Member PR Opportunities

Being a member of the Whole Grains Council offers opportunities to make your company and your products more visible – on our website, in our newsletter, and elsewhere. Here are some of the most obvious ones. If you see some other place that we could help you AND add to the richness of our website’s content, please contact us with your suggestions. Many of our links and new content additions started as member ideas!

Overview of Website Visibility Opportunities

Here’s a list of the main opportunities, with full descriptions below. All website marketing opportunities are free of charge and are included with your membership. NOW is the time to update your information throughout the website, to take FULL advantage of your WGC membership. Contact Vik Bensen at (617) 896-4810 or vik@oldwayspt.org.

Find Whole Grains Lists
… Retail Product List for Consumers (with foodservice / sprouted / GF options)
… Gluten Free Products by mail order list
… Consumer Mail Order list
… Wholesale Ingredients list
… Restaurant Chains list
Press Opportunities
… Photo Gallery Images
… WG Sales Are Up – Stats and Quotes
Other
… Member Directory
… Recipes
… WG Health Studies

“FIND Whole Grains” Lists

One of the main missions of the WGC is to help consumers find whole grain products. We are constantly increasing the resources that help consumers find your products. These lists include

a. Retail Product List for Consumers (Stamped Products)
All products registered to use the Whole Grain Stamp are automatically added to this list (unless you have asked us not to list them). Make sure we have a Product Registration Form for all your qualifying whole grain retail products – whether the packaging shows the Stamp yet or not – so all your products can be fully represented here.

b. Foodservice Products
Our main retail product list now has a search option so that visitors can filter for foodservice products only. If you’re selling to foodservice, make sure your products are tagged to show up under foodservice.

c. Gluten Free Products by Mail Order list
Our Gluten Free page is one of the most-visited pages on the WGC website. If you sell gluten free products directly to consumers, we can include you here. 

d. Consumer Mail Order list
If you sell plain grains or flour by mail order, ask us to include you on this list. Instructions on how to be included are here.

e. Wholesale Grains list
Are you selling whole grains and flour B2B? Check how we can add you to this list.

f.  Restaurant List for Consumers
We keep a list of national chain restaurants featuring whole grains. If your foodservice division sells ingredients or products to one of the chains, tell us, and we’ll add them to the list so you’ll sell more (and so your restaurant customers will appreciate that you told us about them!).   

PRESS OPPORTUNITIES

Journalists contact the WGC daily, and we do everything we can to get our members’ companies and products included in top newspapers and magazines. You can help us help you, by sending us information in these ways:

a. Photo Gallery Photos
Journalists writing general stories on the benefits of whole grains turn to our Photo Gallery for generic whole grain photos. These are UNBRANDED photos – yet they still offer great promotional opportunity. Your company will be mentioned in the credit line… your product category will be emblazoned in readers’ minds… and journalists may be inspired to contact you for quotes. We post low-res photos, so that journalists must contact us for the actual photos. This gives our media team an opportunity to offer contacts and more information for pending whole grain stories. Contact us now – we need photos such as a steaming bowl of oatmeal, a dish of crunchy flakes with fruit, whole grain cakes, cookies, crackers, grains growing in the field, etc.

b. Whole Grain Statistics
Journalists LOVE statistics for their stories. Please consider sharing information on your whole grain successes if it furthers your marketing goals, especially if you can include industry data such as AC Nielsen, SPINS, InfoScan, etc. We used to have quotes like the one below on the website, but took them down when they became outdated. We’d love some new ones.

Hodgson Mills
Hodgson Mills, a leading manufacturer of whole grain pasta, reports that as a category, total Pasta unit sales (individual packages) in the U.S. were down 2.8% for the 12 month period ending May 2005. Hodgson Mill’s pasta sales were up 20.3% during the same time period.
Paul Kirby, VP Sales & Marketing (August, 2005)

We welcome fresh quotes. Listing a quote on this page increases the chances that journalists will contact you for inclusion in a story on whole grains. Just email us, and we’ll post it for you.

OTHER LINKS ON THE WGC WEBSITE

Here are some additional marketing opportunities on the WGC website:

a. Member Directory
All members are automatically added to this list as soon as they are members in good standing. Your listing links to the website of your choice

b. Recipes
We can post selected recipes from your company in our Recipes section, and link back to your website.

c. Whole Grain Health Studies
If your company knows of any peer-reviewed published health studies that show new benefits of your products, make sure we’re aware of them, so we can add them to this page.

e. Guest Blog
If you have news or an “Op Ed” piece that is clearly NOT simply self-promotion, we can consider it as a guest blog. Take a look at three past examples of members’ guest blogs, and get inspired. (We don’t do this often, so you need to have a really good idea!) If you’d like to submit a guest blog, email Kelly Toups with your idea, before you write it.

Guest Post: InvenTeam Teens Make Sorghum Accessible to World’s Poor
Guest Post: Sprouted Whole Grains
Guest Post: Do these look like whole grain pancakes?

Our “Just Ask for Whole Grains” consumer newsletter

Every month we send out an e-newsletter filled with information about the latest whole grain tips, health research, recipes – and deals. If your company is running a whole grains sweepstake or giveaway, offering coupons on your website, or doing anything else that could qualify as a “deal or discount,” contact Kelly Toups.

Now is the time to update your information on the WGC site, to make sure you are taking FULL advantage of your Whole Grains Council membership. Contact Vik Bensen (vik@oldwayspt.org) with any updates.