Strategic Social Media Brief

Grace Cox | COM 316 | Social Media | Professor Plake | December 13, 2022
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Overview of Sparkles

Sparkles Event, Décor and Design, LLC is a wedding planning company based out of

Walterboro, SC. This company travels all over the state planning “The Best Day Ever” for their

couples. They have been coordinating, planning, designing, and creating weddings for over a

decade. They are an inclusive company working with brides of all budgets to create their dream

wedding day. They strive to give their brides a stress-free and beautiful experience while

planning their perfect day. Sparkles' mission is to provide brides of all budgets a

once-of-a-lifetime experience while focusing on the goal of designing and producing creative

and unforgettable events. Their website states “From small intimate affairs to large-scale parties,

we strive to execute events that not only aim to impress but also create unique experiences for

our clients and their guests that last long after the fun is over” (Wedding Planner, 2021).

Social Media Accounts

1,784 followers 4.8K followers 103 followers Sparkles Website

Situational Analysis

Sparkles Events Dècor and Design Social media currently faces a low number of posts

and content, resulting in a lack of engagement across all major platforms. With the increase in

new brides searching for wedding planners, Sparkles has the strength to grow its social media

presence to reach these new clients. In 2021, according to the wedding report, ​there were 29,418

weddings in South Carolina (Wedding Market Report, 2021). With this number increasing in

2022, Sparkles has an opportunity to max out calendar dates for the latter part of this year and
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2023 while continuing to book ahead into the 2024 wedding season. With the rebranding of

Sparkles on social media, we can increase bookings while also improving engagement across

every platform. The content can reach newly engaged brides and keep a consistent clientele on

the event planning side of the business.

When the engagement begins to increase, Sparkles can reach diverse groups of brides,

expand clientele, create personal connections, and teach others how the business works. By

reaching larger groups and creating relationships, your clientele will begin to grow. With the

business gaining experience in all different types of budget groups and types of brides, it will

benefit future generations of newlyweds.

Core Problem

Sparkles social media is in need of a total social media revamp, which will increase

engagement and increase wedding bookings. The socials are not consistent, cohesive, or

aesthetically pleasing. The business as a whole, including wedding planning and all types of

event planning, does not have an overall mission statement. Since there is no mission statement,

it seems as though they do not have specific brand recognition. These three things withhold the

opportunity to receive the maximum amount of business, goals, and objectives. The purpose of

creating a mission statement for Sparkles is to drive the company to achieve certain goals. The

team can create a strong plan to attain those goals after they have been established. The next step

is to create a brand name. Sparkles should want to attract clients who will keep using the

business, not ones who just know about it and utilize it once. The clients will be able to relate to

the brand more when they understand what Sparkles stands for. The social media platforms need

to be improved by creating regular relevant content, interacting with followers, and

professionalism while still reflecting our brand identity. Sparkles will be able to produce content
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that is geared toward increasing booking rates while also attracting newly engaged brides and

grooms.

SWOT Analysis

Strengths

● Enhancing past clientele/sharing past wedding content from photographers

● Promotion of their top-quality vendors

● 4.9 Clientele review rate – 239 reviews: “88% of consumers trust online reviews as much

as personal recommendations” (Music, 2019)

● Facebook mentions with business partners

● Strong professional captions

Weaknesses

● No consistent style

● Lack of website customization

● High follower count but no engagement

● Few likes, shares, and views

● None or few comments from viewers

● Personal content on the business pages

● Lack of content creation– no graphics

Opportunities

● Evaluating/Participate in the latest social media platforms and trends (Freburg, 2022)

○ How-to Videos

○ Behind-the-scenes footage

○ TikTok weddings: #weddingtiktok (Wheless, 2022)

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● Connect the business page to the company website

● Increase click-through-rate/audience engagements

● Reach brides farther than South Carolina

● Expand clientele to all budget brides

● Create personal connections through team introductions

● Create a price sheet for basic wedding day packages

● Sparkles Hashtag: The Ultimate Social Media Guide for Wedding Planning states it is the

perfect idea for sharing the process with others and for gathering wedding planning ideas.

● Revamp company website: According to Internet Marketing Company, “The perfect

website should encapsulate what a wedding planner's mission statement is, such as in its

content and overall appearance, but it must perform well to boot (2019).

Threats

● Competitors:

○ Do-it-yourself brides

○ Corporate wedding planners

○ Travel wedding companies

○ South Carolina Lowcountry Wedding Planners

● TikTok how-to-videos

● Destination Brides

● Blog posts created by other companies

Strategic Implication

Sparkles has a huge opportunity to strengthen its social media by producing content

geared toward increasing booking rates and attracting newly engaged brides and grooms. The
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business has the potential to overtake its rivals as a top competitor in South Carolina's wedding

industry. By enhancing its social media brand and engagement, Sparkles will develop its

platforms to inspire, develop, and help construct the perfect wedding day for every type of bride.

