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Positioning your blog
1. Positioning Your Blog
Positioning Your Blog
Megan Kenney
@sonadora
Wannabe Wino blog
Kathleen Rake
@kathleenrake
Between the Vines / Click
Media Works
Thea Dwelle,
@luscious_lushes
Luscious Lushes Wine Blog
2. Positioning Your Blog
How can you position yourself and your blog to stand out in
the crowd of wine bloggers? With over 2,000 active wine
blogs in the US alone, it can be hard to find your place in the
swarm.
Today, these seasoned writers will give you their thoughts on
how to achieve your goals, connect with the industry, make a
name for yourself and find your rhythm.
3. Positioning Your Blog
Be credible
Keep it real!
cred·i·ble
/ˈkredəbəl/
Adjective
Able to be believed; convincing.
Capable of persuading people that something will happen or be
successful: "a credible threat".
Synonyms
believable - trustworthy - plausible - reliable - trusty
4. Positioning Your Blog
Networking
•Get to know your fellow bloggers
•Find out who the local bloggers are
•Organize communal tastings
•Share your resources
•Integrate yourself with the food blogger community
•Get to know your industry peers
•Attend as many events as you can
•Share your invites and info – know your local bloggers and
network
6. Positioning Your Blog
How to access wine events
• The best way to gain access to wine events is to pay for them!
Being and engaged and interested wine citizen will allow you to spend
quality time with the winemakers and winery staff pouring at this
events.
• Network, network, network
• Check to see if there is a media option.
7. Positioning Your Blog
Setting and achieving
your goals
• In order to define your goals for your blog, you need to understand
them.
• Are you trying to gain traffic?
• Are you trying to gain recognition?
• Are you just having fun?
• The most important aspect of attaining your goals is to be consistent
9. Positioning Your Blog
Connecting with the industry
You’ve already made a great start by being
here, at the Wine Bloggers Conference!
Turn around and introduce yourself to someone
you don’t know.
The next time you are at a wine event, spend
some time chatting up the people pouring.
You’d be surprised what you can learn!
Networking takes time and effort. Just like
finding a job.
13. Positioning Your Blog
How to differentiate
yourself
• Bring something new to the table.
• Why are you unique? Distinguish yourself!
There are thousands of wine blogs out there. Why should I read yours?
14. Positioning Your Blog
Be in it for the long haul –
don’t go in to it lightly
A successful blog, as in any medium, is one that
is consistent, and stays with it for the long haul.
Your audience will come to count on you to post
with some consistency.
Thea – 6 years
Megan –
Kathleen -
15. Positioning Your Blog
Educate yourself!
• The most successful wine blogs appeal to the masses because they
know their subjects.
• You don’t have to be a Sommelier, or a WSET Diploma holder. You just
need to understand what your talking about and don’t make it up!
18. Positioning Your Blog
Learning how to use social media to
engage a global audience
• Social media has been evolving, particularly over the last 5 years.
The top social media platforms are powerful tools to help you
engage with wine tourists.
• Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and You Tube are great ways to
structure your message and hone the art of the soft sell.
• Engage people one on one, or in large groups to create brand
awareness for wines, regions, or a countries virtually.
• Allows a consumer to Search, Connect, Engage and spurs sales
conversion
19. Positioning Your Blog
The world is changing! We are becoming mobile, and we are changing the way we communicate with
each other. Do you text before you call? Do you tweet before you email?
As evidence of this shift in communication methodologies, today, over 75% of individuals (in the US)
belong to at least one social network. Keeping in mind that social networks can be both professional, and
purely social, or some combination of each, you are opening up a widely paved path to communication.
With word of mouth marketing being the single most influential driver of purchasing, that’s a huge data
mine.
One critical factor in new media is mobile media and the use of the smart phone. One source estimates
that of mobile phone owners, 1 in 2 will own a smart phone by the end of 2011. Currently, over 1 million
iPads have been sold in the US. Not counting alternative smart tablets, like the wifi enabled Kindle or
Nook, this is market is becoming more and more savvy and requires access to data on these devices.
Users can read, edit, update and participate in social media from ANYWHERE - 30000 feet, on a boat, in a
wine cellar. This emergence of “anywhere” technology means that your customers are accessing
information 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and are seeking meaningful content during these times.
20. Positioning Your Blog
Twitter is one of the fastest growing channels in the social media
domain. Businesses from mom and pop shops to world wide brands like
Nike utilize twitter to embrace and enhance their brand image.
Twitter is about building relationships. If you embark on a twitter
adventure, be sure that you are able to engaged with your followers in a
meaningful way.
