PowerBlog Review: Denali Flavors

Editor's note: We are pleased to bring you the seventy-seventh in our regular weekly series of PowerBlog Reviews of business weblogs. This week's review is being guest-blogged by Lynne Meyer. Lynne Meyer, APR, is president of A Way with Words.

By Lynne Meyer

Denali Flavors, "The Inside Scoop From One of America's Top Ice Cream Flavor Developers," is the blog of Denali Flavors, the Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA company that develops ice cream flavors and licenses them to dairies. Denali's claim to fame is the very popular Moosetracks ice cream.

John Nardini writes the Denali Flavors blog and its two associated blogs, Moosetopia and Team Moosetracks. John is executive vice president of marketing for the company.

John Nardini has fun with the blogs, and who can blame him? After all, the guy is in a business that's all about fun -- ice cream!

John started the blogs in March and April of this year, and he and five other Denali management members post several times a week among the blogs: "I started the blogs as a way to reach consumers, introduce them to Moose Tracks ice cream in a subtle way and drive them our main web site."

He explains the purpose of each of the three blogs this way:

• Denali Flavors: Behind-the-scenes information from one of America's top ice cream flavor developers.



• Moosetopia: Entertaining. The only blog written by a moose!



• Team Moose Tracks: Information about the company's cycling team that raises money for a variety of local charities.

The three blogs offer a mix of content that make them interesting... and fun reads.

The Denali Flavors blog covers issues the company itself is dealing with, new product ideas, marketing ideas and small business issues. These postings include practical tips and references and links to other articles.

In an ongoing series titled "What Makes Denali Successful," owners Wally and June Blume have each employee do an individual posting in which they give their personal insight into what they think makes Denali successful.

Team Moosetracks showcases the company's dedication to raising money for charities and giving back to the community. Sponsoring an ongoing healthy activity that supports worthy causes can have good residual marketing benefits, too. Featuring them in your blog with lots of photos, as this blog does, is a good use of this communications venue to demonstrate corporate commitment to the community.

And then there is Moosetopia, a "character" blog. Denali's "Moose-cot" refers to Denali's moose company mascot. Moosetopia follows the travel adventures of the stuffed "Moose-cot." A photo accompanies his (the moose's -- yes, it's a blog by a moose) postings in which he explains where he is all over the country. There's even a Moose Page with Moose News and moose paraphernalia such as moose t-shirts, moose tattoos and the 2005 Moose-a Month calendar, all with the drawing of the Denali moose.

A key aspect of the Denali blogs are emails from customers. One satisfied customer wrote: "After exhaustive study and deep soul searching, I have come to the conclusion that the primary reason Saddam was such a dangerous bully is simply because he didn't have access to Denali ice cream. Luckily for America, your wonderful product is available to the vast majority of patriotic citizens, providing us our Daily Dose of Denali. As a good corporate citizen, you have the power to ensure world peace and eliminate strife among nations. Get your wonderful ice cream products quickly to all the trouble spots of the world!" Sharing these fun emails from real folks is a great product endorsement.

According to John, Denali's three blogs have "greatly helped us realize tremendous quantifiable results in terms of driving people to our main website. We've had an increase of 18 percent in web site visits, 10 percent more hits, and total time on the web site is up more than 26 percent. We've received most of our attention on Moosetopia.com, which attests to the validity of character blogs," he adds.

As of August 8, 2005 all three blogs will be consolidated under the main Denali Flavors blog.

I guarantee you'll enjoy reading the Denali blogs. Just make sure you have plenty of Moosetracks ice cream on hand when you do!