Blogging — Craft Beer

Have you ever heard of those incredibly successful bloggers who make millions of dollars a year just by consistently writing new and interesting content on their webpage? I have recently had the opportunity to get more involved in blogging and have built an interest in continuing to pursue it more in my career. I have a background in the brewing industry and plan to use blogging as a heavy tool to promote the brewing industry as a whole along with craft beer.

Firstly, blogging is something that has been on the rise since the early 2000’s. According to Dianna Gunn as she states in her article, “the first blog ever was links.net created in 1994 by then-student Justin Hall as a place to publish his writing. The site consisted entirely of brief posts, each one sharing a link and some of his thoughts on the content within. Of course, at that time he did not call them ‘blogs’ but rather his personal homepage.” (Gunn, 2020). In 1998 is when the first known instance of a ‘blog’ came about. It was when Jonathan Dube blogged Hurricane Bonnie for The Charlotte Observer. According to Cameron Chapman in his article he states, “In 1999, there were 23 blogs on the internet. By the middle of 2006, there were 50 million blogs according to Technorati ‘s State of the Blogosphere report. To say that blogs experienced exponential growth is a bit of an understatement” (Chapman, 2011). In the early stages, the blogs that seemed to get the most attention were political blogs made by candidates.

As blogging may not have been the most popular trend when it was first invented, it started blowing up around the year 2002. Once 2002 hit, Blogging has been on the constant rise ever since. According to Chapman “Popular blogs that got their start in the early 2000s included Boing Boing, Dooce, Gizmodo, Gawker (the first major gossip blog to launch), Wonkette, and the Huffington Post. Weblogs, Inc. was started by Jason Calacanis in 2003, and was then sold to AOL for $25 million. It was that sale that helped to cement blogs as a force to be reckoned with rather than just a passing fad”. Soon enough once blogging started taking off, there were a couple major blogging platforms that came about. The very first was called Movable type which was released in 2001 and then in 2003 WordPress followed. Although, WordPress was said to have been at the beginning of development in 2001, it really started to take off two years later. Chapman states, In the mid 2000’s, specifically in 2005, “blogs were reaching the mainstream. In January of 2005, a study was released saying that 32 million Americans read blogs. At the time, it’s more than ten percent of the entire population. The same year, Garrett M. Graff was granted White House press credentials, the first blogger ever to do so.” So many political consultants, candidates, mainstream news organizations, basically any mainstream media started getting into blogging. It was one of the biggest ways to broadcast news and information. Mainstream media sources, like CNN, also decided to team up with existing blogs and bloggers who were already so successful. They decided to take this route rather than setting up their own blogs and starting from the bottom because since blogging was already on the competitive rise, the existing bloggers already had an upper hand advantage. Chapman states that, “By the end of 2010, the number of blogs grew even more, with more than 152 million active blogs. Virtually every mainstream news source now has at least one blog, as do many corporations and individuals.” Blogging was a huge next step as a marketing strategy in the mid 2000’s and it is very broad to where there will always be room for more creativity within them. Once bloggers started making pretty decent money from just posting their blogs on their webpages, it completely skyrocketed the trend. There were even blogs that explain how to make a full-time career out of writing blogs which were extremely popular. Bloggers like Darren Rowse and John Chow made a good amount of money explaining how to make this trend a successful living. It was only just the beginning of the high rise of this trend.

