Elevating Your Wedding Business: A Deep Dive into ShowIt with Laurel Vines

In this episode of the Wedding Empires podcast, I had the pleasure of interviewing Laurel Vines, an expert in website design and branding, specifically focusing on the ShowIt platform. Laurel shared valuable insights and tips on how wedding professionals can optimize their websites to attract and retain clients.

We delved into the unique features of ShowIt, a user-friendly website builder originally designed for photographers but now used by various creative professionals. Laurel highlighted the drag-and-drop capabilities of ShowIt, making it easy to design without the need for coding. She also emphasized the platform's SEO-friendly nature and seamless integration with WordPress for blogging.

The discussion then shifted to the importance of branding and storytelling in effective marketing for wedding businesses. Laurel emphasized the need for branding to reflect the values and experiences provided by the business, with a focus on making the ideal client the hero of the story.

We also explored the role of blogging in enhancing SEO efforts and attracting potential clients. Laurel shared valuable tips on using blogging as a core marketing strategy and leveraging tools like Answer the Public to address common questions and establish expertise in the industry.

Furthermore, we discussed the benefits of combining ShowIt with WordPress for a comprehensive website solution. Laurel explained how ShowIt allows for easy customization of the visual aspects of the website while retaining the blogging functionality and SEO settings of WordPress.

To wrap up the episode, Laurel shared her offers for website customization services, including a "website in a week" package for template customization. She also mentioned the importance of mobile responsiveness and SEO optimization in website design.

Overall, this episode provided valuable insights into leveraging ShowIt for website design, branding strategies for wedding professionals, and the importance of storytelling and blogging in attracting and retaining clients in the wedding industry. Tune in to the Wedding Empires podcast for more expert advice and tips on building a successful wedding busines

