Vendors: maximize your ROI with inclusive marketing materials

While we almost never decline an advertiser for having marketing materials that are “too traditional,” I do want to make sure wedding vendors looking to appeal to nontraditional clients know that if your website is too traditional, you may not see a solid return on investment when you reach out to nontraditional couples.

45 million readers: On Offbeat Bride’s 10th anniversary + what we’re working on now

As of last week, Offbeat Bride is now a DECADE OLD. It’s still one of the biggest ironies ever for me that the website was launched just as a way to promote the book that was supposed to finally launch me into what I imagined as “real success.” In 2007, digital publishing was still the less-respected nerdy little sibling of the “real” publishing industry, and being a published author was going to be my big ticket to legitimacy and recognition.

…Har har! Joke was on me!

4 reasons I love Instagram Stories

Yesterday I posted on Offbeat Empire’s Facebook page about how, if folks want to follow along with me behind the scenes, they should follow @offbeatbride’s Instagram Stories. A couple commenters were like, “But wait I don’t use Instagram, how can I see that content?” and the answer is…

…you can’t.

And here’s more about why.

How Facebook algorithms and a stupid post about cranky wine relate to the election

Around 9am last Thursday, Megan regrammed a silly Instagram picture of these bottles of amusingly-named wine. This set off an insane chain of events that resulted in, five days later, 13 million people seeing this piece of content.

Put another way, the weekend before one of the most divisive presidential elections in US history, the robots that serve America our information decided that what 13 million of us really needed to see was a throw-away post about wine labels that said “FUCK” on them.

For me as a publisher, this was an insane content marketing story to watch unfold. Come with me on this journey as I unpack what it says about the media, the work of my editors, my company, and even the American election.