Welcome to 2010!  A whole year has elapsed since I last blogged about the importance of keeping your website content fresh and relevant.  My previous post – Website Tune-Up – focused on strategies to keep your website current and favorable to the search engines.  Today, I hope to share some equally important tips to optimize your website and online presence this year.

1.  Make the most of social media. Over the last twelve months I’ve enjoyed a significant increase in traffic to my website and blog as a result of social media.  Active participation in Facebook and Twitter has reinforced our web presence and generated many new leads and relationships.  If you have social media profiles, be sure to link those profiles to your website.

2.  Blog! Blogging offers great benefits due to easy to index regular content. Add a few basic SEO skills and you’re ready to go! Take your blog a step further: Host your blog on your own website instead of using a free hosted blog. Why? When you host your own blog your blog posts supplement the content of your website, thus increasing the quality and vibrancy of your site. Adding an RSS feed button to both your website and blog will make it easy for readers to subscribe to your feed and keep up with your posts. Additionally, RSS features can help make your online (internet) marketing strategies more effective.

3.  Don’t be anonymous. One of the primary goals of your website is to build trust and credibility. Does your website give potential customers the information they need? Is your name, photo and contact information prominently displayed? If you are a service provider you should make every effort to make a personal connection with your visitors.

4. Never underestimate the power of a well designed website. If your website is more than two years old, a revamp alone could boost your SEO ranking. HTML and CSS are the most common technologies used in making web pages, but there are also other ways to go. Flash is known for it’s excellent multimedia capabilities but is generally believed to be less search engine friendly than CSS. Some businesses have even abandoned traditional websites in favor of blog-based sites.

5. Use high quality images. Website images should be carefully selected; ideally they should represent your own work and style to help you connect with your audience (target market). Some vendors may use stock photography as part of their start-up promotions, but in the wedding and event industry I’d advise moving away from this option as quickly as possible (or risk possible damage to your reputation). By the same token, amateur photos will not adequately show even your best work – so select images with a discerning eye.

5.5 Upgrade to Video! If a picture is worth a thousand words than video is worth a million. Video is fast-rising as the newest ‘must-have’ feature because it helps build brand, it’s more engaging than static, printed text, and it’s easier to effectively demonstrate your product or service.

There is virtually no cost associated with these tips – especially if you have the ability or capability to edit your own website. Many resources and tutorials are available online if you need additional information. Otherwise, consider hiring someone to assist with migrating your blog or updating the look of your website – it will be money well spent.

© 2010 E. Delgardio All Rights Reserved

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Today I have an exciting announcement!

I’m thrilled to share the news that A Flair for Affairs has been added to Style Me Pretty’s “Little Black Book of The Best Wedding Vendors”!

Style Me Pretty relies on recommendations from industry insiders, trusted LBB vendors and Style Me Pretty readers to identify outstanding service providers. Each invitation to participate is followed up with a personal interview to assure that vendors meet SMP’s high standards! Clearly this is a huge honor and I’m elated to be included among the country’s top wedding vendors!

The exclusive nature of the directory allows for only a few vendors to be showcased in each region. For example, there are only three event planners featured in Central Florida and I’m absolutely delighted to be the only wedding and event planner based in Orlando!

{ screenshot of our listing }

You may also be interested to know that in addition to the legendary Style Me Pretty blog, there is The Little Black Book Blog. In SMP’s own words, it’s described as “our official vendor blog…dedicated to showcasing the work of the vendors we love. It’s eye candy like you wouldn’t believe!”

I urge you to check it out on a regular basis because it’s incredibly inspiring!

PS: Is A Flair for Affairs in your little black book?

Excuse me, but I am taking a few minutes to pat myself on the back: I just completed my first website tune-up of 2009!

I won’t go into any long winded explanations or step-by-step instructions, but I can certainly recommend some key points to freshen things up for the new year! (Some of these tips may not work well for flash websites.)

5.5 FREE TIPS:

1. Check the expiration of your domain name. Tell the search engines you plan to be in business for a long time by pushing your domain renewal back for at least three to five years.

2. Update the dates and links referenced on your site. If your website footer reads “Copyright 2006″ it need to be updated immediately. Ideally you should list a span, such as: Copyright © 2001 – 2009. Also, delete references to past events that might date your site (with obvious exception to your history of work or resume of experience). Test all the internal links on your site to ensure that navigation is fully functional. Delete any outbound links that are ‘dead’.

3. Have you checked your stats lately? There’s a multitude of ways you can do this. One way is through Google’s product “Analytics“. Analytics is free and I was able to get it up and running myself. If you have some general knowledge of reading html code, and you have access to edit your site, you can probably do this yourself too, and it will cost you nothing. Otherwise, you can ask your webmaster to implement this technology on your behalf. A second option would be through your web host. Some hosting services offer tracking as part of the hosting package, or as an add on service. Statistical information regarding your website traffic is usually easy to decipher from these types of sources. There’s nothing for you to set up, per say, you just log in and review the info.

Checking your stats will give you key information about the most visited pages on your site, how long visitors spend reading or reviewing the info, how many visitors by day, week, month, etc.

4. Take a look at your page titles; that’s the information that pops up at the very top of the browser and provides the primary description for your product or service. You may want to lengthen them or shorten them. First things first: Each page on your website should have a unique title or at least be customized to reflect the content of the page. If the title bar on every page of your site reads the same, you should make the appropriate revisions to differentiate them, thereby increasing the relevance of your keywords, content and search results.

