Wine Blog 101 for Old Media Readers

Dear Newspaper Reader: If you’ve had enough time to read to the bottom of my weekly wine columns in the past, you’ve noticed that I always mention my wine blog. So in late June 2010, I found myself at the Wine Bloggers Conference with 300 other folks who do “postings” on wine blogs, living and blogging from their homes in Spain, Argentina, South Africa, the United States, Canada, France, China -- you name it – there’s a wine blogger in every nook and cranny of the world. And pay attention: Vlogs are about to explode on the internet: short videos posted on blogs.

Blogging is a part of the internet-age communications genre referred to as “social media”. A blog is a short-hand term for “web log”, and it is a type of on-line journaling. (Remember journaling, or keeping a diary?) Blogs cost nothing but time to create and they are easy to maintain. This year’s Wine Bloggers Conference, the third annual, was held in Walla Walla, WA, which is an up and coming wine grape growing and winery area. Not long ago, there were only a few hundred wineries in the state of Washington; now there are almost 650.

An observer at the conference was Dr. Alex Ramirez, who teaches in the Information Systems program at the Sprott School of Business, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Alex is involved in the analysis of why bloggers blog, a study which has implications for communications trends of the future, for the sociology of community organization, and for marketing on the internet. In an age where your teenage and twenty-somethings spend more time in front of a computer or smartphone or digital-game screen than in-person visits with friends and family, blogging plays a huge role. It’s how this generation builds their knowledge base via trusted information outlets.

You might not be as computer-oriented as the youngsters in your life, but we’ve all come to the point that we turn to the internet for instant information. In my columns, I’ll often give the URL (that’s the www…. address) so you can get more detail on a wine or a product or an industry issue. Huh? URL? Oh that’s a Uniform Record Locator. It’s kind of like a library card, but for the internet.

So what wine blogs, in addition to http://www.winebiznews.blogspot.com/ of course, should you follow if you want to delve into the wine world more thoroughly. That is to say: which of the 13,000 wine blogs are worth your time? The list below is highly subjective and cut-to-the-bone for this column. I follow 50-60 wine blogs, and it is a rotating and constantly changing list. Even bloggers burn out!

The Pour. (Eric Asimov, New York Times)
http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/author/eric-asimov/

Vinography
http://www.vinography.com/

Dr. Vino
http://www.drvino.com/

Steve Heimhoff’s Blog
http://www.steveheimoff.com/

Fermentation
http://fermentation.typepad.com/fermentation/

Alice Feiring’s Blog
http://www.alicefeiring.com/

Enobytes
http://enobytes.org/wine_blog/

Jamie Goode’s Wine Blog
http://wineanorak.com/blog/

Reign of Terroir
http://reignofterroir.com/

1 Wine Dude
http://www.1winedude.com/

Juicy Tales by Jo Diaz
http://www.wine-blog.org/

Good Grape
http://goodgrape.com/

That’s a start for you. Blogs are repositories of wine reviews, information about winemaking techniques, the ‘buzz’ in the industry which often indicates what winery will succeed or not with a new vintage or new facility or under a new owner, what regions are emerging as significant wine regions, which star winemakers are working with what winery, deals, details and divas.

The internet has tremendous storage capacity. Blog entries are archived and “tagged” by many bloggers so you can find content quickly. And most have a search capability. Go to http://www.winebiznews.blogspot.com/ and search for Tahoe Weekly. You’ll find every column I’ve ever written, and a few postings that are blog-worthy but perhaps not everyday reading.

Enjoy! All Hail to Social Media!


(This primer appeared in my weekly wine column "It's Grape" in The Tahoe Weekly Newspaper, July 7, 2010)


~ ~ ~ ~ ~
© 2010 Barbara Keck

For more information on dining and the wide range of activities around Lake Tahoe, see the online version of The Tahoe Weekly.

