The Wedding Marketing Authority began his July speaking calendar by visiting the beautiful Southern California wine mecca of Temecula Valley.

On Tuesday, July 7th, Andy addressed a luncheon meeting of the Temecula Valley Wedding Professionals, with his keynote presentation, Marketing and Selling to the 21st Century Bride. Members and guests were also treat to a tour of the newly renovated Pala Casino. The casino had recently reinvested about $150 million to enhance their rooms, events space, public areas, and pool/courtyard.

Next stop is the ADJA Summer Conference, being held in Chicago, July 12 – 15th. Andy will open the conference with a special Sunday evening keynote, Building and Keeping Relationships That Count. Tuesday, he will present Facebook for Business, and Wednesday morning, a half-day version of his seminar, Blogging Your Way To Business Success.

This is the ADJA’s first national conference, and will be drawing speakers and attendees from across the United States. The American Disc Jockey Association has chapters throughout the country and many of them hold regional conferences during the year. As well, the ADJA holds sessions in conjunction with the Mobile Beat Magazine conference in Las Vegas.

Next stop is Oklahoma City for a breakfast presentation, Thursday, July 16th to the Oklahoma Wedding Professionals. Again, Andy will be delivering his keynote, Marketing and Selling to the 21st Century Bride. Then it’s back to Las Vegas.

Finally, Andy will be speaking at the NACE Experience 2009 in Charlotte, North Carolina, July 26-29. He will be delivering two presentations: Facebook & LinkedIn for Business, and Blogging Your Way To Business Success.

The Wedding Marketing Blog is in the process of developing an ongoing speaking calendar which will make it easier to see where Andy is scheduled to speak, and show availabilities for additional speaking engagements.

Joe Fabitz
Contributing Writer
The Wedding Marketing Blog

written by Joe Fabitz \\ tags: adja, American Disc Jockey Association, Andy Ebon, blogging your way to business success, Charlotte, Chicago, Facebook for Business, LinkedIn for Business, Marketing and Selling to the 21st Century Bride, NACE Experience, NC, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma wedding professionals, Pala Casino, relationships, Temecula Valley, Wedding Marketing Authority, wedding marketing blog

Click to follow me

The fine people at Hubspot specialize in optimization and testing of various kinds. Previously, on the site, I have recommended Website Grader, a free service that analyzes and helps you tweak your website.

More recently, Hubspot has introduced similar services to better understand your Facebook, Blogging and Twitter performance. As part of the Twitter Grader service. Without disclosing the exact scoring algorithms, Hubspot explains that your Twitter Grade is based on Followers, their ReTweets of your Tweets (forwarding to their followers), and various other levels of interaction and relevancy.

When I checked my Twitter Grade, it came up at 96.6, which seemed pretty high (out of 100). As The Wedding Marketing Blog is a niche business blog, comparing it to general consumer sites doesn’t typically play very well, as that is an Apples and Oranges situation.

Within the Twitter Grade service, there is Twitter Elite (Top 50). There are various subsets of Twitter Elite. Just for fun, I thought I’d see how I compared to the TOP 50 Twitterers in Las Vegas, NV. To my surprise and amazement, this site (and I) ranked #46, just a couple of slots below MGM Grand and the Tony – CEO of Zappo’s; just a couple of slots above the world famous Las Vegas Sign.

What does that mean to me?

It means this: In order to have influence, one must have an audience. In terms of my goals, it means have loyal readers on this blog. Twitter and Facebook, in particular, are part of my social media plan to direct focus toward The Wedding Marketing Blog.

None of that works unless the content on this blog is interesting and helpful to its readers. Clearly, the stars have aligned as June 2009 is this blog’s best month ever.

The challenge to you: What is it, you can do, to make your blog and website the thought leader in your industry, in your market?

Think about it, make a plan to leverage awareness of your brand, and go do it!!

Andy Ebon

The Wedding Marketing (and Twitter) Authority

written by Andy Ebon \\ tags: Facebook, Hubspot, MGM Grand, search engine optimization, SEO, Twitter, Twitter Elite, website grader, Wedding Marketing Authority, wedding marketing blog, Zappos

In business, it’s difficult not to get caught up in the numbers: Sales, dollars, bookings, inquiries, appointments. In blogging, one measures success by the impact of the blog on its readers.

Blogging impact can be measured in a number of ways:

With all that said, I’m proud to announce that this morning, The Wedding Marketing Blog surpassed 10,000 visitors for the month of June. I probably should have waited until the end of the month for a final total, but this was too exciting.

Besides the soaring number of visits, it’s exciting to see improvement in all areas, especially comments and questions from readers… like you.

As The Wedding Marketing Blog continues to grow in activity, there are a number of features, benefits and goals that will roll out during the second half of 2009.

They will include

I’ll stop there, because it will take quite a bit of effort to launch all of that. Your suggestions and ideas are always welcome. I do my best to read every inquiry, comment, and email.

Each post and reader are important to me. I’m conscious of the fact that different people are interested in different issues. I will continue to give my best effort to provide valuable and stimulating content to you.

With my deepest appreciation for your readership!

Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Blog

written by Andy Ebon \\ tags: Andy Ebon, blogger, content, impact, measuring success, readers, success, Wedding Marketing Authority, wedding marketing blog