I’m here at the 2010 Wine Bloggers Conference and it’s time for the “About Wine Blogging” breakout sessions! Our choices are:
• Wine Blogging 101 with Colby Vorhees, Joe Power and Catie Walker
• Advanced Wine Blogging with Joe Roberts, Jeff Lefevere and RJ Hilgers –
• Wine Blogging and the Wine Industry with Craig Camp, Lori Narlock and Bob
Silver
I’m with the Advanced Wine Blogging with Joe Roberts who just won the best wine blog award 1 Wine Dude, Jeff Lefevere Good Grape (who won two awards!) and RJ Hilgers and taking notes on suggestions from Jeff Lefrevre at Good Grape. Here’s his four main points:
1. Work Smarter Not Harder
2. Work on your writing
3. Develop your brand
4. Capitalize on trends.
Here’s some details and specifics according to Jeff:
BTW, when I get a chance I will try to make these links live…
You don’t have a brand until you have your own domain name.
Make sure the carpet matches the curtains. So make it match. Make it look as good as you want your site to be.
Among more tips, he suggests checking out
www.semrush.com
for stats www.quantcast.com
see who’s linking you: http://www.iwebtool.com/backlinkchecker
Be more productive and work smarter:
manage social media www.digsby.com
monitor sites http://addictomatic.com
Books:
William Zinsser On Writing Well
Strunk & Whites Elements of Style
Research:
Subscription service www.highbeam.com
but it will cost you
NOTE from me: join your local college library and have access to all kinds of research
Grammar help:
www.grammarly.com
To increase the quality of content, use Microsoft Word and then cut and paste into your blog post. Use the tools on Word including Grammar check, reading ease, grade level, etc then post directly. (How? I need to learn?)
Join LinkedIn Wine Groups.
Brainstorm creatively
www.creativewhackpack.com
TRENDS
Trend #1 –mobile
is huge and will continue
make sure your site is mobile capatible
Trend #2–lifestreaming
Trend #3–social graph & facebook fan pages
Nutshell mail
DivShare
Sprout
Trend #4 personal brand
Visual CV aka LinkedIn on steroids
Wix
Weebly
Understanding Trends and Growing Your Site
understanding the
www.vendr.com to sell stuff
www.blogburst.com syndicates your site (no money but traffic)
join Palate Press Network (they’ve invited me–I just have to follow through!)
Curious about the Q & A? check out the twitter stream from winebratsf. You can also follow the action at the twitter hashtag #wbc10
wine predator.............. gwendolyn alley 