On the 23-26 of March, 2012, Alicia Cowan and I were lucky enough to go to Lake Como to work on social media strategy and content planning for an amazing business – The Lake Como Wedding Planner.
This fantastic wedding planning business is run by Rachel Birthistle Cooke, who provides amazing experiences for wedding couples and their guests in the gorgeous Lake Como area as well as Tuscany.
In addition to experiencing the amazing scenery and eating amazing food, going for walks and runs around the lake, and spending time with Rachel and her family,  we worked with the team to create a blog and Facebook strategy mapped out for the next 6 months. We also setup and implemented and systems that will enable them to continue sharing their expertise, passion and experiences of organising exceptional weddings in Italy through social media for much longer.
In order to understand the business first hand, it made sense for Alicia and I to go over to them – and we spent 4 days immersed in their lives! We met the whole team and stayed with Rachel and her family.

While there we covered the following:

• Headline brainstorming for their blog
• How to resize and import images into their blog
• The type of content to share online which would be relevant to their audience and match their brand values
• Using “cloud” tools like Dropbox and Google Docs to share information and plans between members of the team
• Blog writing tips
• Plans for changes to their website
• Facebook timeline cover, app feed and icon updates
• Facebook strategy and content planning

It all started when Rachel and Taimar (who helps with the business marketing and is also Rachel’s daughter) came to our December “Social Media – can you afford to ignore it?” seminar, and wanted to learn more and for us to implement a real online marketing strategy.
It was a great experience and we came away feeling not only that we had helped their business but also made new friends.
Since we were there, we have been so pleased that they have been blogging regularly and sharing great things on The Lake Como Wedding Planner Facebook page
It was so rewarding that the team – Leonora, Laura, Rachel and Taimar showed a real passion for the business, and were excited at these new ways of sharing their stories. The response so far on their blog and Facebook activity has been amazing.

Rachel said the following after the weekend: “Thank you so much for an amazing weekend, I loved it, both on a work and personal level. I hope it is not just the beginning of a whole new way to work but also of new friendships. I feel so positive since the weekend, I also feel more technically able, something I didn’t think I would ever say! Also the response to some of the posts is great. “