We were lucky to catch up with Vicki Oduba recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Vicki, thanks for joining us today. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.

After freelancing for several years in the events planning industry, I decided to take a risk and turn my hobby into a profession. I started by registering my business name and then taking tons of professional classes to gain more knowledge. It didn’t stop there; I invested in my design business by adding unique inventories and started offering virtual courses for beginners. I did this all while building a vegan cosmetics line. As challenging as that was, it was a risk I’m glad I took because it started a beautiful journey.

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

I’m Vikki, a certified events planner/designer. I help clients plan, coordinate and execute their special occasions by assisting them to narrow down budget, theme, style, venue, and everything else to make their big day smooth and memorable. I got into event planning as a freelancer. I had previously helped family and friends with their big days, and after a while, I decided it was time to help clients with my unique gifts of attention to detail by bring their event vision to life. For weddings and other events, I realize how much stress brides and clients go through to bring everything together, most times, there’s lots of confusion on where to start, best deals, what vendors to hire, and how to go about the logistics of the day-of. This is where my team and I come in, we help relieve the stress and clients can get to enjoy their big moments without worry. One of the things I’m most proud of is the sigh of relief on my bride’s face with over 500 guests and everything running smooth and all guests fully taken care of. I love getting those calls the morning after the ceremony to hear clients talk about how much they were relieved that every detail was taken care of. This is how we solve problems for our events clients. My uniqueness also comes from over the top designs for clients. It’s beautiful to wow them unexpectedly.

How did you build your audience on social media?

We all know social media can be tricky. However, one thing I have found is that people do resonate with real life story. For example, for us events planners, posting beautiful events photos are nice, but posting behind the scenes photos with challenges of how the events came together tends to get more engagement. To build a good social media presence, here’s what has worked for me. Doing giveaways, this could be cash or service you can easily provide locally. Giveaways means people has to follow you and tag others to follow as well. It’s a way to appreciate your followers and it works. Also posting real life stories that people can connect with matters. I’ve seen more engagement on my post of personal photos and how my week is going than just regular events post. Using the right hashtag is equally important in building social media presence, this can get your page seen globally.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

In building new clients, I’ve seen that referrals work a lot! People work better with someone they trust, so referrals from existing or old clients has definitely help bring new clients. In addition to that, I’ve also found a lot of new clients on social media. Clients reach out on Instagram a lot and most times turn into booked clients. The other way has been through paid events platform.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.meritevents.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/mymeritevents?utm_medium=copy_link
• Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/meritevents/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/merit-events/

Image Credits
Misterophotography Amcclips Meritphotos