Key Audience

Currently, Sparkles' social media platforms largely target women who may soon be

married. They publish content showcasing their previous weddings and designs. Potential brides

are, of course, the primary audience in the wedding planning industry. Since Sparkles is an event

planning company as well, there needs to be a secondary audience to keep the balance between

the wedding and regular event content. The secondary audience is the regular event clientele,

mostly middle-aged women planning parties.

Strategy

Strategic Storytelling

We at Sparkles aim to communicate how we aren’t your average wedding planning

company. We strive for that personal, one-on-one connection with our brides. Sparkles wants to

design each wedding perfectly, and by personally knowing our clients, we can do precisely what

they envision for their perfect day. Through our campaign, we are hoping to provide our

audiences with background information about Sparkles—the inside scoop—and what we do as a

company to provide and care for our brides. We want our clients to know we mean business

when it comes to designing and perfecting their perfect day. We are a small, women-owned

business that prides itself on its work and attitudes. Our goal is to begin showcasing our work,

partake in social media wedding trends, and explain why we are a top contender among South

Carolina wedding planners. Our call to action should be “Visit our website to book your

consultation today.” This will encourage our potential brides to call us or book a consultation
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online, but it will also show them what our work looks like and our previous client reviews that

are posted on our site. According to Stacy McLachlan from Hootsuite's blog, “A call to action is

a prompt to get your audience to do something specific” (McLachlan, 2021). We are looking for

our audiences to click and book as soon as they hear about our budget-friendly wedding

planning.

Goal Statement and Objective

The overall goal is to increase booking rates at Sparkles Events, Dècor, and Design. The

objective of this campaign is to increase booking rates and reach diverse groups of newly

engaged brides by 15% for the 2023–2024 wedding season.

Objective Rationale

Sparkles' social media needs to be completely revamped in order to increase engagement

and wedding bookings. With more social media followers, Sparkles will be able to attract these

new customers in time for the upcoming wedding season. Sparkles' core problem is that their

socials lack coherence, consistency, and aesthetic appeal. There is no overarching mission

statement for the company as a whole, which includes wedding planning and all other kinds of

event planning. It appears that they do not have a particular kind of brand recognition because

there is no mission statement. The chance to obtain the greatest amount of business, goals, and

objectives is restricted by these three factors.

According to the Wedding Wire, “Wedding planner statistics show being connected is

crucial as 80 percent of millennials are planning their wedding online, and 39 percent of those

are actively doing so on their mobile device" (Goodson, 2019). Sparkles' goal of increasing

booking rates by 15% for the wedding season of 2023–2024 can be achieved by using social

media more frequently and consistently as a result of this comprehensive social media revamp.
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The social media accounts will be able to build a following of women who are newlyweds or

hope to marry soon. As the business expands into each new wedding season, this can keep a

steady clientele coming in.

Sparkles should concentrate on growing its social media presence in order to increase its

booking rates. With higher booking rates, there will be more weddings to plan, more

opportunities to gain experience, and more opportunities to display these exquisitely planned

weddings. In addition to attracting new customers, Sparkles will welcome a diverse range of

brides with varying spending limits for the upcoming seasons.

Content Ideas

Idea #1

For Sparkles’ background story, we would present it on Facebook and Instagram. This story will

be told through documentary-style videos telling the history of Sparkles and what "sparked" it to

be created. Since starting this company more than ten years ago, the owner, Betty Anne Rhode,

has successfully built a sizable clientele. She has been able to make many connections through

social media previously, but with this personal story, she hopes to bring a sense of emotion to the

hard work, sweat, and tears put in to create this small, women-owned business. We want to show

our audiences how we have built this business from the beginning up until the present. This kind

of content will help establish a real, personal connection, which will raise booking rates and

draw in newly engaged brides and grooms.

Idea #2

Sparkles will participate in “weddingtok” trends to gain audiences on TikTok (Wheless,

2022). These trends should be up-to-date and also relevant to our business. Some trends that

would be relevant are how-tos, behind-the-scenes looks at the wedding day, and Sparkle’s
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wedding designs. According to the textbook, these types of videos could be considered thought

leadership, such as how-to guides, video tutorials, videos from team members, and branding

(Freburg, 2022). Sparkles can raise brand awareness among the younger generation (Generation

Z) by participating in trends. According to Collette Mitola on the Wedding Pro blog, “Like

everyone else in varying degrees of isolation, couples are looking for laughs and entertainment.

Some wedding pros have already leaned into TikTok to create content — including

behind-the-scenes event production, wedding planning tips, and dance challenges” (Mitola).

Sparkles could even participate in dance challenges with brides or even our team members.

