Category: Marketing and Social Media

As a full-time celebrant who’s worked across Australia and internationally, I know the tension so...

We’ve all been there. A couple enquires about your celebrant services. You exchange emails, maybe...

A sharp look at why traditional wedding directories are facing their “Yahoo moment” as couples’ search habits evolve, plus what makes a truly valuable directory in 2025 – including free listing opportunities for Australian wedding vendors.

The digital landscape is shifting beneath our feet, and as wedding celebrants, we need to adapt or...

I’ll hazard a guess that Celebrant Institute members and other celebrant colleagues have...

In an exciting development for Aussie marriage celebrants, Apple has announced new features that...

When you’re building your celebrant website, you’re crafting the digital front door to your...

The best marketing in the world meets the target market where they’re at. Whether...

If you’re a wedding celebrant looking to improve your online presence and attract more...

This week members can rewatch the webinar recording of Josh Withers and Edwin from The Social...

Are you ready to take your Instagram game to the next level? Join us for an exclusive online event, the Instagram Mythbusters event, featuring the incredible Edwin Smith from The Social Sandwich and hosted by me (Josh Withers).

Come dive into Sharon and Adam’s wedding in the picturesque Douglas Vale Historic Vineyard...

The wedding industry in Australia is vibrant and evolving, despite the shifting societal views on...

This week saw the 28th user of Instagram – that’s right, he’s been using...

This Insights podcast episode is with Josh and Sarah-Louise Anderson, who is planning her wedding...

Kim and Zac married in Cronulla and they always knew that Tania Marsh was going to be their...

Silvia asks: I really want to find out how to start a website when you haven’t done any...

A new study finds that the later we meet someone in a sequence, the more negatively we describe...

The Easy Weddings 2024 Australian Wedding Industry Report provides an overview of the state of the...

The 2023 WeddingPro Benchmarking Report offers a comprehensive look into the current state of the...

In this episode of the Insights podcast episode – Insights level members can listen here...

Coming back into full-time celebrancy in 2023 I knew that the industry had changed, the celebrant population had changed, and the couples booking weddings were not just different but they had different means and ways of identifying which celebrant was the best for them, so I spent $20,000 on marketing.

Create a rabbit hole for your couples to fall down so they fall in love with you!

The digital era is witnessing a significant transformation in how we connect, communicate, and...

In 1997 the term “web log” was shortened to blog and ever since common people like you and I have had the power to write and publish on the internet. For the longest time it was the only way you shared your mission, your life, your opinion, your story.

Luke emailed me yesterday as I was about to solve for myself the problem he identified: What software would you recommend to use for a marketing list? Again are there any zaps or workflows in setting up the marketing list?

Great question Luke! I’ve been toying around in this realm for a while and have regrettably landed on the most expensive solution around: Active Campaign. I’m going to show you how I created a Zapier zap to collect email addresses at a wedding fair and get ChatGPT to send each person an email instantly after they scanned the QR code and entered their email address. It was such a smooth and professional workflow, I’m really happy with it. But before I show you how I created that I want to talk about email marketing for a moment. Email marketing is amazing and horrible. It’s amazing because people who identify with you and how you roll can and will give you their email address, and you have the opportunity to bring value back to their inbox via marketing emails. It’s horrible because trying to land in someone’s actual email inbox and not their spam folder is an arduous exercise that even yours truly finds hard, and tiring, and annoying. So you’ll try the cheaper products, then you’ll try MailChimp, and the rest of them, and marketing folklore tells us that if you are serious about this you end up on Active Campaign. so that’s where I am. Whenever someone enquires with me, books with me, or if I interact with them at an open day or wedding fair, that email address heads into my Active Campaign contacts list and I try my hardest to bring them immense value and joy. Not spam. So let’s have a look at this zap to collect emails at a wedding fair.

Want to start playing with AI chat in a way that will make sense to your celebrancy practice and business? Here’s five prompts you can ask to get a unique insight into your business today.

A celebrant friend was complaining to me recently about the market, we’ve all had the same conversation, either us being whined at, or us doing the whining. The truth is that we are not owed our next enquiry or booking, we need to work for it. So here’s some ideas on how to work for it how to grow your business. Take any of these ideas and deploy in an authentic and meaningful way for you.

  Jano le Roux, a copywriter, has done a deep dive on the marketing surrounding the new...

Elaine asks: When I obtained my Domain Name of domainname.com.au from Melbourne IT when I first...

There’s gold in the questions you get asked by other celebrants, people in the wedding industry, our clients, friends, and social media followers. Do you know what to do with them?

An element of my social media content strategy I’m quite proud of is that I’ve really worked hard at making better photos, photos that I have made – and therefore own – so that I have photos and video for my own social media channels and blog. If you’re interested in pursuing that art as well, Josh Rose has written a really good guide that I think would help you. It’s aimed at taking better holiday photos, but the advice translates directly to weddings as well.

When you hear of social media posts going viral, it simply means people are sharing it....

Suzanne asks: “Looking for advice on professional web design v. self design. Objective to attract biz, be good return on investment and not rubber-stamp like. Also some good advice on logo vs personal service brand.” Two important questions here and they’re both worth addressing.

The Copywriting Course’s subject line generator might be just the gold mine you need to start writring that next blog posts, social media post, or recording that vlog or podcast.

A study has found that adding copy to a new app’s website around the lines of “we...

Whether you’ve got 10 or 10,000 followers across all the different social media channels,...

If you’re feeling a bit stuck on what to post on your blog, or social media, or both, here’s seven content ideas you can easily write right now. Then schedule them up to drop every day, and watch your online personal brand grow!

Instagram has shared a post today about how and why people see what they see on Instagram. I’m not going to speculate on how much of this is smoke and mirrors, or politics, or conspiracy theories. Instead, lets take them at their word and believe what they say.

