Lenn asks, "Is weekly posting enough?"

Lenn commented on my last post (So You Wanna Start A Winery Blog...), and asked "Mike...do you really think weekly posts is enough?"  He suggested twice a week as a minimum.

Basically, you should post whenever you have something interesting to tell your readers, and post often enough that they don't lose interest.  I'm quite willing to wait a while for one of Dover Canyon's stories (although I love the excitement of Tom Wark's daily posts).

I'd rather have a good post once a week, than a mediocre post every day.  (Hint: if you like taking digital pictures, taking an interesting one and writing a little bit about it is an easy way to create good posts).  That's why I suggested 30-60 minutes to put one together.  A good post takes a little time (for me, anyway).

As I said in my original post, posting more often tends to be better (assuming there's good content in those posts), but I also know that most wineries don't have dedicated bloggers, and most of their potential readers don't use an RSS reader to read blogs by subscription (yet) - instead they read by visiting the blog itself. So, once a week is a reasonable minimum. If it becomes a chore for a winery blogger (owner, winemaker, marketing director, tasting room manager, ...) to think up something to post, their blog is doomed.

These aren't wine bloggers, these are *winery* bloggers! Many small winery owners (who stand to benefit the most from blogs) just want to make wine, which is why you see poorly-thought-through Web sites and no winery blogs.  A winery blog is a way of involving readers in the story of your wines.  Tell the story well, and those readers will buy your wine, and pass the story along to others (and maybe they'll buy, too).  In your reader's minds, blogging sets your winery apart from all those who apparently don't have anything interesting to say about their wines.

I'm trying for a reasonable compromise here. After all, I want to encourage wineries to dip their toes in the water and tell us their stories. Hopefully, some of them will catch the bug.  Right now, exactly none of the winery blogs on our list are posting regularly each week. 

Personally, I'm ready to help any winery that wants to blog with advice and encouragement (and a subscription to their RSS feed). And I know Lenn is, too (particularly those Long Island wineries).

Comments

[Mary Baker]

Mike, thank you for the compliment and support! It's true that winery owners/winemakers don't have a lot of time to post. I also think that photos are important to a blog, and it's time consuming to take, download, crop, resize, and upload.

As a winery partner and manager, I am trying to write at least nine full-length pieces during these relatively quiet months, and uploading them to post at scheduled intervals using the Typepad scheduling feature, so that I'll have at least three features per month through March. Then I'll try to post shorter, current news or photo pieces in between.

[Josh]

One thing I would add: make sure you spell check and proof your posts. Spelling and grammatical errors reflect very poorly on your winery operation.

Also, I wouldn’t say that *none* of the winery website blogs are posting on a regular basis (cough pinotblogger cough).

Nice, informative articles on starting a winery blog. For us (Capozzi Winery) the challenge was and is: How do you get someone interested in a winery that isn't even built yet? How do you build excitement for a wine that no one has tasted yet?

The clear answer for me was to blog about the birth of our winery and the winemaking process. I love writing and telling stories, and blogging about our journey brings me great satisfaction. That it also brings in potential customers and builds buzz is really just a nice bonus (and a convenient business justification for spending a portion of my day blogging).

Anyway, nice blog. It's definitely a weekly read for me.

[seemiaexculse]

Between 1950 and 1952, a bored weatherman, stationed north of Hudson
Bay, left a monument that neither government nor time can eradicate.
Using a bulldozer abandoned by the Air Force, he spent two years and
great effort pushing boulders into a single word.

It can be seen from 10,000 feet, silhouetted against the snow.
Government officials exchanged memos full of circumlocutions (no Latin
equivalent exists) but failed to word an appropriation bill for the
destruction of this cairn, that wouldn't alert the press and embarrass
both Parliament and Party.

It stands today, a monument to human spirit. If life exists on other
planets, this may be the first message received from us.
-- The Realist, November, 1964.

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