The 3 Top Social Media Platforms for the Wedding Business

There’s an old saying, “You can’t be all things to all people.” In social media, you can’t be all things on all platforms. What works on Instagram doesn’t necessarily work on Pinterest. TikTok is another beast altogether. Each social media platform has its own specific language and needs love, care and attention to thrive.  

Very few venues, if any, have the time or resources to manage their presence on more than one or two platforms. In order to help you decide where to focus your efforts, here are the three that we find to be the most effective for wedding venues. 

Priority 1: Instagram

For today’s couples, seeing is believing, and Instagram is all about images and videos. This channel needs to be a primary, if not the primary social media platform for your venue. In order to be successful, you need to post to Instagram 5-7 times per week and take advantage of all four formats that Instagram offers:

• Single Feed Posts: These are single photographs or videos that are best-used when you want to highlight one moment.
• Reels: Like TikTok, Reels lets you create short videos, then add filters, text, trending music and effects before you post. At the moment, Reels are prioritized in users’ home feed and the Explore page, which means users that don’t follow you will get to see your content— exposure that will lead you to building a new audience. Quick, engaging video content performs well here, such as a before-and-after transformation of your space, or a panorama of a sunset wedding set-up. 
• Carousels: Carousels let readers swipe through multiple images, videos or both. Think of it as a mini album. By nature, carousels generate higher engagement because users actively swipe from one photo or video to the next. They also tend to generate a lot of comments, which makes them show up on more users’ feeds.
• Stories: Top brands will post Instagram stores at least 3 times per week. It’s a great channel to showcase an authentic first-person POV at the property. From the behind the scenes of getting ready for a wedding, to a gorgeous view of the getting ready suite, this channel is where you can tell stories to an audience that is listening. Even though Stories disappear in 24 hours, they engage your super fans—and you can save priority stories to your profile’s highlights.

Priority 2: TikTok

Forget the myth that TikTok is full of tweens and teens. Seventy-five percent of TikTok users are over 20, and, from what we’re seeing at Carats & Cake, a lot of them are planning weddings. Or helping others do the same.

You want to be on TikTok. And you want to get it right. 

To succeed on TikTok, you have to commit and invest time in the platform, understand trends, what makes sense for your brand to participate in, and learn the language of TikTok. If you’re not sure what will resonate with your intended audience and still feel authentic, take a look at what your peers in the industry are doing, and note how other wedding businesses are integrating TikTok trends and features into their story-telling.

When you first start the account, it’s important to post at least twice a day. We find it takes about 30 days of constant posting for the algorithm to understand what it is that you’re posting, who's following you, and who wants to see more of your posts.

Priority 3: Pinterest

Pinterest is a social discovery platform that is filled with inspirational images and videos. Many couples today head to Pinterest when they are in the planning phase—pulling together a mood board to define their wedding aesthetic and shopping for the perfect wedding venue.

The platform encourages users to share and pin gorgeous images and videos from around the Internet, so you don’t have to own a ton of photos or videos to start your own Pinterest account and create content. Your Pinterest pins and boards can include content from photographers’, planners’, or florists’ websites. You can even use images and videos from couples’ weddings on Carats & Cake!

Pinterest boards are a great way to show the versatility of your wedding venue, such as creating a curated Fall Weddings or Spring Weddings board. Then load them with beautiful photos and videos of your venue. Make sure they’re relevant and useful. And make sure you use the same language that people use when searching for a subject (ie, “spring weddings” vs. “spring nuptials”) in order to have a better chance of your content getting noticed.

What about YouTube, Facebook and Twitter? 

No question that these are the 800-pound gorillas in social media. YouTube, in fact, is the second-most visited site on the Internet after Google. And Facebook has an enormous number of daily active users. 

But if your time and resources are limited, you want to invest most of your effort in the sites where upscale couples go to plan a wedding. Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest are where you want to be.

Carats & Cake is building the fintech platform for events business to better connect with, and serve the needs of, digital and mobile-first customers. We believe that by using modern technology, the very best engineering talent, and a mission-driven approach, we can transform the events industry with purpose-built tools and solutions that enable future growth. Our platform is built on trust and transparency, making it easier for properties to convert sales and align with customer needs every step of the way.