We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Maria Biffle. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Maria below.

Maria, appreciate you joining us today. Do you manage your own social media?

Since the beginning of Soiree, I have always been the one to do “all the things”, so to speak. Like many small business owners, I was motivated to reach a point of success where I could hire my own team. Within that team, not only would it be stylists that would assist with planning and event setups, but also the back of house functions, like social media management. For the longest time I took care of planning, posting and engaging in all social media we participated in. Some months I would be organized and on a roll (yay!), while others I found it challenging to find photos, create posts, videos and come up with a vision for the feed. Organization and forward planning is absolutely key – it’s something you have to make time for, if it’s important to your business marketing.

Soiree is on several social media channels – Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest and Tik-Tok. It was important for me to find tools for posting that would be as streamlined as possible. I use Planoly for all of my content organization and posting, which has made it much easier to manage. Making the time to plan out your social calendar for the current/next month(s) can be overwhelming and super time consuming if you’re not sure where to start. Through various resources, content planning calendars and classes I have taken, I’ve been able to find a groove that helps get the postings done consistently. That also included recently hiring a social media assistant! Letting go of part of this process for someone who is type A is hard, but really has given me time back and I’m lucky to have someone that is well versed in social media management helping me.

Lastly, I want to leave some advice that was given to me when it comes to social media posts. No matter what platform(s) you decide to use, remember that your future client is using what you post as a means to hire or work with you. Whether you are an event planner like me, where all photos on my IG reflects the work we do and services we offer – or you are a baker showing all the yummy treats you create, be intentional with your posts. Take time to create content photos that show your work, authenticity is crucial. The other piece to remember is to show yourself from time to time…say hello, introduce yourself and let people see the face behind the business. Connection and engagement is key to your growth!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Soirée was created from the love of celebrating life and creating moments. Ever since I was a little girl, I loved helping put together parties with my family. From setting up decorations to helping put the last details on the desserts, I knew I wanted to be a party boss one day. Soirée started out as an online party shop. It has now grown into a full party planning + design company!

I started the journey of creating Soiree when I was working on my Master’s in Business Administration, with a specialization in International Business. For our final capstone project, we were required to create a business model from beginning to end. It could be anything we wanted, as long as it was legally plausible. I thought to myself, it I wasn’t working my current corporate job, what would I want to do? I know, party planning! So I created a business model of my perfect party planning business and a few years later, began to make it a reality.

When I started putting together the formalities of the business, I turned to Google and social media to research other event planners, classes I could take, conferences I could attend, and just any videos that would provide more education for this type of business. Coming from working retail for many years, in several different roles, I felt confident in business management but needed help in the marketing aspect. I took tons of classes and attended some live conferences, which allowed me to network with like business owners and start to be part of a community that was very supportive of each other. At this time, I was also getting the support from my mother and my best friend, when it came to prepping and styling events. I did many family + friend events to gain experience and practice, practice, practice!

When the pandemic hit, I was already in the process of hiring my first employee ever. It was an exciting moment for me because I had worked up to being able to make this happen AND it was a sign that my business was growing! Something I could only imagine in my wildest dreams. We were not able to meet in person for several months, but communicated daily and she worked with myself, best friend and mother to come up with ideas of how we could still bring celebrations to life, safely. As a small team of 4, we created party kits, kids activity kits, STEAM kits, and offered balloon garlands – all as a no-contact drop off for those clients who were interested. It was important to me to find a way to stay connected as well as support the need to still celebrate milestones, even if it looked a little different. Being able to offer this was such a heart warming experience.

Now, a couple years post pandemic, Soiree is reaching new heights. We have focused our niche in 3 categories: party planning, event design, and styling + coordination. We still very much create customized details as part of our styling services; it’s all in the details! I have been able to grow my team to now having 6 members, all with many creative talents. We have a social media manager who keeps our feeds fresh with new content. The types of events that we cater to now has expanded: birthdays, wedding events, micro weddings, baby showers, corporate events, milestones, and more. I am humbled and just EXCITED beyond belief that I have such a cool job. As something that was just a fun dream to consider, to putting in the work and staying with it (good times and bad), this is what I am most proud of.

How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?

Once we are hired for an event, all communication I do with clients is via HoneyBook. It has been the best event management system I’ve come across. Working in this platform allows me to have a consistent thread of communication between myself and the client and I am also able to include my team on it. This helps tremendously in that we are all on the same page from the start. After an event is complete, we do send follow up emails to clients and also stay connected to them on social media (since that’s where many of them find us). We have been able to have a high number of clients come back to us for yearly celebrations or new events they are hosting. I attribute some of that to maintaining an organized relationship with them through HoneyBook. To add, much of our business growth comes from referrals. Clients hire us and guests who attend their celebrations end up wanting to contact us for their future events. We do offer discounts for referral clients and repeat clients.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I touched on social media a little in a previous question, but also wanted to include how we continue to grow our followers and presence. One, we use Planoly for our social media management and posting. Two, we now have a social media manager that helps maintain this for us including posting the right kind of photos that build our ‘magazine’. Three, I do not participate in ads…I know, I know – there will be those that feel strongly about using them, however in our type of business, it has not proved to be successful. That being said, our followers have grown quite a bit in the last 2 years, organically. I find that it’s a combination of keeping a fresh feed AND engaging with those who comment on our posts. We also consistently post on stories, which for me feels like a different client at times. What I mean by that is in stories, the snap shots/videos we show are current and at times behind the scenes work we are doing – these prove to be more interesting and usually give us higher engagement via reaching out to us or completing our inquiry form (because the client refers to it). It also can lead to them looking at our feed, liking posts and following us. For me, I can say that I have high results and connection with the followers we have – and it’s still growing! It has never been about having x amount of followers, but instead being genuinely connected to the ones we do have. Slow and steady wins the race.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.soireebyria.com
• Instagram: @soireebyria
• Facebook: @soireebyria
• Other: Tik-Tok: @soireebyria Pinterest: @soireebyria

Image Credits
@camilamargottaphotography @bohobabesphotography