Zephyr Conferences

Why and How to Engage in Influencer Marketing

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“Influencer Marketing” is all the rage. It is popular – and should be – because influencers (no matter what you call them) are people others trust and who can influence how people perceive your brand.

Traditional marketing is you telling your customers why they should purchase your product or service. Public Relations is different, in that someone from the media tells your story for you – ideally in a positive way but this is not in your control. Influencer Marketing is sort of a combination of traditional marketing and traditional PR:  brands engage influencers (ala marketing) to tell their story for them (ala PR).

Of course, this only works if “influencers” (which could include bloggers, those on social media, or even those with offline communities) have an audience and that audience finds the influencers credible – in other words that the influencers truly have influence.

There are multiple ways to engage with influencers but I’ll divide them here into two main strategies:

Work With the Stars

Some brands have decided to work with the stars. This could include those with national fame, like Kim Kardashian who has 120 million Instagram followers. But it could also include the relative “star” of the niche you are pursuing – that wine blogger whom everyone labels as the cream of the crop. This method involves quite a bit of work:

  1. Identify potential influencers
  2. Calculate the size of their audience
  3. Determine the “quality” of their audience as it relates to you
  4. Contact influencers you believe are a good fit
  5. Create a working relationship with those influencers (ie pay them)
  6. Provide them your product or service
  7. Reinforce their social media postings with your own social media accounts
  8. Follow up to ensure they do what they say they will do

Micro-Influencers

Another strategy is to worry more about an influencer’s niche and less about his or her reach. So rather than that star wine blogger, this strategy would suggest pursuing a number of wine bloggers with less reach but who have great credibility with their audience. Forbes Magazine suggests this strategy is the Marketing Force of the Future.

At our three influencer conferences (Wine Media Conference, International Food Blogger Conference, and Beer Now) you can pursue both strategies but the second is the most relevant. Yes, the stars attend and you can make relationships with them. But the real benefit of a blogger conference is to bring hundreds of micro-influencers together in the same room. We do not limit attendees to our conferences based on their reach. Instead, our attendees are self selected because they are passionate about their subject and it is this passion that makes them credible with their audience. As a sponsor, you can then serve your product or present your message to these folks without having to spend the time and money to analyze, segment, and narrow down to get what you hope will be the right fit.

Beer Bloggers Conference and Wine Bloggers Conference Renamed

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We at Zephyr Conferences have talked about rebranding our blogger conferences for years. Eleven years ago when we started the Wine Bloggers Conference as one of the first niche blogging conferences in the world, blogging was new and hot. But even back then, change was in the air as the most debated subject at that 2008 event was whether this new thing called Twitter was going to die a quick death or change the way people communicate.

Fast forward eleven years and we are proud our wine, food, and beer blogger conferences are still going strong. Blogging, despite its many death announcements by pundits, is not going away.

Rebranding of the WBC and BBC

Yet we all recognize blogging is only one form of communicating and that our conferences also attract non-blogging writers and social media users. For years we have discussed changing the name of these three conferences and have now made major steps by rebranding two of our events.

We are rebranding the Wine Bloggers Conference as the Wine Media Conference and the Beer Bloggers & Writers Conference as Beer Now.

We have two main goals we are trying to achieve with these name changes:

  1. Better Represent Our Attendees: Almost all our attendees not only blog but also use social media. Many write about wine or beer for print publications or on contract for businesses as well. So calling the conferences “blogger” conferences is not really accurate any longer.
  2. Be More Inclusive: There are social media users and writers who communicate about wine and beer but who do not blog. While we feel the conference content is applicable to social media influencers and non-blogging writers, we want names that reflect that.

We did not make these changes in haste, nor without great consultation among our communities. The new names (and websites URLs) will be more accurate and more inclusive. We have also kept our existing graphics, the megaphone man and beer man standing on kegs, which keeps our ties to our original name.

Let there be no mistake. We love bloggers and believe blogging has drastically altered the landscape of beer and wine writing. But with these name changes, we hope to continue our support of beer and wine bloggers while opening up our conferences to others.

Wine Country Fires and Meeting Planners

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Smart Meetings Magazine recently did an excellent article on the wine country fires from the perspective of meeting planners. The article covered our decisions at Zephyr Conferences in addition to stories on the Silverado Resort, Safari West, and the Napa Valley Film Festival.

