2016 – The Buzz Bin Year In Review

new-year

We survived 2016!

It was a wild, strange and perplexing year filled with politics, social issues, the Olympics, celebrities, food, craft beer and wine, and of course emails – so much talk about emails.

Before we get too far into 2017, The Buzz Bin editors wanted to revisit a few of our most popular posts of 2016 and a few of our other favorites based on cultural and social relevance. Here we go!

 The Top Five

Because of our expertise in Food + Beverage, it isn’t surprising that beer and wine dominated The Buzz Bin with four of our top five posts. Our writers had different approaches to writing about beer and wine, from looking at how millennials and women are shaping the industry to making bold predictions about trends. However, a discussion about search engine optimization (SEO) was able to crack the top five.

Here’s a look at our top five posts for 2016 based on unique page views (UPVs).

#5. 20+ Local SEO Tips for Businesses with Multiple Locations. Having strong search rankings requires planning, strategy and flawless execution. In fact, Google looks at more than 200 factors when ranking content. For organizations with multiple locations – like PadillaCRT for instance – SEO can become infinitely more complicated. Jason Poulos offered up valuable tips on maximizing local SEO.

women#4. Women and Wine: What Does this Segmentation Really Tell Us? After attending a Wine Market Council research conference, Katie Myers shared great insights on female wine consumers. It’s certainly not a monolithic group.

#3. What You Should Be Drinking This Fall: Five Trend Predictions. Fresh cocktails, cold-brew mixers and craft ciders were just a few of the trends that Katie Myers predicted would be on cocktail menus this past fall. We don’t see these trends going away through the winter. Cheers!

 #2. How Millennials Are Shaping the Alcoholic Beverage Industry. Millennials remain rich fodder for bloggers, as marketers continue to try and crack the code on this elusive generation. Katie Myers cracked our top five posts once again by providing three key takeaways for marketers seeking to reach millennial drinkers.

 mommoth-photo#1. BEER-CATION: 45 Must-Visit Breweries (INFOGRAPHIC). If a picture is worth a 1,000 words, then a good infographic is worth at least 10,000. Denise Grega struck social media gold with her take on some great craft breweries from across the country. Not surprisingly, our list of 45 breweries generated great debate about the breweries that made the list and the ones left off.

Editors’ Picks

Along with our top five posts, The Buzz Bin editors also wanted to highlight a few of our other favorite 2016 posts, based on the relevance and timeliness of the topics.

ken-boneTop 5 Bizarre Social Media Moments: Election Edition. Shalee Hanson took a look at the 2016 election through the lens of social media, which included everything from parodies of President-Elect Donald Trump’s pension for Twitter to Ken Bone – remember him? – getting 15-minutes of fame following one of the presidential debates.  It was an election filled with many firsts – both highs and lows – and social media was right there to capture it all.

#EpiGate: How Mylan is Handling Criticism Over Increased EpiPen pricing. Mylan, the pharmaceutical company that owns the EpiPen emergency allergy treatment, made big headlines after it dramatically raised prices on the life-saving drug. Kirsten Lesak-Greenberg examined how the company handled its crisis communications.

ryan-lochteA Look Back: Brands and Their Misbehaving Spokespeople. Ryan Lochte. Need we say more? He’s so very 2016. Along with Lochte, Laura Schultz reminded us of other misbehaving celebrity spokespeople from the past decade.

How B2B Content Marketing Can Stand Out in the Noise. Increasingly in public relations and marketing, content is king. Leonard Pollard took a deep dive into how content marketing will continue to grow for B2B technology companies.

Too Many “Celeb” Cooks in the Kitchen? Who doesn’t love a good Food Network binge-watching session, especially on a lazy weekend? Danielle Pesce asked a provocative question in her post about whether the proliferation of shows featuring amateur celebrity chefs are taking the “art” out of cooking.

There you have it. Our Buzz Bin Year in Review. We look forward to another great year of providing content and thought leadership about public relations, marketing, digital, social media, branding and so much more.

Happy New Year!

Related Posts: ABCs of the 2016 Olympics Fresh off the Tap – Three Craft Beer Trends to Watch BEER-CATION: 45 Must-Visit Breweries (INFOGRAPHIC) Planning to Post Socially for a Brand this Olympics? Read This First 2016 Booze Trends: What we love, hate and can’t wait to start Food Values in South America