Wine Conversation | Reaching out from within the wine bubble

Talking about influence, elitism and wine

September 6, 2011 in marketing with 5 Comments

On a highly unusual day in London recently I was lucky enough to be interviewed twice on similar topics – the coming together of wine, blogging and some measure of influence.

This blog, in large part thanks to its longevity but also some very active and loyal followers, regularly appears on lists of “top wine blogs”. Of course, there is no easy or accepted way of defining what these top blogs are, and every time this comes up, the usual discussions arise (see my recent post about the UK Wikio rankings). However this is measured, it means that those of us involved in publishing it get asked to share ideas and our ‘secrets’ with others, which is always fun and good for the ego*

The first interview was with Cision UK, a PR services company, and I will share that with you if/when the video is public. We had a bit of fun with this one.

I also met with PeerIndex, one of the leaders in the field of online influence measurement. I wrote about online influence on this blog in the past (“Writing Under the Influence of Twitter” and “Measuring Influence or Communication Skills“). They asked to interview me for some thoughts on influence and wine, and the result is this video, shot on location at Around Wine (thanks to the very generous Daniel, aka @winerackd). Please excuse the lighting which makes me look like I’m wearing Tim Minchin style mascara:

One of the quotes which seems to have caught some people’s attention was:

“I have no influence. People who follow me make me have influence, so effectively they are the influencers.”

This may seem backwards, but the point I was trying to make is that influence is being viewed backwards. The individuals with lots of followers do not necessarily have the ability to influence the behaviour of others. We ought to be looking at how these particular users represent the shared interests of those in their networks.

I can’t make anyone drink a bottle of wine … but if you can convince me that I should drink yours, then maybe you’ve got the message right that will make others do the same.

Trying to target bloggers as mouthpieces for PR messages doesn’t work, but learning to engage with them is a great way of engaging with consumers in general.

Just a thought.

* It also goes to prove my point that any measure of “influence” is self-referential because if you are seen as influential, you attract more attention, links and interviews … and therefore more success which then means more “influence”

Shock! Wine blog helps to sell wine (wineconversation.com)
What Exactly Does a Social Media Influence Score Mean? (fastforwardblog.com)
Review: Tim Minchin’s Comedy Prom at Snape Maltings (cassiefairy.wordpress.com)

The Perfect Wine “App”

July 21, 2011 in Tech with 9 Comments

One of my favorite podcasts is NPR‘s Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me. Wait Wait is a weekly new’s quiz show, based out of Chicago, that invites various guests to answer a series of satirical questions.

This past week, Ev Williams of Twitter was invited onto the show as a guest, and he echoed a comment I happened to make recently when talking to a friend about wine apps for mobile. People often complain about the mundane tweets that happen on twitter, with a occasional traffic update or news item. What’s interesting is that this worked to train the users to use twitter to communicate. If you had built an app for these “traffic updates”, people wouldn’t use it since it was not part of the way they communicated. They’d forget it’s there and therefore, not tell everyone what’s happening on the freeway.

From the Show: It turns out it has a lot of different facets, because while there’s many people doing stupid narcissistic things, that gets you to use it(twitter) on a regular basis and it gets you familiar with it. But then when you see an accident, you’re trained to tweet that you’ve just seen an accident, and suddenly that’s a useful piece of information. Whereas, if we told you that this was a program only for reporting accidents, you’d never think of it. – Ev Williams

When my friend asked, “what is the best wine app”, my response was, bluntly, that they all sucked.

I might want to clarify and say that they all suck for 99% of the population of wine drinkers. The current wine apps are all what I call “destination apps”, meaning you need to make them your destination for information you need. The truth is that we need apps that are not destinations, but rather locations were we hang out. I mentioned to him that if you want to make a wine app that works, try making a “life app” that includes wine.