Watch for my forthcoming book: "Wineries of the Sierra and Its Foothills". Publication date early Summer 2011, Wine Appreciation Guild Publishing.

World's First Twitter-Enabled Tasting Booth- South African winery Noble Hill innovates!

The "World's First Twitter-Enabled Tasting Booth" was the headliner news from Noble Hill Wine Estate, a boutique vineyard and winery tucked between Kanonkop and Paarl Mountain in South Africa.

The winery proudly annouced that it was "ceding control of its brand to the public".


Alerted to this innovation by South African Wine News (http://www.wine.co.za/news/ ), we were interested in what can be done with the basic 140 characters in a Tweet, and this was it: Noble Hill Wine Estate launches the world's first Twitter-enabled tasting booth, ceding control of brand to the public.

The press release made some important points:

"If the 140 character blurb above seems like a foreign language, it's because it is written for the micro-blogging service Twitter which has gained a worldwide following including the likes of Oprah, Richard Branson, and Barack Obama to name a few. Twitter is used by celebrities and the proletariat alike to post short bursts about daily life, links and comments.


However Twitter took on a new role connecting the wine-loving public with a boutique South African producer at the WineX Festival in Cape Town, held from September 9 to 11.


The idea is simple: instead of using its booth to indoctrinate the public with pre-formed ideas about its wines, Noble Hill Wine Estate is ceding control of it's marketing message to wine-savvy festival-goers. Talkative sales reps will be replaced by a Twitter-enabled tasting booth that will let tasters post their comments, thoughts, and reactions directly to Twitter or via their smart phones. Tweets@noblehill or containing #winex keywords will be displayed real-time in large-format for all to see.


"Most luxury brands exercise draconian control over their message in order to sell their products. We're turning this idea on its head because, let's face it, wine drinkers are an educated and opinionated crowd and can already turn to forums like Spit or Swallow and other blogs to broadcast their experiences," said Director K. Austin Tillery. "Instead of ignoring this elephant in the room, we are embracing public opinion and letting it shape the direction and tone of our brand. We're not editing what people have to say; we're giving visitors a platform to share."


Prizes were awarded for the best Tweet of the Day each evening.


Useful Links:Noble Hill's Twitter stream - www.twitter.com/noblehill
The official Noble Hill web site - http://www.noblehill.com/
Rate and review South African wine farms - http://www.spitorswallow.co.za/
WineX Rand Merchant Bank Wine Festival official site - http://www.winex.co.za/


Noble Hill is a single-vineyard estate produces premium red and white wines sold in select restaurants and bottle stores in South Africa and abroad. Noble Hill has garnered international acclaim, including being recognized for producing the Best Merlot in the Paarl District by South African Terroir and winning Michelangelo International Gold and Silver Medals for its Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon.


All information courtesy of press release from Noble Hill.

Producing New Wine Drinkers: Hats Off to Gary V

I'm not a true Vayniac; I don't follow Gary V every day, but he's done something we all need to get better at: producing new wine drinkers.

A friend sent me this link (click here) to the short bio/interview in the New York Times: It is well worth a read.

Not long ago, I was sitting at a luncheon with 22 great minds in the wine industry, and this fervor to produce new wine drinkers was sadly, and noticeably, missing. I'd asked, "Who at this table owns a millennial?" I was greeted with quizzical looks.

I confess, I no longer own a millennial. My boys went off to college, graduated, got jobs, girlfriends and wives (in that order, and sequentially) and are now producing the next generation of wine drinkers. But I do hold loose title to one millennial, my 22-year-old niece Margaret, and we keep in touch via text messaging (she never answers her iPhone anymore and doesn't own a landline phone and rarely deigns to answer email). Margaret is the real thing.

So... Margaret is sitting at the bar in a restaurant and her date goes to the bathroom. My text alert bings, and it says, "Quick Aunt Babs, date in loo, steak + calamari coming, what wine 2 get?"