What does this mean? This means you will need to spend a significant
amount of time reacting and interacting with your followers. Companies
and personalities that are successful on twitter actively engage the
consumer and begin conversations. Host a Q&A with a winemaker. Host
a discussion about the region you offer tours in.
21. Positioning Your Blog
Remember, Twitter is about conversation, and engaging your followers.
If you tweet WITH them they will come; tweet AT them, and they will
unfollow and possibly speak negatively of your online presence,
something you really don’t want to encourage. As it is a conversation,
please refrain from scheduling tweets and auto-messaging followers.
This is a deterrent, since it defeats the purpose of Twitter being a two-
way conversation.
Twitter is a great tool when you are newer to the bloggersphere
because you can engage in conversations, be that with a brand or a
person
It’s also great to engage a technical audience if you have questions
about your tools.
22. Positioning Your Blog
Facebook is perhaps the easiest social media outlet to become involved in.
Here, you can create a page for your company, and introduce it to people you
know. In turn, people that “Like” your page, can recommend it to their friends,
thereby creating the viral marketing that is so powerful. Facebook, like other
social media outlets, is inherently viral. It is an opt-in marketing tool, where
people choose to Like your page, and then choose to tell their friends about
your page.
If you create a page on Facebook, Be sure that you are actively engaging with
your audience on your page. you will need to spend a bit of time posting short,
meaningful content pieces that people will be interested in reading. this in
turn, will encourage your readers to repost this content to their readers.
23. Positioning Your Blog
Having a page dedicated to your blog is a great way to connect and engage with
an audience that you might not already be familiar with!
Over 50% of my Facebook Fans are not my “friends”.
24. Positioning Your Blog
Video content can be an important component in your new & social media
strategy. Increasingly, video content draws viewers from across a broader
market segment.
When you think about adding video to you program, it is important to have
the expertise to product clear, concise, quality material rather than home
grown efforts. This will reflect on your brand.
In the wine business, some ideas for video content include
–Discussions with the winemaker
–Wine Reviews
–Travel blogs
–Virtual tours
Incorporating Video in your Blog
27. Positioning Your Blog
Build Community on Social Media:
Engage
Notice that engagement moved from Twitter to Facebook
28. Positioning Your Blog
Build Community on Social Media:
The Hashtag
• A hashtag (#hashtag) is a searchable conversation string on twitter.
The use of hashtags in the wine industry has exploded in the past 5
years.
– Some great examples of hashtags are:
– #bcwinechat
– #varietaldays
• Varietal days are also useful for associations that wish to promote
their region, such as #chardonnayday, which focused on a specific
varietal. You can opt to provide media samples, group tastings, and
other sponsored events but you can also encourage the wider wine
drinking public to just grab a bottle of wine and tweet along.
• Events are planned to coincide with the varietal themes, and wine
drinkers around the world can meet each other (virtually) and
discuss the wine they are drinking.
29. Positioning Your Blog
Varietal Days
• Inform people who are interested in the
varietal but not familiar with your region • #Champagneday
• #cabernetday
• #pinotsmackdown
• #grenacheday
• #tempranilloday (#tempranilo)
• #chardonnayday
• #malbecday
Participate in varital days buy
buying your favorite wine, and
tweet along!
31. Positioning Your Blog
Build Community With Online Tastings
Online wine tastings are a great way for you to buildi commity.
While established bloggers are often invited to participate, these
events are open to the public as well.
Some ideas are:
• Whole Foods Taste & Tweet
• Varietal Days
• Event Days
Just grab a bottle that fits the event, and tweet along!
32. Positioning Your Blog
Engaging the press corps
• Before 2012, few people from the US had heard of
the Okanagan. But, waging a 2 year campaign to
bring 300 bloggers, media reps and wine industry
professionals to the region for the Annual Wine
Bloggers Conference has paid off! This year, the
annual conference will take place in the region’s heart
of Penticton.
• It’s important to expose your region to international
travelers. Just because tourist are not yet in your
area, doesn’t mean they will not venture to the area
in the future. By developing this message early and
often, you can place your region and your winery at
the forefront of their travel minds.
• While BC wine is rare outside of the immediate
location, the cleaver use of marking has made it a
clear and logical destination in my travel mind. Why
not pop over from Vancouver for the weekend?
33. Positioning Your Blog
Do I have to write about every
wine?
This is a very personal decision. Some bloggers don’t write about wines they
don’t like. Some do.
Some bloggers write about every sip, from a vacation wine to a sample.