For me it comes down to a few apps that already exist. Evernote: a place where I share all my wine notes and store information that I find online. I use it everyday and would feel as though I was missing an arm if I didn’t have it at the ready. It’s a tool that I use for organizing my life, and wine is one aspect of my life (shocking I know, I do enjoy other things too!). Then you have the other arm of social: Twitter, Facebook and to a growing extent Google+, all of which are places where I share my life with friends and family. Since wine is a social lubricant, it only goes to show how natural it is to talk about the various wines I’m enjoying.

I don’t want to get too detailed, but I do want to offer up a challenge to wine app creators. What we need is a lifestyle app that builds wine into its core, or an app that allows for conversations, categorizations, or amplifications of things other than wine. Do this and you’ll have an app that normal folk can relate to. I’m not saying there isn’t a place for specialist apps, each discipline needs these, but they are not going to grow an audience much bigger than the niche they are built for.

Till soon,

Ryan Opaz

Read the full transcript of Ev Williams on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me

Branding Tip: Gravatar

July 7, 2011 in Tech with 1 Comment

A big part of branding is consistency: making sure that when you leave comments and links around the web, you do it in a way that creates a trail of similar information. When we consult new wineries who want to get online, we tell them to make a special folder that they keep on their computer with: a headshot, image (of winery, vineyard, team, etc), logo, a text document with some cut and paste descriptions that they can use, and any other relevant “social information”. This very simple trick ensures that your information is relevant and consistent.

One other tool and one that is EASY and indispensable to getting online is: Gravatar. Gravatar stands for “Globally Recognized Avatar”. Avatar is both a 3d movie featuring agile blue people, and more importantly for us, a visual representation of yourself online. Usually Avatars are small square images that you see show up in the comments section in blogs, your photo in Facebook and your icon on Twitter. Using an image of your profile can go a long ways to helping people visually connect with you and your brand. Gravatar helps your brand be dispersed everywhere, without you having to think about it.

Check out this video for more info:

Hope you like today’s tech tip. Now go sign up for your Gravatar, and then test it out in the comments below by telling us how it went!

Ryan

Does your website have a mobile version?

June 20, 2011 in Tech with 5 Comments

photo credit @Flickr .m for matthijs

It was reported today that consumers spend more time on mobile apps than on the web. Really this is no surprise. It is the way the world works, big things become smaller and smaller as technology gets better and better. If we could go back in time and start the computer revolution today, no-one would design a big box that sits in a special room in your house as a way to get online. If we started from scratch, we’d probably begin with something a bit more “iphone-like”. Small, portable and always connected to the web.

Laptops are shrinking into “pads” and desktops are more and more specialized professional tools, which brings me to today’s question:

Do you have a mobile version of your website, version that looks good on a small screen and is easy to navigate? Have you even checked?

If you’re working with an open CMS system like WordPress, or something even more cutting edge like Posterous, you are probably fine.

If you know what a wordpress plugin is, you might try one of these out.

If these don’t mean much to you, then go and check out your website on a mobile app.

Here’s a tip: if your site has pretty moving things on the screen when you look at it, it’s most likely using Flash. And what does Flash mean? It means that no-one with an iPhone can access your site, and many others will quickly lose patience and go elsewhere rather than watch your site load. If you’re using flash, get a new site.

Your customers are more likely today to find you while navigating on their phone, than on a laptop. If they can’t interact with your site you will be losing customers and fans!

Any questions?

The Return on Investment of Wine Education

June 14, 2011 in marketing with 34 Comments

… or why “consumers need more wine education” is wrong

It would appear to be widely accepted in the wine trade that if only consumers knew more about wine, the more, better (and higher profit) wines they’d buy.

“Consumer Education” in the form of brochures, seminars, events, newsletters, websites, apps, social networks, trips etc, form part of most every wine marketing plan (assuming they’ve even bothered). To quote one recent example, Tom Lewis (aka @CambWineBlogger) in a discussion on this topic initiated by Wink Lorch (aka @WineTravel):