Photographers! Tips for winter photography? How could i have improved this pic?

I'm relatively new to winter photogrpahy and its unique challenges, i'm just looking for a more vibrant look
i know the bright white snow makes for a challenge so i sometimes tick up an extra notch of exposure compensation, but i did not do that here
i used "D lighting HS" in Nikon view nx2 to improve the lighting a bit
anyway, just looking for tips for winter photogrpahy, in particular the high contrast between the bright white snow and darker trees for example

The white snow will fool the lightmeter, showing more light being reflected than if you were metering from an 18% gray card.

If you do not have a gray card, you can just take some test shots, increasing the exposure one third stop at a time. You will NOT be able to see which exposure is correct using the LCD on your camera.

Take your tests home and view these images on your recently calibrated and profiled computer monitor

Once you have determined how much you need to increase the exposure, make a not of it.

Not much to add to fhotoace's answer, or to what you are already doing. Snow is tough when it comes to exposure. In my opinion, it is better to expose for the snow and have it correct and just let other subjects in the scene fall where they may as concerns exposure. I agree with "ace" in that metering off a grey card in a snow situation is a real godsend. I have a Lastolite collapsable unit that is a combination grey card on one side and a reflector on the other. It's great to use for exposure anywhere, but especially in tricky situations such as snow. Unless the shading or time of day drastically changes the light, once you set the exposure into the camera manually, it is typically going to be fine to leave it alone after that. Of course, always shoot in RAW so you have some further exposure flexibility after the fact in RAW processing.

Yes, you should have increased exposure by half to one stop. It would have made the scene brighter and you could have added more contrast when post editing.