I do my bit. Value wines for this group. But soon they'll be moving to $15 a bottle consistently in the campus liquor store, and she's been known to use my brother's credit card for $25 a bottle and more.

I just KNOW that somewhere out there, a smart person is going to create an iPhone app for this generation of new wine drinkers, kind of like a Ghostbuster-Who-Ya-Gonna-Call and then the texts will no longer bing on my phone and some edgey guy like Gary V is gonna get really rich.

And more power to that person!

p.s. Gary I love you, and who wouldn't?

Please Muddle Responsibly: Perfect Viral Marketing!

It's always a wonderment to know how viral marketing efforts hit my email in-box, but this one is a nice surprise. It could also serve as an almost perfect case history of how wineries could market their products.


First, I receive an email that DOES NOT hit my spam filter. This means that the marketers are using a service like Constant Contact or Vertical Response that requires its clients to get opt-ins somehow from its target customers. Bravo!


Secondly, the email subject header is brief but compelling: "Recipes of Rio - Leblon Cachaça"










The email text is interesting:

Bom Dia,

As a Brazilian living in Rio, with a passion for spirits, I have been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to work at some of the top hotel bars in Rio (I am currently the head bartender at Hotel Fasano-Rio). In my search for inspiration of new cocktail creations, I enjoy spending time visiting and trying out what some of the top bartenders are making throughout the city.

I have taken the opportunity to explore a few of my favorite cocktail bars with Steve Luttmann, of Leblon Cachaça. There are so many great places to visit that I couldn’t take you everywhere, but I wanted to share some of my journeys through Leblon, Ipanema, and Copacabana and introduce you to some of my friends and colleagues.So, I share with you some of my Favorite Recipes of Rio!

Saude!

Next, when I do the display-images thing on my email, the photos at the top of the email (see above) are varied, vibrant, and it doesn't hurt that they include some good-looking bartenders.

After a few seconds, the YouTube video magically opens when you click on ANY image or recipe. The soundtrack is terrific, the movie a watchable 3 minutes. Try it yourself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNH_RLrllw0

Then, reverting to the email again, the recipes are clearly posted and printable.







What could be more perfect? Hats off to Leblon!







.

Your Daily Three

If you are still not sure that the path to resolving your winery’s administrative and marketing woes is Technology (with a capital T), then you should be at the Wine Industry Technology Symposium. The two-day gangbuster of what’s new in info tech and social media is finishing up today at the Napa Marriot, so there is still time to get your questions answered. I got one question answered yesterday: what’s the optimal number of Twitters (Tweets?) to do in order to continuously promote your winery. Three. Three a Day.

It’s a full time job to manage a social media function at a winery. Jennifer Rolander is the Direct Sales Manager for Quivara Winery, Healdsburg CA. Her days consist of time at the computer and more time at the computer. She’s pretty creative and has a kind of friendly focus that might have come from her background in clinical psychology. Grinding out Tweets and managing other social media tools for Quivara is mentally challenging. And then there is the immediacy issue.

“Answering a consumer question in two days just doesn’t do it,” Jennifer said. “Customers want answers NOW.”

That is the dirty little secret of social media management. It’s demanding. Someone must be tasked with the responsibility to pay attention to what’s going on with the chatter, every single minute. It is just not a matter of setting up a page on Facebook and encouraging your wine club members to become your followers. That is just the start. It’s called viral marketing because it is like a virus – the news, good OR bad, spreads from person to person. And as “Bos”, aka Andrew Bosworth, a senior engineering manager for Facebook, said in the session on Embracing Social Media and Commerce , you’ve got to take the risk of giving up complete control of your brand.

This is a tall order when a winery has taken time to build a carefully crafted image. Lots of folks in that conference room want to get into the social media game because it is, after all, free. Isn’t it?

.

