The Most Prolific Winery Bloggers of 2008

Here are the top five (along with the number of posts made in 2008):

1. LaFond Winery & Santa Barbara Winery  (178)
2. Sokol Blosser  (145) 
3. Stefania Wine (112)
4. August Briggs (101) 
5. Twisted Oak Winery (97)  

An honorable mention goes to Michel-Schlumberger's Benchland Blog, which had a partial-year total of 57 posts, the best of any blog started in 2008.

Although quality and quantity don't always go together, that doesn't seem to apply here.  It's probably because wineries that are interested enough to make 2-3 blog posts a week also care about making posts that are going to engage their communities.  It's pointless to blog if you don't see an ROI of some sort from it, and poor-quality posts (flat-out uninteresting, lacking in information or context, not useful to the audience) kill blog ROI, however you may define it.

As a side note, all of these blogs make extensive use of photographs, either as the focus of the post, or to increase interest in what's being written about.

Surprisingly, neither of the top two  blogs have a link back to their winery Web site(s), although there are certainly obvious places for such a link (LaFond has the name of each winery at the top of the page, but they aren't links!).

If you're a winery blogger and you're not subscribed to these blogs, then you might want to consider it for two reasons: 

• Seeing what other people post about (inspiration), and
• Commenting (when relevant and thoughtful) is a good way to bring traffic to your own Web site or blog.

If you don't know how to subscribe to a blog, 2009 is definitely the year to learn how!

(If you think your winery blog was overlooked, please let me know.  I did my best to check all the winery blogs which I know about, but not having an RSS feed may have caused me to miss your prodigious blogging output.)

Comments

[tom merle]

Mike,

I just want to send my best wishes for 2009 and my appreciation for your own blog. It provides an excellent resource, which should prove even more valuable as we ride out the economic tsunami growing in its destructive intensity.

[Jo Diaz]

Interesting read.

It's hard to imagine that a winery blog wouldn't have a link back to their own Website, though, isn't it?

There are still so many marketing disconnects behind great intention. Perhaps not having an in-house techie is why? When a company has someone whose sole position is to take care of all things that relate to technological marketing, then something as elemental as linking back to one's site won't be overlooked.

That day's coming, but in the slow to ripen wine business, that's going to take more time than we may possibly imagine.

Not a dooms-day sayer, here, just working with so many wine companies, I know that their focus isn't necessarily on the cutting edge, on the whole. They're focus is having consumers pull through their products, and the process is also as long as a season's brix reaching an optimal level for harvest.

[El Jefe]

Nice metaphor Jo!

It is surprising that there wouldn't be a link back to the winery web site. I fret a lot about how to get blog visits turned into web site visits and (dare I say it) conversions. Witness all of the links at the top of my blog that lead that way!

I think the problem is that it takes someone who understands both the tech side and the marketing imperatives enough to not overlook these elemental things.

(This post also makes me realize what a slacker I was in 2008. Time to get on it!)

[Jo Diaz]

El Jefe... Glad you like the metaphor...

Been in the business long enough to see that one materialize over and over again in bored rooms. ;^)

What's really ironic is that you're on the most "prolific list," but didn't proliferate...

[Mike Duffy]

Jeff, Jo:

Thanks for reading and commenting on my blog. I really appreciate you taking the time.

The problem is that smaller wineries, who have the most to gain from leveraging technology, are generally least able to afford a dedicated technocal resource. Certainly, Twisted Oak's success in using technology is a direct result of Jeff being a techie.

The hope is that companies like eWinerySolutions, Cultivate, and Inertia Beverages would, by virtue of a common backend and a standardized checklist of things to ensure, would eliminate the problem, but only a relative few wineries are making use of them. Most, for reasons of "penny-wise-pound-foolish", undertake it themselves, piecing together solutions or homebrewing an incomplete solution.

My pet peeve is wineries that engineer there own blog solutions (or do a bad job of integrating one from off the shelf), so that RSS is broken or something else just doesn't work correctly.

Anyway, thanks again for contributing to the discussion.

[Judd Wallenbrock]

Mike,

Thanks for the special mention. I think something we've done that is a bit different is to bring as many of our team on board as authors allowing readers to really get to know not just the wines of Michel-Schlumberger, but the people...what I call 'cultural terroir'. I hope readers enjoy!