As many people might wonder if they should get into blogging as a career. The most popular question is, “how much money can you make blogging?”. The answer to that question can vary tremendously. Grant Sabatier states in his article, “It is pretty easy to make an extra $500 to $2,000 per month blogging in your first year. In years 2 and beyond, after you’ve built traffic and subscribers, you can increase revenue to $100,000 plus in a year” (Sabatier, 2020). In 2020, there are 10 richest bloggers in the world, “HuffPost (founded by Arianna Huffington): $143.1 million, Engadget (founded by Peter Rojas; now edited by Dana Wollman): $47.5 million, Moz (founded by Rand Fishkin; now edited by Morgan McMurray): $44.9 million, PerezHilton (Perez Hilton): $41.3 million, Copyblogger (founded by Brian Clark; now edited by Stefanie Flaxman): $35.1 million, Mashable: $30 million (founded by Pete Cashmore; now edited by Jessica Coen), TechCrunch (created by Michael Arrington & Keith Tears; now edited by Matthew Panzarino): $22.5 million, Envato Tuts+ (founded by Collis Ta’eed): $10 million, Smashing Magazine (founded by Sven Lennartz and Vitaly Friedman): $5.2 million, and last but not least Gizmodo: $4.8 million (founded by Peter Rojas; now edited by Kelly Bourdet).” These bloggers have made a very successful career out of blogging. It definitely isn’t impossible to get to where they are now, however, it is very difficult. Right now, blogging is a very competitive field that a lot of people want to be successful in. It is difficult to come up with creative new things that makes you stand out over everyone else in the game. However, if you know what how to attract your target audience and can market your blog like crazy, it will be a little easier to get ahead. As Target Internet stated in their article, “Recently, blogging has branched into lots of variants, ranging from traditional, proprietary blogs (like the one you are reading), to blogging on third-party platforms such as Medium and LinkedIn Pulse, and micro-blogging in social media captions. There has been a further bifurcation of the blogging industry into bloggers and social media influencers. A lot of people who may once have become bloggers, are pursuing careers as influencers instead. These trends have brought new commercial and creative opportunities for independent online content creators. The downside is that blogging has become harder to define, and therefore harder to report on as an industry. This effect has been so pronounced that use of the term ‘blogging’ itself seems to be waning. According to Google Trends, global search volume around ‘blogging’ and related keywords reached its lowest level on record in June 2019, and has been close to flat since then” (Internet, 2020).

Later after blogging blew up there came to be a thing called microblogs and Tumblogs. One social media that people might think of that is considered microblogging or Tumblogging is Twitter and Tumblr. According to Chapman, “Tumblr was the first major site to offer this kind of service, starting in 2007. They allow for a variety of different post types, unlike traditional blogging services, which have a one-size-fits-all post format. It also makes it easier for users to reblog the content of others, or to like individual posts.” Today, in 2020, blogging is still a very popular trend and huge in the marketing industry. The biggest way to advertise people’s blogs and make them known are on an app called Pinterest. Pinterest is a social media app that is designed to have easy access on discovering new trends in all areas of interests in the world. It has a tremendous number of blogs. Some examples of these blogs entail cooking recipes, fashion, home décor, dieting plans, DIY ideas, etc. Pinterest first came out in 2010 and has been extremely popular ever since it launched. Some interesting facts about Pinterest as stated in Elna Cain’s article is, “There’s power behind using Pinterest to drive traffic to your blog. Just take a look at these astounding facts: A pin is 100 times more spreadable than your average tweet, Each pin can drive up to 2 page visits and 6 pageviews, Ecommerce sites benefit from pinning as each pin can generate 78 cents, The life of a pin is one week! Compare that to 24 minutes for Twitter and 90 minutes for Facebook. And don’t think because you’re in the blogging, tech or marketing industry you can’t make an impact on Pinterest. Pinterest is the number one traffic source for a lot of bloggers” (Cain, 2020). When you use Pinterest for blogging, you can promote posts, product offers, earn traffic to your blog, and engage with followers.

Secondly, I want to tie blogging into a more specific category such as craft beer. Craft beer was invented in the 1960’s and began to be popular around the 1970’s. Microbreweries on the other hand have been on the rise since the 1990’s. Since then, according to Rachel Arthur in her article, “there were 8,275 craft breweries operating in the U.S in 2019 which includes, 2,058 microbreweries, 3,011 brewpubs, 2,966 taproom breweries, and 240 regional craft breweries” (Arthur, 2020). Many people don’t know how to distinguish a brewery from a bar. A brewery is a business establishment that makes and sells beer. Bars don’t make their own beer, they just sell limited beer that is distributed from other breweries. Bars mostly sell cocktails, wines, and mocktails where breweries cannot. Additionally, breweries have their own license that is separate from a beer and wine license. Depending on different states, brewery laws can be a lot stricter than bar laws. Every state is different when it comes to those laws, which is why they vary. To put this in a better perspective, an example would be Montana’s state laws. There are specific laws that state breweries are only allowed to sell an individual customer 48 ounces of beer to consume on premise. They are also forced to stop serving out of their taprooms by eight o’clock at night and be shut down to the public by nine o’clock. However, bars in Montana are much more relaxed. Bars can serve however many ounces of beer to a customer (responsibly) that they desire. They also are able to serve to the public until two o’clock in the morning. Now a second example is that if you were to go to the state of Washington, breweries are treated much more equal to a bar than what Montana enforces. Breweries can serve a customer however many ounces of beer they desire (responsibly) and their taprooms can stay open much later than eight o’clock.