What Millennials Want Included in a Wine Blog

What could be better than to enlist the help of a Social-Media-Addicted-and-Therefore-Representative-Millennial to talk about what to include in a blog targeted at this important up-and-coming consumer group? As a relative newcomer to the world of wine blogs, my very bright niece Margaret has a few recommendations to those wineries and Citizen Bloggers who might be interested in improving their blogs. I enlisted her help during schoolbreak from Indiana University, knowing that she is a constant internet and iPhone user ( junkie might be too strong a word, well, maybe not….). For several days, she took a look at the list of best blogs culled from recommended blogs noted on other sites (vinography.com, etc ) and here are her observations about what catches interest -- or not --

• Blogs should include a very visible way to contact the blogger. Ideally this should be in a “contact-us” tab at the top of a blog, if your blog is organized that way. If not, embed your e-mail address in the “about me” or “profile” section. Why make it so hard to contact a blogger directly? I mean, we all want content suggestions, as well as comments on what we’ve blogged, right? And sometimes we'd like to have this dialogue off-line....
  
  · Blogs that Margaret showed me as examples that use this feature best: http://www.thewinoclub.com/, http://www.fermentingthoughts.com/, http://www.barrys-wine.blogspot.com/, http://www.sharonwine.blogspot.com/ (which uses the (at) and (dot) to foil spammers
  
  
• It is useful to put on your blog the list of blogs that you personally respect and follow. Some people call this a blog-roll. And this blog feature is perhaps most important for what we used to call “the working press”, ie those blogs associated with a print magazine, because having this feature on a publication’s blog shows that the editors and writers are open to gathering information from a variety of news sources. If you are not a member of the working press, having this list on your blog still shows that you are open to other sources of information than just those in your immediate social sphere. A good example per Margaret: http://www.sharonwine.blogspot.com/
  
  · By the way, those who establish links to other bloggers make it easy to build relationships and share readers with each other. Margaret says, also look at www.nichewineblog.com
  
  
• An example of a blog that could use some graphic-artist assistance, in Margaret’s opinion: http://www.winemaking.jackkeller.net/. Her reaction: “everything is the same color, it is just a headache to read because of the small font, you have to scroll down a long way to find information.”
  
  
• An example of a well-designed blog in Margaret’s opinion: http://www.domaine547.com/, because “the sections are clear, header bar at the top takes you quickly to different parts of the site”.
  

Overall, bloggers are pretty literate – not too many grammatical errors, misspellings, long boring sentences. (This comment from Margaret, who is, after all, a dual English/Neuropsychology major)

Now, of course, I need to take her recommendations to heart, and improve my own blog. And I will. Thanks, Margaret, for doing a wonderful job!

Interested in Social Media? Better get on Mashable’s list!

Social media is not “exactly” free; there is a time-cost. How do you decide where to put your social media time-budget? It’s hard to remember how I got turned on to Mashable last month, but it has improved my Social Media IQ faster than a Kaplan course. How rapidly is Twitter growing? What about Facebook? What are the important elements of an authentic website that attracts Millennials? It’s all on Mashable … if you can handle the several-daily email feeds. My heartfelt suggestion for wine marketers: learn how to handle it.

It's easy to get a swamped feeling from the FeedBlitz frequency of Mashable articles. But don't. Just let the Mashable feeds sit in your inbox until you need a break. (A midday bowl of breakfast cereal -- that healthy lunch-on-the-run-at the-desk -- goes well with Mashable, for example). At the very least, a quick scan of Mashable first-paragraphs will keep you current.

I predict that there will be a Social Media Trivia game emerging soon, and I intend to be a contestant. I know now that Twitter grew 1382% annually, and just in February-March alone, 76.8%. Check it out. That’s the kind of information that Mashable accumulates, and it’s a very useful guide to the solid facts of social networking.

