will comment and add your own ideas.

This week I decided to focus on how to enhance social media content for a small auto repair shop. From what I can see, there aren’t very many repair shops in the social media sphere. I found a few, but most were not using their tools very well (I thought Favour Auto Repair in Greensboro, NC ran a pretty good Twitter page @FavourAuto). But for most auto repair shops with a social media presence, it boils down to really bad or limited content.  So without further ado, here are ten social media content ideas for an auto repair shop:

1. Give repair and car care tips. You can tweet or post updates about what to do when your car overheats or when your clutch feels too tight or too loose. What benefits are there to using a higher octane gas? How often should I get my fluids checked? You get the idea.
2. Post special deals on Twitter or Facebook. You could offer a discount for an oil change or tire rotation. Running specials will increase your followers and get more people in your store.
3. Refer your followers to businesses that do things you don’t. Maybe your repair shop doesn’t do body work, but you know of a really good shop down the street that does. Sharing information like this shows your customers that you care. Not only are you developing a better relationship with your customers, but the other shop will appreciate the business you’re sending them and they may even reciprocate.
4. Provide testimonials from customers. There’s no better way to prove your company is the best than through a satisfied customer.
5. Post pictures. Update photos of your employees, the work space, the newly-decorated waiting area, customers using your WiFi, etc. These pictures will not only show the human element in your shop, but what is available at your shop.
6. Run contests to invoke more participation from fans. Some ideas for contests include:
   1. Who has the best before-and-after pictures of a car they fixed up?
   2. Who has the craziest ‘my car broke down’ story?
   3. Who owns the prettiest/ugliest car out there?
7. Try a giveaway. You could give something free to the first person who comes into your shop with the answer to a trivia question you asked on one of your networks.
8. Comment on current events. Post your perspective on things happening to car companies in the bad economy (just make sure to keep your posts politically neutral and without controversy).
9. Generate discussion, particularly on your Facebook Page. You could have employees write about their favorite type of car or why they got into the car repair industry. Ask your customers and fans to include their opinions.
10. Run a “Hottest Car” tournament. Every week you could compare two cars and have your fans vote for which one they think is cooler. Put the winner against a new car the next week.

Do you have any additional content ideas for an auto repair shop? How about requests for future posts? Let me know!