A significant portion of Offbeat Bride’s readers are wedding industry folks doing market research and keeping up with industry trends. Some of them are even doing respectful marketing, leaving comments that are thoughtful (and non-self-promotional!) that help them connect with our readers. It’s lovely!
Every once and while though, 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 strangle a certain mother of the bride, etc etc etc.
But wedding industry friends, for the good of your business: don’t be that guy. Do not alienate potential clients by ranting publicly about your work frustrations on a publication read by couples.
I want to be clear about this: I totally get it. Like any job, working in the wedding industry can be frustrating. Like any job, you deal with people making the same mistakes over and over. Unlike some jobs, there are a lot of emotions and family dynamics involved. So I get it: working weddings can be complex and exhausting.
However, when you leave public comments on Facebook about how no one understands how hard you work and you want to assault a bride’s mother? That’s not a way to win friends and clients. When you leave a comment on a wedding blog about how brides are rude? I’ve seen our readers reply with comments like, “You’re only confirming all the reasons I don’t trust anyone in the wedding industry.”
For me as a community manager, of course these ranting comments are troubling. I can handle that, though… I deal with troubling comments all day, every day. It’s part of MY frustrating job.
My larger concern with ranting vendor comments is that from a marketing perspective, they’re TERRIBLE FOR BUSINESS. Not my business, YOUR business. You know a quick way to ensure you won’t get clients? By complaining about them to their faces, “educating” them with hostility, or flat-out telling them they don’t appreciate you.
Offbeat Bride’s Facebook page has blasted into the stratosphere this month, with our Like count going from 33k to 43k in the last 30 days…. Read more
My advice? Find a nice private corner of the web to vent. There are numerous private online communities dedicated to wedding vendors networking and kvetching, and I think they’re extremely valuable. We all have frustrations we need to get out! Work can be a pain in the ass, and trust me: as a wedding media publisher, I GET IT. I truly, seriously, majorly understand… more than I could ever admit in public, really.
But when wedding vendors leave hostile comments on a publication catering to their potential clients? They’re damaging their professional reputations, and missing a marketing opportunity.
Don’t be that guy.
