Reaching Influencers Through Blogs

Was on the phone with Tom Maher of FuelDog a couple of hours ago discussing our upcoming panel on blogging at the IAEM Annual.

Towards the end of the conversation, Tom asked me whether I really thought my coffeeshop blog was making a difference in sales.  As I thought about my answers, I figured it would make a good post for TSMR.

The Aldo Coffee Co. blog does work beyond what a traditional web site is capable of doing.  Here's why:  Influencers and the trickle down effect.  While you don't need a blog to start this trickle down snowball rolling, I believe a blog will help accelerate the process, resulting in a bigger, faster snowball of buzz.

These same types of tactics can probably work for your event if you have some influencers who are already blogging.

Here's how it works for coffeeshops, and I'll cite a recent example:

1.  There are several online forums and blogs in our market that cater to the "coffee geek".  Geeks are similar to wine conossieurs in that they appreciate the bean the way an oenophile would a grape.  Coffee geeks aim to understand and coax the best possible brew out of a varietal bean or blend through an almost obsessive attention to the regions and growing processes of individual plantations as well as the equipment used (including plumbing and barista skills).  Many are home roasters, some own their own shops.  We know where they congregrate online.

2.  In a forum discussion on "any good cafes in Pittsburgh?", we had our roaster (one of the most respected in the country) post that his coffee was available at our place and that our staff had trained with their award-winning barista trainer.

3.  Geeks seeing that post with plans on travelling through the Pittsburgh area would make the short trip to our burb and try us out.

4.  Because geeks are all about raising awareness of good espresso, they want other geeks to know about their discoveries.  So they post about visiting us on these forums.  And some had blogs.  Their forum posts direct readers to their blog posts about us (which were often quite detailed).  Every time someone comments on us on their blog, we thank them on ours and post comments to theirs mentioning our name in the text.  More mentions in the blogosphere = more search engine visibility.

5.  Other geeks soon find us either through these third party blogs - or, through Google searches that brought up those blog posts.

6.  Those geeks would the stop by and again, either refer back to their forums or mention us on their own blogs.  Sometimes we'd even get fans who've never been here.  And here.

7.  Voila... established credibility with the most discerning customers.  We become a "destination" coffeehouse for the knowledgeable espresso drinker.

8.  Granted, that population alone isn't enough to support the business, but it's the group that will build buzz for us.  As a result of the buzz they've helped build, the hoi polloi, doing their own searches, find more third parties talking about us than other local coffeehouses.  And they try us out because of that buzz. 

9.  But that's not all.  We also have something in our arsenal that non-bloggers don't.  A local RSS aggregator, www.pghbloggers.org.  They've grown from tracking four dozen blogs a year ago to more than 350 today.  Every time we post it ends up on pghbloggers.  And because we're one of the few non-political, non-religious blogs out there, we get an extraordinary number of local hits from it.  I also make it a point to go to the local blog meetings they sponsor and meet other local bloggers.  This in turn has resulted on our shop being "cooler" than others - and more likely to be mentioned by other local bloggers when they're thinking "espresso" or having a meeting.  Some of the bloggers who come here regularly travel five miles or more - passing numerous other chains and indie shops along the way. 

10.  Finally, we use as many social networking toys as we can.  Flickr.  Planzo.  Feedmap.  Eventful.  Each of these applications has a number of core users who may find us through unexplained associations, such as downloading photos of the Virgin Mary Latte.

So, yes, blogging does work.  But it's not going to work on its own.  You still have to be a marketer - finding the right audience that's going to get you some viral punch is vital.  So is using available blogging tools to widen your cast and increase and visibility of your posts.  And most importantly, having a great product so people will keep talking about it. 

Of course there's more to it than just this, but I have to leave a few secrets unrevealed so we can keep our edge in the local market.

Comments

[Lonnie Ellerbee]

I found this article by searching business blogs on Google. While reading Business Blog Consulting the mention of you aritcle on your coffee shop caused me to visit. You have done an great job of explaining how things work and I really enjoyed the article.

Going cross country in my 18 wheeler might have affored me the opportunity to stop in because coffee has been part of my life forever. HaHa.

Maybe I'll get that chance to stop in one day. Untill then great work.

Lonnie Ellerbee

[RichW]

Dan,
Thanks for stopping by. Actually Seattle does have at least one blogging coffeehouse - Victrola (which not conincidentally we've included in our "Heroes and Legends" links on the Aldo Coffee Co. blog). Victrola started its blog back in Feb. as a way to talk about daily goings-on that it couldn't do on its static site (victrolacoffee.com).

The Victrola blog goes even farther than we do in terms of educating consumers on the differences in roasts and equipment and why their coffee experience is superior. That's probably because you have an ultra-competitive market up there that we don't have here in Pittsburgh. It's through Victrola that we learned about the Clover machine we're now investigating. Plus, their roaster, Tonx, has had a blog for quite some time (www.tonx.org).

With them starting the Seattle coffee blog snowball rolling, I think you'll be seeing more coffeehouse blogs up your way very soon.

[Dan McComb]

Great article. I'm reposting it for some of the members of our business networking group here in Seattle, where we got lots of coffee, but I don't know of any coffee shop that has a blog!