Transcript

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Welcome aboard the Wedding Empires podcast with yours truly, Jack Bowie, where we plunge into the depths of creativity, entrepreneurship, and the love-infused world of weddings. Each episode, we're going to unpack strategies, insights, and stories that empower you to craft the wedding business of your dreams. Welcome to the Wedding Empires podcast. Welcome back to Wedding Empires podcast. I'm your host, Jack Bowie, owner of the Wedding Academy. And with me today, I have a very special guest who's going to talk to us about a CMS, a website builder that not all of us know about. The ones that do know about it, love it and swear by it. But I believe that there's so many wedding professionals out there that don't know about this platform and need to know about this platform. So I thought I'd bring in one of the experts, Hi, Jack. I'm so good. Thanks for having me. You're welcome. You're welcome. Now, of course, the website platform that we're talking about today is called ShowIt. Now, can you, Laurel, explain for everybody who doesn't know what ShowIt is, what the platform is and why Yes, so ShowIt is a website builder and it was actually built with photographers in mind years ago. Today, all kinds of creative professionals are using it, but it was actually originally designed for photographers who are looking for a user-friendly website platform. In the back end, it actually might remind you a little bit of Photoshop. the way it's laid out, but it's completely drag and drop. So the design capabilities are pretty much limitless. No coding is required. You can code some of it if you want to, or if you have that ability, but none is required. It's pretty much endless possibilities in terms of design. It's also very SEO friendly. And it actually integrates with WordPress for your blog. So you still get those really strong SEO capabilities that come with WordPress, but these great, Great. So we'll come back to how it kind of works with your existing WordPress, because I think that's really interesting and really important. What struck me that was really different with ShowIt was the builder. It truly is like drag and drop, build what you want, right? It's incredible when you come from something like WordPress, where you're really, you are limited with the capabilities of the platform. Yeah, you can upload Elementor and different builders and whatnot, but with ShowIt, you literally have this blank piece of paper almost, and you can, you know, drag your picture how big you want. You can, if you want to embed something, you just pop a little embed square and you just like drop it where you want it. That is incredible, right? How much do you love that? Oh yes, I absolutely love it. As a designer, it's a dream come true because you don't have any strange blocks like you do in Squarespace or you don't have the intense code or limiting things that happen with WordPress unless you can custom code everything. So it's a Yeah, definitely. And of course, like all the other builders, you can upload your brand and your fonts. I know that you've got to make some changes to the fonts. You've got to make them. What's the That's right. So once you've got your font files, you can just simply Google how to do it, but you basically need to just simply convert it. There's converters online. Change your font to a W-O-F-F file type, and you can upload that and just show it and have your font absolutely everywhere. All right. So going back to your background, Laurel, what inspired you to establish your Yes, so I dabbled in design all throughout, like while I was in school, growing up. I started a freelance design business, I think I was about 15 when I first started my business. And then I eventually ended up going into dental assisting and I did that for quite a few years because I just didn't think that I could make the freelance lifestyle work for me, that I wanted the security of just having a regular nine to five job. And it wasn't actually till 2020, my husband and I full-time RV'd for a couple years. And while we were doing that, I got back into freelancing. And it was just a creative outlet as well as a part-time income for me at first. And then I just fell back, totally back in love with design. That's also when I discovered ShowIt, built my first, my own website on ShowIt. And Great. And, and I know that, um, just from researching your business and what you do, yes, you do a lot of design for show up, but you're also big on brand identity, which, you know, the combo of those two things together is super important, obviously for wedding professionals. So I guess, um, let's talk about sort of how, how you recommend crafting a unique brand identity for Yeah, so whenever someone comes to me for branding, I really start first with their values. Like what makes you unique? What kind of experience do you provide? One thing with just thinking about your branding and your marketing in general is your brand should be a reflection of you and it should be authentic to you. It should also be about your ideal client and what kind of experience you're giving them. you know, who they are. So making sure that your brand isn't just about Yeah, amazing. Okay, cool. And what role do you think does storytelling That's a great question. So I don't know if you've read Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller, but that's a favorite book. But his approach is essentially that anyone that comes to you, your ideal client, they are the hero in the story and you are their guide. So in any piece of marketing, you're always making your potential client the hero of the story. And you're just the guide that takes them from where they are to where they want to be. And that absolutely can be infused in your branding as well. So I really like to use what they're called brand archetypes. So if you search these online, you'll find them. And it's actually, they can, you can find up to 36, I believe, but they're, they're separated into like four categories. And I actually brought them up here. So that I could, and then it's explore spirituality, leave legacy, provide structure and pursue connection. And so each of those four archetypes is then split into even more niched sort of value systems. And so that's