5. Purchase multiple versions of your company name. Why? For starters, this will prevent the brand confusion that results when a start up company selects the same or similar name to yours. Also, it helps customers find you even if they spell your company name incorrectly or can’t recall the exact web address (this happens ALL the time!). Think about the way you use the web and how you search for others, then reverse the process to create additional avenues for customers to find you. Then, be sure to “point” all the secondary domains to your website.

5.5 BACK UP YOUR SITE !! If you can’t do it yourself, ask your webmaster to do it for you.

One final recommendation: Don’t’ forget to run a Copyscape scan to document and protect the integrity of your content. If you are the true and original author of the content, you will surely want to know if someone has plagiarized your work. Also, plagiarizers beware: website content can be authenticated all the way back to the launch date of a site.

I welcome any comments you may have. And please feel free to share your favorite, fast & easy tune-up tips as well!

© 2009 E. Delgardio All Rights Reserved

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At long last, the new website is finally up and it looks FABULOUS! We are excited by the new format which was custom designed to give our visitors and potential clients easy access to essential information. In particular, the new site beautifully showcases our most recent weddings and events, highlights our latest accolades and features a plethora of inspiring wedding and event images.

Be sure to check it out! A Flair for Affairs® And we’d love to have your feedback, so please drop us a note to share your comments!

© 2008 E. Delgardio All Rights Reserved

It was a gray and rainy day in Orlando…

Seriously… tropical storm Fay is looming over Florida and we are in ‘hunker down’ mode (…for some reason that term always brings to mind an image of George Bush…) The world is quiet and we’re sitting here waiting to see what’s gonna happen next…

Seems like a perfect time for a blog entry….

I’m deep in the midst of a website overhaul. This is quite exciting for me because my revamped site will have lots of new features that my existing site can’t support. It’s also proving to be quite a lot of effort to rewrite content and collect images for the photo galleries, etc. I’m optimistic that the fresh look and new features of the site will resonate better with potential clients and make my personal and financial investment worth while.

Now that the site is close to being complete, I’m looking forward to it’s debut and hope it’ll be well received…. If my web designer and I have done our jobs correctly, I will benefit from better placement in the search engines and increased exposure. At the same time, I’m a little apprehensive about the whole matter since I’m keenly aware of how prevalent plagiarism and copyright infringement are these days. Soon enough, my focus will turn from creation to protection.

I say this with some experience. My original website was launched in 1998 and still exists in cyberspace; I abandoned it long ago when site #2 went live. Both of these sites have been copied in the past and I have had to notify the offenders that I was aware of their unscrupulous behavior. Now, as site #3 nears completion, I know I’ll need to be vigilant about monitoring for rip-off sites.

Apparently many planners/coordinators have had similar experiences, which is really quite a sad reflection on those (plagiarizers) who boast about their creativity. And somehow these geniuses think they can get away with it…. ugh! the nerve!

The most helpful and comprehensive information I have found on this topic – a research shortcut, if you will – was complied by Lorelle VanFossen, who writes a phenomenally informative blog entitled: Lorelle on WordPress. Here is a link to Lorelle’s blog, and her tips about Finding Stolen Content and Copyright Infringements. After reading through the entry, be sure to bookmark her site for future reference, because you’ll surely want to go back for more.

© 2008 E. Delgardio All Rights Reserved

How fab is my blog header picture!!!

I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the work of my friend, Orlando photographer Thomas Alan . He’s amazingly talented and such a pleasure to work with! I am so grateful to him for allowing me to use this stunning image which is featured in my new prints ads, website and business cards…. (oooh!)

Today started off with an interesting little situation… which I was all prepared to write about as it involved a fellow coordinator who found pictures from her website on another (newer) coordinator’s website. My mind ran wild with the editorial possibilities – but that was at 10 am.

At 11:30 I was scrambling to make it to a meeting with our ABC State Coordinator. We had an appointment to ‘catch up’ – as she is quite a busy lady and I always enjoy the opportunity to fill her in on a things I’ve been working on and hear about her latest projects.

Following that, I rush back to the office, pull email and start catching up on my to-do list… At least I tried. On the to-do list today: Make programs for Wedding #1 this weekend, prepare sales tax, return phone calls and email… Oh, the rental company can’t find my cc authorization so I need to re-fax… And, in the midst of all of this, I’m working on a special project for ISES which involves my typing a few pages of information for our Programs & Education binder (part of our “Chapter of the Year” submission). And so it went… and then something really fabulous happened…

About 5 pm I received an email from ISES Headquarters with information regarding the annual Esprit Awards. The email started off like this:

The 2008 ISES Esprit Awards Committee would like to thank the exceptional ISES Members who submitted an entry for the 2008 ISES Esprit Awards. Each and every entry represented the high level of professionalism practiced by ISES Members world-wide. You are all truly the best and brightest in the Special Events Industry!

Flashback (I may have to use this term a lot since my blog is new): A few months ago, with the help and support of a few colleagues and members of the event team, I submitted an event for an Esprit Award. Aside from sitting for the CSEP exam, it was literally one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done (from a professional standpoint). It took 3 of us about 80 hours to put this binder together – I mean, it was a very involved process – and all this going on right in the middle of prime-time wedding season. Somehow, we finished project, and it was actually quite impressive; we felt good about it and hoped it would do well in the judging….

So, the email says: Click here for the 2008 ISES Esprit Nominees - and I did….my heart was pounding as I scrolled through a long list of categories and names and then on page 11 I found my name! – and our event! – and my ISES Orlando team members!!! Oh my gosh- that was exciting! I took a few minutes to email our team with the news and and then it was back to work… another meeting from 6 – 9…

What an exhausting and exhilarating day!

© 2008 E. Delgardio All Rights Reserved