Beer Blog Categories

[KC Hophead]

As my blog posts grow I get certain types of readers. I start to learn exactly what I like to write about and how, but I'm still wondering what readers what to hear about. My blog started out all over the place but pretty much stuck to funny stories or informational with comical twists. What is your blog like? Are you all over the place or do you try to keep to a strict schedule and format? Are their other categories?

Of course categories are combined all over the place but I see two major categories (with their sub-categories) that blogs lean towards:

-Informational
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- Beer News
- Beer Updates (stores/pubs/etc)
- Beer Reviews
- Educational
- Pictures/Videos

-Entertainment
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- Controversy
- Show-off's (you know who you are)
- Stories
- Pictures/Videos
- Music - Bort has introduced us to 'blip'ing songs for beers.

[Drafternoon]

Thats a good question,

Drafternoon.com started out in April as a chronological Beer Review Blog, kinda like a beer a day, on a wordpress blog, after a month it quickly outgrew that, and now has multiple blogs featuring different content, as well as beer reviews, beer news, and educational content. We just hired a few columnists who will be writing features, and we are in a pre-production of a weekly video blog

but it is def. a good question of how, and what do you write about, and how you distribute that information...I'd be interested in knowing how other beer bloggers are doing it.

[DrunkMonkey]

Thanks for the shout out for my "Blip your Beer" post! I've been Blipping beer for almost a year now. It's usually my final line for my BA reviews.
Right now Show-Me Beer is pretty open, I'm still cutting my teeth. It's a Blog about beer from Missouri, as well as drinking beer in Missouri

[Chipper Dave]

I have a long list of beer categories that I blog about. Typically I have a category for every brewery I review beers from, a category for each style of beer I review, homebrewing, categories for lists and events and categories for different regions and states. The list of categories is so long that I don't list them on my sidebar but rather include links to categories from within my blog posts or perhaps a short list of most recent "hot" categories. The categories are always listed at the bottom of each post and are used for my own reference as well as allowing readers to find more stories on similar themes.

In most cases I'll list 3 to 4 links to related stories at the end of each blog post rather than rely on categories. It has helped to grow pageviews and get additional comments.

[KCWortHog]

Mine's informative - you know that :)

I have intentions to change it up a little bit though & make it more educational/informative and light-hearted... I'm getting bored with my blog and it's only been 7 months (ok well if you count my blog I deleted during a self-pity party, 10 months). I have 2 categories for my future posts but am still working on my format... more to come on that.

I enjoy funny blogs, but they HAVE to be informative as well. I really don't get much out of reading about people hanging out with their friends & drinking beer & some funny joke someone told. Who cares? I don't; I have better things to read. :)

[TheBrewClub]

So far mine is mainly beer reviews from a noob perspective, with a smidge of educational stuff. I'd like to do some more current events or news/interesting stories, just don't have the time right now. I try go get a post out every third day, but its been flexible. Still a work in progress! Probably too many categories actually.

[Phil_L]

I just write what ever I fancy, mainly because I can. I do struggle with the newsy stuff, purely as it's related to a shop, I have to be careful with somethings. I tend to leave that to the guys who've got a better grasp of the english language, and a different reason for blogging.

I can write what I like, in truth, I just can't be arsed with the fall out from controversy. I would like to set up and write a counter to this, but... to what ends. I do suffer with emperors new clothes sometimes, um, frequently. Celebrated beers, that in reality are a triumph of style over substance, and heavly under "rated" brewers beers, that in actual fact are honest, good and damn tasty beverages. Hell, I am stepping on a whole other subject, and I am a big fan of rating sites, especially the Beeradvocate/Ratebeer scene...

But, why I started the blog, purely for a technological reason mainly of getting new beers out there, getting the google bots to have a look at us faster and keeping our more regular and demanding customer base up to date, rather than them calling in. It's evolved into homebrewing stuff, Brewing Network stuff, etc etc as and when they occur; such is my love of brewing and homebrewing. I also started it as a place to stash photo's from my travels, a sort of travel log, just so my mom knew where I was on the planet, again saving phonecalls.

My blogging has somewhat reduced with the evolution of twitter - a really fun peice of work - I love it for the interaction that the blog doesn't have. Having grown up in a pub, I kinda enjoy/thrive on interaction, helping people find the beers that they want... twitter allows me to do that, albeit often with the geekiest of people ( <- pot, kettle, black)

I love reading other peoples blogs, from all over the planet - so where ever you are, please keep it going!