kind of the framework that I use for branding. And it's basically who you are I love that. I love that. Okay. And that'll help people drag it out for themselves, right? Because I'm sure the majority of people will come to you with branding and go, I like this and I like that, but like they haven't in their own mind found a way to, you know, bring it all together or make it, make it really authentic to them. So I'm sure that's a really great tool to help them achieve Yes. Yeah. A lot of times people are surprised because they might know, oh, I like this color or that thing, but they've never explored the reasoning behind it or what kind of feelings they want someone to feel when they see their branding. You know, is it more, is it like a passion? Is it excitement? Or is it more of like a calm and reassuring feeling? So that's what we dive into a lot too, is like, what kind of feelings do you want to portray? And what So how can wedding professionals optimize their website to Yeah. So I think with attraction, it's really going to be about SEO is a big part of attraction. So and I know you had a couple of questions about that, but with SEO, it's, you know, using the kinds of phrases that your ideal clients would be searching for, you know, kind of getting in their brain using keyword tools. I really love Ubersuggest for this. So doing some keyword research, optimizing your website, blogging, so answering questions that couples might be asking surrounding certain types of venues, certain types of weddings, is going to be a key attraction, basically providing good content. And then retention is like when someone lands on your website, just making sure they have a good user experience. Is it loading quickly? Is it very clear what the next step is that they should take? Is it easy to contact you? That's a big one I see. A lot of times you have to scroll so many different places to find out how to get in touch with you, and that should be really, really simple. Just talking about that, I know ShowIt is a little bit different because you're kind of building your navigation from scratch, unless, of course, you buy a template and it's all in place. But have you got any tips when it comes to ShowIt about building a user-friendly website navigation experience? Yeah, well, I think the first one would be to just keep it really simple, you know, making sure that you're not adding way too many options up there, making sure that on mobile, you have your own mobile menu, which can be a it's a little bit tricky on show it you do have to like hide that on your desktop and then display it on mobile with a little hamburger icon um but yeah making sure that your top navigation is really simple and then i like to use the footer navigation for those more things like maybe if you have a newsletter opt-in and you have like other pages besides just your home about services contact Yeah, and I think just thinking about the main things that we want people to do, but down the bottom, if they want to dive deeper, so it could have, as you said, you know, the social links and whatnot, but also that could be where your employment page is, where your privacy policy is, those things that, you know, people that really want to dive deeper can find, but they're not necessarily used all the time. 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And talking about mobile responsiveness, of course, that's everything these days. And one thing I think it's important to point out with ShowIt is you're building your website side by side, and you can flick between this beautiful drag and drop builder for your desktop to your mobile version as well. So you can see both at the same time, or you can switch and sort of work on each, which is quite incredible, isn't Yes, it's so unique. There's really no other builder that allows you to do that to design completely differently for mobile. And over it's about 60% now of users on average are on mobile. So if anything, we want to prioritize that even more than the desktop experience. So what I love about showed is you can hide elements, if they're not fitting, you know, or if there's a slowing down mobile, you can just take them off of mobile, but still have them on desktop. And vice versa, you know, completely rearrange things. So they just fit well, and they are easier to read on mobile, you know, we want to make sure things are sized well, correctly for mobile. So you can change the font size, whatever you need to Yeah. And you know, as you're building it, you can actually see it, it's just like a perfect demo on your phone. So you can truly say, when you're turning something off or turning something on or increasing the font, you can see in front of you what that's actually going to look like. So it's incredible. All right. I'd like to know, we touched on SEO, but do you have any advice specifically for wedding professionals looking Yes. So I would say blogging is the biggest one. And I think this is really one that's the hardest a lot of times for writing professionals to keep up with, or they get intimidated by it. And it's really going to be, I think, something. It's going to be a long-term strategy. But I really like for people to think about it as their core marketing and content strategy. And then they can just use that to repurpose on other channels. your social media channels, your email marketing, you know, blogging is just so valuable for that. And it's not like social media where you have to, uh, maintain a specific consistency to continue to gain traction. You know, as long as you can, you know, continually put up content, it doesn't have to be, you know, if it's only once a month, you know, that's something, and that's a lot of times you're going to get, you know, more traffic for that, you know, continued in the months to come. versus social media where you'll post once and then after 72 hours no one's gonna see that post again. So blogging is just a great place to get people while they are in those planning phases. So answering questions that your couples might have. I really love a tool. It's called Answer the Public, where you can search for questions. Like you can just put in the topics, maybe a location or a certain venue, and then see what kinds of questions particularly people are Googling surrounding