You can read the whole report here, and I’ll share some excerpts and thoughts on it below.

Krystal asks: “I seek perhaps some advice on how I continue to be “out there” without sailing into the boring seas or moving into sharing content on social media that isn’t relevant. Maybe I need to be patient with the process, once my first wedding is over and I’ll feed my future marketing off that.”

Google, in light of legislation being introduced in Australia, has threatened to pull out of the Australian market. I’m sure they won’t, if only because they won’t walk away and leave $59 billion of income on the table and destroy the trust in their brand over a couple of dollars being paid to news organisations.

David Placek is the branding genius behind some of the biggest names in the technology world. The words Sonos, Intel Pentium, Apple PowerBook, Blackberry, Gimlet podcasts (home of Reply All), and the Impossible burger, all came from David’s branding company, Lexicon Branding. In 2014 Placek released a book which I’d love to read – but can’t find for purchase. Luckily for me, and for you, Om Malik recapped the book in his blog recently.

10 ways to make wedding fairs, wedding directories, wedding blogs, wedding magazines, expos, and virtual wedding fairs, work for you.

I married a couple recently and the bride had one of those names where there was a few different ways it could possibly be pronounced. In that situation, when we first meet, I introduce myself with my name, and expect the same in return, I’ll then note how they pronounce their own name. But she didn’t!

I feel the same way about business.

If you’re not already familiar with the reason why, when faced with two cafes next to each other most of us will choose the busier cafe, the reason is social proof.

A repetitive theme in my writing is the encouragement for you to create your own content. I really do believe that creating original, helpful, relevant, personal, content is a majorly easy way for you to have a win today.

There is a fascinating article on The Correspondent today about the next “dot com bubble” being online advertising. The link is a long, but easy, and really (seriously) interesting read, but for the benefit of CI blog readers, I’ll quote a few sections here.

When I post on social media, I’ve got one plan in mind. Not to sell, not to do a deal, not to whinge or complain. I want to be known. So when people that like me make a decision about a celebrant, I’m who they think of. When I saw this recent meme about the mortifying ordeal of being known and loved it resonated with me so much I had to work it into a talk for our recent conference.

Liene at Think Splendid shares five powerfully simple ways to get more enquiries to your wedding celebrant business today. They’re so simple that you are hopefully already doing them, or if you’re not, this is a quick and swift reminder.

Everyone knows a guy who knows a guy who can get you on the front page of Google. I’d argue that you might not want to be on the front page of Google for everything, but it doesn’t hurt for the right people to be able to find you.

In this article I’m not going to add to the SEO noise, you can read a million articles about SEO practises and there are even more people willing to take your cash to make it work for you.

But if you don’t mind kicking around the shed that is your website, here’s a check list of things you can change or improve on, and they’re backed up with good research. As opposed to the standard old wives tale SEO advice that most people’s parent’s next-door neighbours are dishing out.

Your stories are more powerful than you think. This article is about sharing the stories about you and your celebrancy that you’ve forgotten to share.

In a post yesterday I described the hard work of finding your ‘Almost Nobody’. This, I argue, is your life’s work, and something that will forever be changing. A good example of me doing that work in my own business is by filtering out the ‘Everybody’ and making room for the ‘Almost Nobody’ to feel comfortable on my social media.

Hi, I am a new country celebrant with three weddings booked late this year, early next year but none performed so far. I am attending a wedding expo soon ( in the country) and am not sure what to do. I have collaborated with a supplier to use an arbor, have my logo enlarged to easel size and have business cards. But wondering what else I need. I dont have photos of me officiating yet obviously. What information type material should I have with me, what questions do you usually get asked, do I just stand there and smile, “have chockies to reel them in”? Please help!!

“Differentiation starts with the choice to do one thing well” says Bernadette at The Story of Telling blog. I wanted to break that powerful statement down and offer up some food of thought for celebrants today.

Sarita asks: I’m a relatively new celebrant and just after some advice on the world of wedding directories. There seem to be loads. Apart from the obvious ones like easyweddings, ABIA, there’s lots of smaller ones like polka dot bride, wedding guide, celebrant society, etc etc & a huge variation on how much it costs to list with them. Have you any tips, recommendations on where to go and where not to go. I feel like I should be listing somewhere (shouldn’t I?) but where to go!

A quick and easy weekend exercise for everyone today: read the front page of your website and your about page. Look at your recent social media posts and your bios on the networks. Are you talking about the product or the user?

A pertinent question about building and maintain an email list today: For anyone looking to follow your example of maintaining “an email list of all couples I meet at expos, fairs, open days, along with all who enquire with me” and sending them a weekly newsletter – are there any legal considerations or permission issues (opt in/opt out) we need to consider? Is it fine to just add any email address to a newsletter database or is there particular wording we need to use in sourcing those addresses for that purpose? Cheers.

A common conversation amongst everyone in the wedding industry who is not a wedding photographer is asking photographers for photos.

It’s great when you get them, it means your social media feeds have a professional feel over an iPhone photo feel, and it’s literally their job to make art out of events so their photos are always going to be better than yours.

Celebrants offer such a personal service, your service is very different to mine, to every other member of this website, and the thousands of other celebrants available. We can communicate our differences in text and photos on our website, through blog and social content, and by meeting people but meeting every single enquirer can become tiresome.

So, let me introduce you to a secret warrior in my sales toolkit: testimonies.

This afternoon a couple got engaged and they have never heard of you, they’ve not made any decisions about their wedding, and it’s highly likely they don’t know anything about the wedding industry, how it works, what things cost, and who does what.

The only thing you can rely on in the wedding industry is that today a couple got engaged and all of your previous branding, marketing, advertising, and godowill in the market means nothing.