The info on Mashable is good, and it’s also readable. Short articles. Disciplined sentences (we could all learn from that!). Articles like “5 Essential Traits for Community Managers” with great tips from author Stuart Foster like “The ability to be yourself in print, on Twitter, and via other types of communication is extremely important”. And the article on Tweefind and its ways to rank Twitter users. And oh ecstasy, the resources on their Facebook Week event! Be selective, and you’ll find Mashable to be a valuable resource.

p.s. Since this is all pretty new to me, I subscribe via e-mail feeds. It's easy to do.

Snarky Comments: Who Needs 'Em?

First, a rant: I don't care if Story Inn or Hoosier Inn or BedMeDown Inn makes a profit on a wine event. What I care about is that consumers are exposed to a variety of wines in an atmosphere of education, fun, and responsible monitoring of consumption. What we all care about in this business is that it KEEPS GROWING. Or, that's what we should care about.

Blogging is a serious communication form for us "citizen bloggers", as OWC calls us. It's also one of the most important pathways to the new marketing paradigm that's lumped in with the ubiquitous moniker Social Media. So when I get a snarky comment, I feel like I'm entitled to hit the delete button on the "moderate" (aka approve or disapprove its publication) blogspot tab.

Last week, for the first time, I disapproved my first snarky comment. It was what I considered parochial, mean-spirited, and not in the best interest of the growth of the wine industry.

The comment was made about the upcoming Indiana Wine Fair, to be held in two weeks at Story Inn. Something about how it was misleading to call it an all-Indiana wine event. Something about how the owner of the Story Inn might make some profit from this event. Something that was ... fitting for a cat fight in a high school girls' bathroom. That kind of snarky comment.

Oh, I've been called a PollyAnna more than once. I despise territoriality and corporate politics; that's why I left Corporate America early-on. I adore people who have passion, are willing to work hard on a project, aren't afraid to get down on the farm and put dirt under their nails, and who take the risk of promoting a cause that may or may not pay off.

That's what the organizers of the Wine Fair at the Story Inn have done: all of those things above that I adore. And if they make a profit some day, well, that's the American Way.

Any other questions or comments?

If they are constructive and bring something to the party and are in the best interest of growing this industry, they get posted. If they are snarky, then ... not.

Hmmmm, I think this is referred to as a "publication policy". Gosh, that is so old-media. So be it.

Where's the Buzz?

Like many people (mostly men, I think), I have reading material close at hand for contemplation during my morning constitutional (oh yeah, pretend you don't!). This is our chance to ponder the fringes of the universe and the topics that populate the "c" list of our oh-so-busy lives. One such ponderable is a note I printed out on a LinkedIn app called Company Buzz.

LinkedIn introduces this feature thusly: "What are your customers saying about your company? Every second thousands of people are sending out messages about companies and industries on blogs, twitter, and across the internet. Company Buzz taps into this information for you, to find the relevant trends and comments about your company."

I will. And while I am at it, I'm going to explore the other tools that let companies follow what's being said. I'll be back with more apps and the results using them as a test case by spending a few days tracking his company for a friend at ACI Cork USA.

Yes, you can google your company's name. That's one easy way to track the Buzz. But the immediacy of follow-up should be an important marketing concern for any company where there is a deprecating remark posted or negative buzz that's starting.

Beyond the crisis management aspects of tracking the Buzz, knowing that your company is increasingly in the public eye is one sign of the success of your marketing, viral and otherwise. Oh, Hello! Social Networking is here to stay! As a marketing professional who puts a lot of time into staying on top of communications trends, my press list for my PR clients includes bloggers, e-Zines, .com's of major magazines, other www's in the wine industry. I'd be doing a disservice if I just sent business news for clients to the old standbys: magazines, newspapers, business journals, TV/Radio. It's simply not enough anymore to do that kind of traditional marketing communications.

But the next step is the metrics. It's great that Constant Contact tells me how many "opens" my e-mail blitzes get. That's a good first start. (I could brag here, but I won't...) But beyond the bare splathering of news into the ether, I want to know who is saying what about my client companies. And my own.

So stay tuned.
And if you have hearsay or experience with any tracking services, please post a comment.