Idea #3

Sparkles can create graphics and post them to highlight the team members. By

highlighting these team members, we can tell our potential or current clients about our staff and

what they have done or are doing for Sparkles. Many of our staff members have had their

weddings planned by the owner, Betty Anne, and this would be a great time to highlight their

favorite parts of planning, meetings, and just the anticipation of waiting on their special day.

Sparkles should want to highlight the women who help design and plan these perfect weddings

so that our potential clients know their names and faces when they are coming to book. Sparkles

could do a short video introducing our part-time employees as well, so we can see all of the

familiar faces of Sparkles Events, Decor, and Design.

Best Practices

There are a few best practices for the wedding planning business on social media.

Internet Marketing Company explains that “One such method associated with digital media is

search engine optimization” (Internet Marketing Company, 2019). This plays a vital role in how

businesses are found online. A typical online user will perform a search to find answers to their
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questions, which will result in numerous results. In order to rank higher in search engines,

wedding planners should tailor everything from their content to their websites. According to

Advertising Age, “Wedding season has returned in full force following pandemic cancellations

and postponements, and TikTok has become the go-to destination for brands to promote

products, answer questions, and ultimately drive sales for a new generation of brides” (Wheless,

2022). Sparkles would be able to utilize #weddingtok to be a part of the trending weddings of the

season. Next, would be for Sparkles to create a hashtag custom to our brand. The Ultimate Social

Media Guide for Wedding Planning states that “For planning posts, you want to show up during

your wedding reception, go ahead and tag them with your wedding hashtag” (Curator, 2022). If

Sparkles were to implement these three practices, their social media would have an automatic

increase in engagement. Hassan states in his study of Strategic Use of Social Media for Small

Business, “Social media allows small businesses to conduct marketing activities effectively

despite limited financial resources, lack of expertise, and competition with large business

organizations.”

Evaluation

To see if we successfully reached our objective, we need to create a measurement strategy. The

plan is to produce several types of content so we can focus on content creation measurement. We

will measure:

● Conversion rates

● Likes and shares/followers

● Use of hashtags (#sparklesweddings, #makeitSparkle, #weddingtok, #sparklegirl)

● Click-Through Rate (CTR)

● Social media conversion rate

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● Bounce rate

● Traffic to your site

In the middle of our 2023-2024 wedding season, we will evaluate our engagement, likes and

shares, click-through rates, and use of different hashtags, to measure if there is an increase. We

will track whether the overall view of our brand is positive, negative, or neutral. We will use our

specific channel metrics, such as conversion rates, likes and shares, and traffic to our website to

get an idea of what content is favored or most engaged with by our audience demographics. By

the end of our 2024 season, we will then evaluate if our updated social media content increased

our booking rates and website traffic (Freburg, 2022).

Creative

Creative 1: Documentary storytelling video thumbnail: Facebook

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Creative 2: Staff Member shout-out Graphic: Instagram
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References

Freberg, Karen June. Social Media for Strategic Communication: Creative Strategies and

Research-Based Applications. SAGE Publications, Inc., 2022.

Hassan, Shahizan, Siti Zaleha Ahmad Nadzim, and Norshuhada Shiratuddin. “Strategic Use of

Social Media for Small Business Based on the AIDA Model.” Procedia, social and

behavioral sciences 172 (2015): 262–269. Web.

https://pascal-ander.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01PASCAL_ANDER/16pov8i/c

di_crossref_primary_10_1016_j_sbspro_2015_01_363

Internet Marketing Company, fishbat, Explains How Wedding Planners Can Benefit From

Digital Media. (2019, October 23). PR Newswire.

https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A603489209/AONE?u=anderson_cl&sid=bookmark-AO

NE&xid=3323dc6b

Music, S. G. (2019, September 10). The power of guest reviews in event planning. SGM Events.

Retrieved October 5, 2022, from

https://sgmevents.com/2016/09/19/power-guest-reviews-event-planning/

“Social Media Expert Reports Global Wedding Trends.” PRWeb Newswire 2010: n. pag.

Print.https://pascal-ander.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01PASCAL_ANDER/16po

v8i/cdi_gale_infotrac_243361725

The Ultimate Social Media Guide for Wedding Planning. Curator. (n.d.). Retrieved October 5,

2022, from https://curator.io/blog/the-ultimate-social-media-guide-for-wedding-planning

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Wedding Market Report. 2021 covid-19 wedding market update. (n.d.). Retrieved October 5,

2022, from

https://wedding.report/index.cfm/action/blog/view/post/pid/1606/title/2021_Covid_19

_Wedding_Market_Update

“Wedding Planner: Sparkles Events Décor & Design, LLC.” (2021). Sparkles. Retrieved

September 20, 2022, from, https://www.sparkleseventsdecoranddesign.com/.

Wheless, E. (2022). How TikTok is reinventing the bridal business: #WeddingTok has more than

2.4 billion views. Advertising Age, 93(11), 6.

https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=sso&db=ufh&AN=1579

93030&site=ehost-live&custid=s9006749