that. And then it gives you an opportunity to answer that and become sort of the expert Excellent. So I guess that leads me into the sort of WordPress meets ShowIt situation. I guess, first of all, if I've got a WordPress website, why would I consider moving to ShowIt and eventually sort of having both, right? Having ShowIt, but then having a WordPress Yeah. So the great thing about ShowIt is it's really completely just changing the visuals of your website. But if you're already blogging on WordPress, they make it really easy for you to just take all those blog posts and all the blog content will still be there. All your SEO settings will still be there. But the way it looks is going to be designed in ShowIt. And so that's just, It's really easy for you to change the way it looks at any time. You're able to have all the same functions, so search bar, categories, everything like you would on a WordPress blog. But then the back end, if you're already used to blogging in WordPress, is going to be the same, you know, the way that you structure it. all the SEO settings. It still has the Yoast plugin, which if you don't have that, I really recommend that for making, just as a guideline for making sure your blogs are well SEO optimized. So Amazing. And it is pretty easy to get it set up. I think they, do they still help you do it? If it's something that you, you know, you set up your full account with free account, I think it's paid now, but You reach out to support, don't you? Can you walk me through Right, so with ShowIt, there are three levels of plans. There's the basic plan, which is with no blog, and then there is the basic plus blog, which is basically just a basic blog, and it does include a couple of plugins, and that includes the Yoast plugin, a couple other basic plugins. If you have a lot of really advanced plugins you're wanting to add, So different kinds of blog integrations, or maybe you've been blogging for years and years and years, and you have tons of content that might be hard to move over. They have a third plan, which is the advanced blog plan. They're all very affordable. But if you are wanting to blog, you'll have to move to one of those second or third level of tiers. And then when you are ready to set it up, you'll just need to connect your domain and the show it support team is absolutely fantastic. I've always had great experiences with them and they make it really easy. You just reset, reach out. They have a chat support right in the back end of the builder and just tell them, Hey, I'm ready to set up the WordPress blog. Yeah. Awesome. Can you share a case study or success story where effective branding and web design impacted Yes, so I worked with a wedding client here in my home state, actually, in Kentucky, last year. And she's actually increased her bookings quite a bit since we redid her website. She re-branded it to be more of her ideal client. She gave her an opportunity also to refresh her copy. She's getting more inquiries from Google, which is incredible. So Great. Now for those, for those who are kind of dabbling with show it themselves, I want to know where you Ah, this is a great question. So, uh, I really love Davey and Krista templates specifically for wedding photographers. Um, they do a great job. They also prioritize SEO when they build the templates, which is something that's really important to think about when you are choosing a template because there's a lot of things that go into the back end of building the template in terms of text hierarchy and where the text is placed, all kinds of things like that. So making sure that it is someone that has prioritized that in the way they built the template. Theirs are very well designed. They're fantastic. I really love tonic templates as well. Those are, they're just beautiful, beautifully designed and very strategic And you can also find templates for Showit on marketplaces like Etsy, Creative Market, those kind of sites as well. There's plenty out there. And you don't necessarily have to buy an entire website template, right? find on some of these platforms just a sales page or just a podcast page. I might have used one for mine. Yes, yes, that's fantastic. And, you know, if you've built your whole website, but you want to add on the layout of a highly converting sales page, that could be a quick way to do it is to buy one, then, you know, you know, put all your branding and your fonts and everything on it and incorporate it into your existing site. Or you could just go to Laurel Vines That's always an option. I do also have a template customization service. A lot of people like that. If they already have a template that they've picked out and they love it, but just the work of, you know, changing out all the branding and everything, or if they're rebranding in the process, I have that as well, uh, as an offer because a lot of people, um, you know, just the time that it does take to customize the template. Sometimes it's a lot easier to outsource and just making sure that it's, it's still mobile optimized Yeah. So why don't you run through with me? What are your Yeah. So I really have just two main offers and that is we call it website in a week, which is template customization. Um, and that's where you bring a template or I have a suite of templates that you can choose from. Uh, and we basically just take that week. I get all of your branding and if we're doing branding, we would do that beforehand. and I do your SEO work and everything. And then you get me all of your copy images, everything. We have a kickoff call. And then in that one week, I customize the template based on your branding and your copy. And then you're able to review. I also include up to like three custom sections because a lot of times, you know, there's just a few things that won't quite fit into a template. So we have to add a few custom customizations as well. Make This episode of Wedding Empires is brought to you by the Wedding Academy, where you can start and grow your wedding business. We offer certificate courses, group coaching programs, and a whole heap of templates and worksheets and things to help you get started and grow your wedding business. For more information, visit WeddingAcademyGlobal.com. And don't forget to use your 5% discount code podcast