I guess if you’ve read many of my newsletters or listened to any of my podcast episodes, you’ll know how I place a high value on positivity.

There are loads of personal reasons for this… I have to work hard to keep myself in a positive mental state. Or I have to work hard to get myself out of my regular low moods. Positivity is a conscious choice for me.

But I’m not going to talk about that today, I’m going to talk about why I believe positivity (or at least a lack of negativity) is so so important in business and marketing.

And I’m going to talk about this because I can see the usual trend happening… we get busy, and we start moaning about things on social media.

This week I’ve seen several posts telling clients off for ‘ghosting’.

I know why these things go semi-viral. It’s because we’re all in the same boat and for the vast majority of us, most of our followers are peers, not potential clients. People push out this content because they know we will say ‘yes! I feel this too!’ and share it, and yes it creates a sense of camaraderie between suppliers. And it creates reach for the person who shared the original post.

I’ll tell you a secret. That’s the only reason they put out the original post in the first place. Their own reach, engagement, and playing to the algorithm. It wasn’t to help you.

Camaraderie doesn’t pay bills. And negativity doesn’t, and hasn’t ever, attracted clients.

So please, for your own sake, and for the sake of the collective reputation of the wedding industry, let’s not moan about client behaviour on our social media. I can tell you as someone who worked in marketing for a decade before becoming a photographer, if this worked, Coca Cola would be telling you off and moaning about you every day for drinking Pepsi.

And would that make you buy coca cola, because you thought you were upsetting them by not buying their product? I’m guessing not. Would it put you off buying coca cola because they’re a bunch of moaners? I’m guessing it probably would, at least subconsciously.

Everything you do and say becomes a part of your brand. It becomes what people associate with you and your brand. And in our cases our brand is often ourselves, so if you’re a social media moaner, even from time to time, that becomes part of how people perceive you.

I know we’re busy and getting stressed, and just trying to make sure we don’t fall into epic backlogs, and we’re replying to our enquiries with gusto and enthusiasm… and when people don’t reply we can take it personally. But it’s not meant personally.

They don’t mean it personally.

The world doesn’t revolve around us as wedding suppliers. Oftentimes people have to enquire just to get the price. So in reality if they don’t reply after getting the price it’s usually just more expensive than they can afford, or want to pay. That’s not ghosting. That’s because you made them ‘enquire’ to see your prices.

If I walk past a watch shop, for example. I love watches so I’ll often look in the window. Which watches do I want? The ones I can’t afford. I won’t walk in the shop just to tell the staff I can’t afford the Rolex in the left hand window. To me the first stage of an enquiry is simply looking in our shop windows and trying to see what we can afford.

I consider ghosting as someone who continues the conversation beyond the price stage, then disappears… Stops replying to messages or emails, or doesn’t show up to a meeting.

Before that, I don’t give it a second thought. Actually I rarely give it any mental energy at any point. People lead busy lives, and I don’t personally feel they need to explain themselves to me. I move on.

Let me finish on a positive.

To reduce so-called ghosting can be quite simple. Just tell them, explicitly, what you want them to do next. People love it to be made clear what the next step is.

For example, my response to an initial enquiry is short and to the point. Here’s my full price list (I have a starting price on my website), and I want to talk to you so click this link to book in a zoom.

I encourage you to go back and take a look at your enquiry response and make sure it explicitly asks for the next action from the enquirer.

And don’t expect them to read your mind. If it’s so important to you that they tell you that they can’t afford you (the Rolex in the left hand window) give them a simple way to do that! Tell them you need that.

Ghosting is a part of life now everything has moved online.

Just keep focusing on making great work, making yourself easy to find, easy to contact, and easy to deal with at every stage of the process.

The easier you make it all and the more positive you make the whole experience around your brand, the less likely someone is to disappear into thin air at any stage of the process.

If you’re shooting this weekend, have a great one! Thanks for reading.

Adam

PS If you read last week’s email I did make it to the venue in France that day, and didn’t need to find a seedy Paris motel. Eurostar was also a disaster on the way home, but I’m told I was just unlucky because everyone in the world decided to attempt to travel last weekend.