Our remote working team conflict resolution policy

The Offbeat Empire is staffed by a team of contractors who all work remotely. Sure we’re based in Seattle — but I’m the only person who lives here. The rest of the staff is in California, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, New Jersey, and Michigan. We keep in close touch via Slack, and we’re all nice people… but still: conflicts happen. This in mind, I thought I’d share the Offbeat Empire’s official conflict resolution policy.

Forums are dying

For the last four years, the Offbeat Bride Tribe’s traffic has been in decline.
Across the web, forums are dying as we all increasingly default to social media like Facebook. What does this mean for the future of the Tribe?

Pinterest vs Facebook: how different algorithms encourage different publisher behavior

While both Facebook and Pinterest traffic are hugely important to me, I interact with the two networks very differently. As a publisher, Facebook has me trained like a dog: we post all day, every day on our Facebook page because we see an immediate, real-time traffic boost when our posts go out. Meanwhile, I have very little control over the traffic Pinterest sends, even though I also post there all day every day. So why do I keep pinning?

Let’s talk about clickbait

I think of clickbait as manipulative and forcing your hand (ie “This bride got left at the altar — YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT SHE DID NEXT”), but the truth of publishing is that a huge portion of a publisher’s job is what’s known as content marketing.

How do you make sure that people who are interested in your content A) see it and B) are interested enough in it to click through to read it? People do NOT want to leave Facebook, so it’s a significant challenge.