During a recent skype chat, a friend and co-wine-blogger asked me, “If you had your druthers, what do you tell a winery who is preparing for a blogger meet-up or wine fair?”
Astounded by the poignancy and relevancy of the question, I admitted that I needed time to think, and promptly changed my skype status to “away”.
After much hemming and hawing, it occurred to me that the wineries that truly leave an impression on me as a blogger are the ones that not only have a warm and open personality when serving their wines, but were the people who went out of their way to grab my contact information, rather than leave me with a heap of pamphlets.
Why is this crucial? It’s crucial because those wineries who are social media friendly go out of their way to ensure that we’re connected in every way possible. They invite me to their Facebook fan page, ask to be a friend through their personal pages, connect with me on Linked-in, thank me via email for taking the time to taste their wines, request my permission to be subscribed to their newsletter; and if they’re really advanced, they’ll send me a tweet inviting me to their winery at a future date. Granted, I can think of a dozen wineries, primarily in the USA, who have gone that extra mile, but these wineries made an effort to connect, showing enthusiasm, interest and assertiveness, and therefore, are unforgettable.
To put this in layman’s terms, if you go back to your single days, the most interesting people were the ones that went out of their way to show interest in you. Unlike the guy who wrote your number on the back of his hand, where it was promptly smudged away by morning, those guarded your number safely in their wallets and promptly called you the minute they walked in their front door were impressionable. They wanted you to remember their face, their voice and their offer to take you out to dinner the following evening.
This same theory holds true with wineries. If you truly want a wine blogger to remember you, be active, be assertive, be communicative and be online. Don’t assume that just because a wine blogger takes photos of your wines or tweets a tasting note they’ll remember you the next day. Be the winery they won’t forget. Go out of your way to ensure they hear from you immediately, simply by commenting on their blog by posting a thank you, or retweeting their comment showing that you’re listening.
Maybe one day in the future, wineries will end the age old tradition of overloading bloggers with a small forest of paperwork, hoping they’ll call you in the morning, and instead, be the winery who is interactive, interested and available for comments or questions in every way possible.
What are your thoughts? If a winery had a blogger meet-up, or attended to you at a wine fair, what is your ideal way for them to interact with you?
Gabriella Opaz
