Advanced blogging strategies

Advanced Wine Blogging Strategies 06.25.10 RJ Hilgers, Jeff Lefevere, Joe Roberts

Agenda, About & Intros.
30 + Tips, tricks and takeaways: 15 minutes
Panel discussion with RJ Hilgers and Joe Roberts: 20 minutes
Q/A: 15 minutes
Developing Your Site, Content and Professionalism
Managing Your Site and Social Media
Writing Content
Understanding Trends and Growing Your Site
Final Thoughts Beyond Tips and tools

Agenda & About (cont.)
What we won’t be covering:
How to make money
Ethics
Blogging v. Mainstream Media (MSM)
What we will cover:
Working on your writing
Working on your brand
Being smarter about the management of your writing and your brand
Writing Content

Today’s Goals
Writing Content

Your Panel
RJ Hilgers: RJ Hilgers is a digital marketer who works for Microsoft after spending over 10 years in Sr. leadership positions at Avenue A / Razorfish, one of the premiere digital agencies in the country. RJ's Wine Blog has been in existence for two years, started after being convinced by Jason, at Jason's Wine Blog, to start writing. Two months and 50-some posts later, RJ was off and running. RJ has been a wine enthusiast for the last 20 years, inspired by a bottle of Barnard Griffin Cab / Merlot that changed the way he thought about wine. http://www.rjswineblog.com/

Jeff Lefevere: A digital marketer by day and a wine blogger at night, Jeff has been blogging since January of 2006. His site, goodgrape.com, is a winner and four-time finalist in the American Wine Blog Awards and a lot of people have said some really nice things about his writing at: http://goodgrape.com/index.php/praise/
Joe Roberts: Joe is a musician, consultant, and IT refugee. His site, 1WineDude.com, has been around since early 2007, and despite Joe's best efforts has been successful. Most recently, 1WineDude.com won Best Wine Blog in the 2009 FoodBuzz.com blog awards, was a finalist for Best Overall Blog in the 2010 Wine Blog Awards, and has been mentioned at SteveHeimoff.com approximately 4,732 times in the last 12 months (which ought to count for something, right?). http://www.1winedude.com
Writing Content

Developing Your Site, Content & Professionalism
You don’t have a brand until you have a domain name
www.yourbrand.com
Godaddy.com
Every blog platform has instructions for “domain mapping”
Don’t make my mistake
www.goodgrape.net / www.goodgrapes.com
Writing Content

Ensure your carpet matches the curtains
Quick rule of thumb: 0 + 0 = 0
The best book in the world can underperform if it has an ugly cover
www.99designs.com
Inexpensive, high-quality customized blog headers and logo design
www.vistaprint.com
Inexpensive, high-quality professionally printed business cards
Writing Content

Visual appeal in the form of custom imagery can significantly increase your site professionalism
Learn the basics of an image editor
www.paint.net – FREE!
Move beyond Google image search for images
Flickr Advanced Search / Creative Commons / Open Source
http://www.flickr.com/search/advanced/
Writing Content

Speaking of Creative Commons
Ensure your blog identifies your content rights
www.creativecommons.org
While we’re on the subject of covering bases
Ensure your blog has a disclosure policy
www.disclosurepolicy.org
Writing Content

Cross-link within popular posts
Understand your popular posts by seeing what keywords are driving traffic and then cross-link
www.semrush.com
Measure your site against others
www.compete.com
Automated analysis of your site for improvement
http://www.websitegrader.com
Writing Content

Serious about earning advertising revenue?
Should have 3 rd party verified stats
www.quantcast.com
Want to know who links to you?
http://www.iwebtool.com/backlink_checker
Want to be more productive as a browser?
FireFox plugins
PageRank Checker, others
Google Chrome Extensions
Evernote
Writing Content

Overwhelmed by social communication?
www.digsby.com
IM
Email
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIN
Want to monitor site mentions beyond Google Alerts?
http://addictomatic.com
Writing Content

Writing Content
The best book on writing non-fiction
On Writing Well by William K. Zinsser
The best book on grammar and style
The Elements of Style by Strunk & White
Writing Content

Writing Content
Go beyond Google for Secondary Research
www.highbeam.com
Check your articles for grammatical correctness
www.grammarly.com
Writing Content

Writing Content
Maximize the use of Microsoft Word
Grammar check
Reading Ease
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level
Post straight to Wordpress, Blogger,
TypePad, others …
Writing Content

Writing Content
Join LinkedIN Wine Groups for member contact, story ideas and networking
http://www.linkedin.com/groupsDirectory
Writing Content

Writing Content
Brainstorm Creatively
Creative Whack Pack
http://www.creativewhack.com/
Writing Content

Trend #1: MOBILE
Mobile Compatibility
Wordpress plug-in
Or
Mobile site conversion
Appmakr (www.appmakr.com)
MotherApp (www.motherapp.com
Mobile App Loader (www.mobileapploader.com)
Writing Content

Trend #2: LIFESTREAMING
Lifestreaming Too busy to blog
Writing Content

Trend #3: Social Graph and Facebook Fan Pages
NutshellMail ( http://www.facebook.com/NutshellMail )
DivShare ( http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2225214147 )
Sprout http://sproutinc.com/showcase/facebook-fan-pages/ )
Writing Content

Trend #4: Your Personal brand
VisualCV ( www.visualcv.com )
Wix ( www.wix.com )
Weebly ( www.weebly.com )
Writing Content

Understand the world of online PR
Vocus ( www.vocus.com )
Cision ( www.cision )
Burrellesluce ( www.burrellesluce.com )
Writing Content

Odds and Ends
Sell something
Vendr ( www.vendr.com )
Join the Palate Press Ad Network
Syndicate your site
Blogburst ( www.blogburst.com )
Ensure your site follows the Webmaster tools provided by Google and Bing
www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
http://www.bing.com/webmaster
Writing Content

Summary
Work Smarter, Not Harder
Automate, Automate, Automate
Work on your writing!
Develop your blog brand
Develop your personal brand
Capitalize on trends
Writing Content

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Advanced blogging strategies

by jelefevere on Jun 28, 2010

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Advanced blogging strategies — Presentation Transcript