Here is the portion of the article about Zephyr Conferences:

In the Words Of A Planner

Allan Wright
Allan Wright

Allan Wright, owner of Zephyr United, organizes the Wine Marketing & Tourism Conference annually on behalf of Zephyr Conferences. This year, it takes place Oct. 23–25 at Flamingo Conference Resort & Spa in Santa Rosa, which has 170 guest rooms and almost 15,000 sq. ft. of meeting space. He described his post-fire return to wine country.

“We had two meetings scheduled in Santa Rosa for November 2017, a month after the fires: the Wine Bloggers Conference and the Wine Marketing & Tourism Conference,” he says. “A few days after the fires started, we started getting emails and phone calls from our attendees, asking if the conferences would be canceled. Quite a few of the messages we received implied it would be risky and even inappropriate to hold our meetings, since the locals were having to deal with the crisis. We discussed canceling both meetings.

“However, every local we spoke with—our hotel, Sonoma County Tourism, locals on our advisory boards—provided us a united message that Sonoma County was not closed for business and, in fact, wanted us to come and support them with our conferences.

“We made a public statement a few days after the fires started saying that our meetings would proceed as scheduled, which they did. We did experience a drop in registrations, which had a big impact on us, but nothing compared to what the locals had to suffer through. [We] ended up addressing the fires in our content at both conferences. I remember one person in the audience coming up after a session on the fires and crying because he had lived through the fires and was so emotional that we were addressing it.

“We decided to return the Wine Marketing & Tourism Conference to Santa Rosa this year, in part to support the local area again. One year later, one would never know the fires had even happened.”

Five Tips to Make the Most of Your Sponsorship at a Blogging Conference

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Interested to sponsor a blogger conference? Here are tips for sponsors on how to maximize your investment, based on our 11 years of running the Wine Bloggers Conference, Beer Now Conference, and International Food Blogger Conference.

  1. Set Your Expectations Properly: If you sponsor a conference and expect immediate movement of the dial (sales or something else) you will be disappointed. Your goal is to make connections and create relationships that pay off over the coming days (social media), months (blog posts), and years (ongoing interaction and reposting of the quotes and reviews you receive).
  2. Attend and Interact: One of the best things sponsors can do is actually attend the conference and participate throughout the weekend, not just for the time slot you are sponsoring. This allows you to make connections with attendees and determine with whom you would like to work in the future. Plus, attendees who see sponsor reps throughout the conference will be impressed.
  3. Take Advantage of Your Benefits: It is amazing how many of our sponsors do not take advantage of the benefits they receive. For example, many sponsors have the option to write a post that gets published on the conference website but a good portion never take the time to do so!
  4. Don’t Self-Promote Too Much: All companies have the tendency to want to promote themselves. That is what traditional marketing is all about. However, influencer marketing is about making relationships to get the bloggers or others to like you and your product. Be real. On the other hand, make sure you do clearly provide your social media handles and contact details. It is amazing how many sponsors forget to do this.
  5. Engage on Social Media: We see many sponsors sit back and watch the social media activity, which can be extremely robust. Much better is to engage with attendees: follow attendees, respond to their social media posts, and write your own posts that are not simply self-promotional but are of interest to attendees.

We think these tips will help you fully appreciate your investment in a blogging or influencer conference!

Zephyr’s Sara Pletcher Named Citizen of the Year!

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We are very proud that our own Sara Pletcher, Operations Manager of Zephyr Conferences, was recently awarded the Citizen of the Year Award in her hometown of Milford, Delaware.

The Chamber of Commerce of Greater Milford presents the award annually to a citizen who demonstrates outstanding achievement and support of the community of approximately 10,000 people. While that might seem like a small town, the size of Milford in no way diminishes our respect for the award. In fact, Sara embodies the idea of thinking globally and acting locally.

To make this post official, here is a quote Sara gave her local newspaper. “It’s a great honor to be recognized for my volunteer service to the City of Milford.  I have a passion for this City and I’m constantly striving and encouraging others to make Milford the best place to live, work, and play.  For others to recognize that passion and nominate me for Citizen of the Year is very humbling.”

Sara also told the paper this about her current job with us: “About a year and a half ago, I quit the comforts of corporate America to accept my dream job of planning beer, wine and food conferences for a company based in Montana.  The flexibility of working from home has several perks, one of which is the ability to give back to my community through my Downtown Milford, Inc. presidency.  So while it was a daunting leap of faith, I’m proud I took it and accepted the challenge.”

You will see Sara at all of our conferences, managing the event. Congrats, Sara!

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