You can only guess with blogs and breweries getting more and more popular in the 2000’s that there would be no doubt a few craft beer blogs out there. In 2020, the top five most popular craft beer blogs according to the website Beer Lover World are, BeerYeti.com, Bon Beer Voyage, Brewers in Pennsylvania, Tale of Fale, and Beer God Blogs. These blogs are thriving in the brewing industry. Topics that you will expect to find in these craft beer blogs entail a wide variety of subjects. Some blogs cover beer festivals, different breweries, and home brewing, while others cover brewery tours, beer tasting, and pretty much all things beer. As Jay Breslin discusses in his article about the benefits of blogging about craft beer is this, “Composing and sharing blog posts is a concise way to share production methods and product details with consumers. Savvy consumers want to know how their beer is being produced, from dry storage to the canning line, and blogging gives your brand a consistent educational voice on those subjects. Exemplifying your knowledge in the field will strengthen your brand and give consumers insight into the real methods used for creating the brews they love. When you establish yourself as an expert, people seeking an answer about craft beer will look to you first. Even sharing everyday business decisions, such as sourcing grain locally and your reasons for doing so, can result in a powerful message to consumers and peers. Use your beers and brewery as a diving-off point. Get creative with recipes or events that your audience will find exciting and actually will want to try at home or attend. Fun recipes and events drive more interest in your product and can have a lasting effect with consumer engagement on social media. Whipping up a recipe for a BBQ meal to go with your flagship IPA or a brownie made using your Imperial Stout will result in an exciting piece with long-term benefits. Check out Iron Hill’s recipe for Spicy Peanut-Coconut Noodles paired with Rising Sun IPA for inspiration. Consumers love to know more about their favorite locally produced beers. To accompany your upcoming brew made with local ingredients from down the road, develop a blog post to detail the hyperlocal aspects of that partnership. Highlight the farm where you sourced your berries for a barrel-aged saison, and dig into your relationship with the farmer or purveyor. This reinforces your real-world ties to the community. In addition, highlighting employees and the crucial production work they are doing helps engage consumers with an insider’s peek into how production is done. It’s critical to keep your blog content fresh so those turning to your website for information, news and entertainment will return — frequently. With a group of craft beer lovers following along and conversing about your business online, your digital presence will have a natural support system. Acting as the friendly craft beer authority online and sharing these details with customers will keep them coming back and enhance your image as a respected tastemaker in your larger community. These are only some of the benefits of blogging about craft beer. It’s equal parts fun and rewarding, especially when it comes to testing out food recipes and interviewing employees for question-and-answer pieces. Get creative and stay focused on building a loyal fanbase who will enjoy coming back to your site, buying your beer and visiting your brewery — and will tell others to do the same” (Breslin, 2018). I really liked reading this article because it showed me that not only is it a fun interest of mine to start a craft beer blog but it will also greatly benefit me if I can do it smart and correctly.

In the near future, I want to begin my blog on my very own website. I have a huge passion for craft beer and would like to discover all the new and upcoming trends of beer and what is to come next in the brewing industry. Every year technology is evolving which comes with new creative ways and ideas to improve beer and new styles. I want my blog to be a first-hand resource for people to find out everything that is rapidly changing in the current brewing industry.

Bibliography

Arthur, R. (2020, April 15). ‘Craft brewers are facing new realties’: US craft beer grew 4% in 2019 — but 2020 will be a difficult year. Retrieved from Beveragedaily.com: https://www.beveragedaily.com/Article/2020/04/15/US-craft-beer-grew-4-in-2019-but-faces-difficult-2020-with-coronavirus#

Breslin, J. (2018). The Benefits of Blogging About Your Craft Beer. Retrieved from Brewers PA: https://www.brewersofpa.org/the-benefits-of-blogging-about-your-craft-beer/

Cain, E. (2020, October 13). How To Drive 3x More Traffic To Your Blog With Pinterest. Retrieved from bloggingwizard: https://bloggingwizard.com/pinterest-traffic/

Chapman, C. (2011, March 14). A Brief History of Blogging. Retrieved from Web Design Blog: https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2011/03/a-brief-history-of-blogging/

Gunn, D. (2020, May 15). The History of Blogging: From 1997 Until Now (With Pictures). Retrieved from Themeisle: https://themeisle.com/blog/history-of-blogging/

Internet, T. (2020). THE TOP 10 PAID BLOGGERS IN 2020. Retrieved from Target Internet: https://www.targetinternet.com/our-analysis-of-10-top-paid-bloggers-2020/#

Sabatier, G. (2020, September 3). HOW MUCH MONEY CAN YOU MAKE BLOGGING? Retrieved from Millennial Money: https://millennialmoney.com/how-much-money-make-blogging/