Category Archive

Marketing & PR

SEO guest post inquiries: the best and the worst

Every morning I wake up to several “can I write a guest post for your site?” emails from writers working for SEO companies. See, there’s this whole weird corner of SEO that’s all about barfing out (usually questionable) guest post content for blogs, in exchange for links in the body of the post. It’s not something I ever EVER do (you want links from the Empire, you buy advertising, the end), but the inquiries just keep coming… sometimes as many as 5 or 6 overnight. (It’s always overnight, because the writers are non-US based.)

This morning I had two SEO guest post inquiries, and they illustrate the best and the worst I’ve seen in a long time…

Don’t be that guy: why wedding vendors shouldn’t publicly rant about work

Every once and while, a wedding vendor will perhaps forget that Offbeat Bride isn’t an industry publication. Every once and a while, we’ll get ranting, vitriolic comments from vendors about how stupid brides are, how little couples understand about what vendors do, how this one time this one couple did this totally awful thing, how they want to strangled a certain mother of the bride, etc etc etc.

But wedding industry friends, for the good of your business: don’t be that guy.

How NOT to pitch a nontraditional wedding blogger a story about engagement rings

As the publisher of a highly-trafficked wedding blog, of course I get a lot of public relations pitches every day. What’s most remarkable about these pitches is how completely and comically off some of them can be. Here’s my big guidance for public relations folks: if you’re pitching a publication, it’s worth taking five minutes to familiarize yourself with that publication’s focus.

5 ways to use Pinterest’s Source page to market your business

Have you ever visited Pinterest’s “Source” page for your website? This is the page that displays the most recent pins sourced from your website. You find it by going to http://pinterest.com/source/[your URL].

I am obsessed with Offbeat Bride’s source page at http://pinterest.com/source/offbeatbride.com, and it’s one of my most frequently visited pages. I don’t even visit Pinterest.com any more — I’ve bookmarked Offbeat Bride’s source page, and it’s one of the most effective ways I have of marketing my business. Here’s how…