“Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.”

-Thomas Edison

© 2009, iMatrimony Wedding Technology Blog. All rights reserved.

I cannot even begin to tell you how many computers I’ve had “bite the dust” over the years. There is nothing more upsetting than loosing important software, documents, photos, and more. So what would you do if you lost everything you use to run your wedding business on your computer today? What would you tell your clients? How long would it take you to rebuild and recreate all of the contacts, documents, and information for your wedding business?  Although there are options to attempt to recover your items, the odds of 100% recovery are low. Take the necessary steps to protect your business now.

DIY Backup

Backing up your wedding business doesn’t have to be complicated. Decide how often you need to backup important information for you wedding business be it weekly, monthly, or quarterly. There are a number of external hard drives available, which are great tools for backup storage. Self scan your documents, and save them to your external device, or simply burn them on CDs and store.

Backup and Storage Services

Don’t have the time to do-it-yourself? Use a secure company or online service to scan, and store your important business documents and files at a remote location. Mozy.com, Pixily.com, and iBackup.com are three great resources for backing up your wedding business.

Already have a system down for backing up your business? Do share. Let us know what works for you, and what tools have been most beneficial.

© 2009, iMatrimony Wedding Technology Blog. All rights reserved.

A few weeks ago in our 30 Days to Build a Better Blog series, I touched a bit on the importance of having a Privacy Policy for your Wedding Blog. It’s a must to disclose things like, whether or not you’re paid to promote or review products, what information you acquire from tracking and cookies, or even how you plan to use the data you capture from your readers. 

There are a few sites that have made this process a bit easier. Privacy Policy Generators start with a list of questions regarding your blog, and the intentions of your blog. Your answers to these questions directly populate the information provided in your Privacy Policy. Take a look at the Privacy Policy Generators below, and be sure to include the correct information pertinent to your wedding blog.

Direct Marketing Association
WebDevTips – Privacy Creator
Privacy Policy Creator.com

© 2009, iMatrimony Wedding Technology Blog. All rights reserved.

“One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.”

-Elbert Hubbard

© 2009, iMatrimony Wedding Technology Blog. All rights reserved.

Twitter takes the next step into the world of Video. I recently shared a very cool app called BubbleTweet, that allows you to add a short video message to your Twitter account. Now there’s TwitCam by LiveStream. TwitCam delivers live streaming video on Twitter. So how does it work? It’s easy, in just 3 steps you too can share live video with your tweeps.

1. Plug in your WebCam
2. Login to your Twitter Account
3. Click the Broadcast Button, That’s it!!  

Twitcam then posts a description and link of your Twitter account for everyone to join in. Stream live from a wedding or industry event, and chat live with your tweeps while streaming. So check it out, and let me know what think. Ready, Set, Action!!!

© 2009, iMatrimony Wedding Technology Blog. All rights reserved.

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

-Albert Einstein

© 2009, iMatrimony Wedding Technology Blog. All rights reserved.

Networking is such an important part of building your wedding business, and if you’re anything like me, you are constantly attending wedding industry events. I love meeting new people in the wedding world, and do my best to write a little note on the back of each business card I receive, to remind me of where I met the person, and a little keyword about our conversation. Then what?? What do you do with the business cards? Do you enter each and every new contact manual into your management system? Not anymore. 

Cardscan-Contact Management System is one of the best tools to help with managing all the new contacts. It’s available for PC and Macs, and quickly scans 30 business card  a minute into a contact management software. It seamlessly syncs with your mobile device and softwares like MS Outlook. You can also capture contact information from emails and webpages.

So after a night of networking, save a ton of time by scanning your business cards directly into your address book. Never enter a business card manually again.

© 2009, iMatrimony Wedding Technology Blog. All rights reserved.

You Made It!!!

We have finally reached the end of the 30 Days to Build a Better Wedding Blog series. Can you believe it? Having a wedding blog for your business is much like a full time job. I hope that this series was helpful in improving your wedding blog, and providing each of you with tools to reach your blogging goals and aspirations.

With sincere appreciation, I’d like to thank each and every one of you who visited the iMatrimony Blog daily in anticipation of the next topic and task. I appreciate all of the kind words and comments you all shared by email and on Twitter. It made it so worthwhile to receive all of your feedback. 

Day 30 Task – What do you think??

Please, please, please share with me your opinions and thoughts on this series. Was it helpful? What did you enjoy most? What would you like to see more of on the iMatrimony Wedding Technology Blog? I want to hear from YOU. Leave a comment below or send an email to info {@} imatrimonyblog.com. Happy Blogging!!!!

© 2009, iMatrimony Wedding Technology Blog. All rights reserved.

This series has absolutely blown by for me. We are one day away from completing the 30 Days to Build a Better Wedding Blog. On Day 18.5, I promised to revisit the topic of “Protecting your Wedding Blog within Social Media”. It is no surprise that this series is not the first “30 Day Blog” series. There are many others available over tons of topics, industries, and genres. Wedding blogs have become a part of so many businesses in the industry, so I decided to share this series with the wedding industry as an effort to provide basic and common blogging knowledge to you, my readers. 

Social Media has its pros and cons, and can be used to build or destroy your brand. So, it’s important never to avoid a conversation about your brand within Social Media.  It is imperative to choose the “high road” and respond with specific intent to protect your brand. Below are  articles that address this topic first hand:

Mashable.com – A Guide to Protecting Your Online Identity

SocialMediaToday.com – Protect your Brand Against Negative Buzz

LifeHacker.com – Manage Your Online Reputation

Day 29 Task – Protect your Wedding Blog within Social Media

Take immediate steps to Protect your Wedding Blog within Social Media. Commit time to research your brand on a daily basis, manage your Google Alerts setup on Day 3, look into your @mentions on twitter, and most importantly, ask people you trust within the industry what others are saying about you.

© 2009, iMatrimony Wedding Technology Blog. All rights reserved.

On Day 28, we’ll take a quick look at how to spread the word and promote your wedding blog using social media. What is Social Media?  In my opinion, it’s simply a platform for people to communicate and share information. Social Media is a great avenue to share information about your wedding blog, and increase your readership. Using Social Media, can take your wedding blog to places and people you may never have reached otherwise. So where do you begin?

• Link your wedding blog on your company website
• Place your wedding blog link on your business cards
• Place your wedding blog link in your email signature
• Publish your wedding blog on Facebook (NetworkedBlogs, Blog RSS Feed Reader)
• Publish your wedding blog on Twitter  (Twitterfeed, HootSuite)
• Add your wedding blog to directories (Technorati, StumbleUpon)
• Submit your wedding blog posts to bookmarking sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, Tumblr

Day 28 Task – Use Social Media to Promote your Wedding Blog

If there are any areas listed above that you have not explored to promote your wedding blog, do so today. Be careful with submitting your blog posts to bookmarking sites. Don’t submit each and every post, and encourage your readers to submit posts from your blog as well.

© 2009, iMatrimony Wedding Technology Blog. All rights reserved.