It’s Sunday, the last day of the Wine Bloggers Conference. I’m exhausted, but I knew that this was a meaningful day since the breakout sessions were happening. Why the meat of the conference was on Sunday morning after 3 days of wine events seems like poor planning to me, but I’ll address that in my wrap up post.
So up I got, and my savior, the tea fairy, brought me a cuppa to help steel my body for the mornings events. There were six sessions to choose from. I’ve included a few links as well, since the presenters were generous enough to post video / Powerpoint content around the web, for those of us who wanted to be everywhere.
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Legalities of Blogging *special thanks to Mike Wangbickler for the video
- Monetizing your Blog
- Creating Social Networks for Wineries *special thanks to Mike Wangbickler for the video
- Facebook, Twitter, and other Social Media for Wine Businesses
- Beyond Words: How Video Content is Changing the Wine World *special thanks to Mike Wangbickler for the video, shown below
- Search Engine Optimization
I choose to attend the Beyond Words session and was really glad I did. This session focused on the current state of video content in the world of wine blogs, for both business and peers. Lisa deBruin (@winedivergirl) from Hahn Family Winery and the California Wine Life blog, as well as Hardy Wallace (@dirtysouthwine) now the new voice of Murphy Goode (@goodetobefirst), but also author of Dirty South Wine, were joined by Drink This TV founder Bob Asher to talk about these topics.
Is video important? Why is it important if this is true? What I learned from Hardy is that video reaches and audience you might not expect it to. It is still fresh and new int he wine blogging world, and while more and more people are starting to enhance their blogs with video (particularly after the WBC), it is still not widely accepted practice in the wine blogging world. One notifiable exception to this is Gary Vaynerchcuk, who’s Wine Library TV has been the flag bearer of video blogging for a while now. Gary V, who was a keynote speaker at last year’s WBC, is a different beast however, in that he specifically review wines for sale in his store, while citizen bloggers such as Hardy and Rick Bakas are reaching their audience with the addition of wine and food pairings, and video tasting.
Video can and will change the way that we blog. As a person who blogs my passion of wine, and uses the internet to express this passion, Hardy inspires me to get out the webcam and go to town. Every blogger, and v-logger, has something to say, that’s why we blog. Video can give us some additional tools to help guide our lofty readers through the murky swamp that is social media. From a bloggers perspective, it’s easy to create video. It may not be pretty, but all it takes is a flip cam, a web cam, a phone cam, and some software to edit that video. Practice makes perfect.
Lisa de Bruin of Hahn Family Wines, who uses video to enhance the Hahn image, suggests that we research our subject matter before we take that leap. The last thing we want to do is tip toe through the tulips…er…winegrapes, since it’s been done to death. That would bore our viewers to death and isn’t really adding anything to our blogs. Brands have a story to tell, and can effectively do this trhoguh engaging video. Hahn TV is engaging us with interesting facts, engaging conversation, and interesting stories.
Practice makes perfect! To that end, check out my video debut, teaching you how to say Tempranillo (thanks to Bryan Kane from teh Winery Collective for this embarrassing tidbit). Now, this was done off the cuff and was not at all expected to end up on Facebook, but it’s fun anyway.
Check it out! Sorry, just a link …
Furthermore, I will be embarking on a joint project that uses video to taste wine with several peeopl, and engage in discussion about that wine. More on that to come in the near future.
If you want to see the report for yoru self, check out the videocast that Michael Wangbickler of Caveman Wines generously posted on his blog for us.
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For some other great video bloggers that I follow, check out:
- 1WineDude – Dude vlogs!
- Dirty South Wine – bringing the CRUNK to NorCal!
- Drink This TV – an irreverent, fun, serious but no take on wine tasting
- Stark Silver Creek – an online reporting tool that reports on “all things West Coast” has a lot of great content from the WBC
- A Good Time with Wine – Matt has been doing his videos since I met him last year, and is great at it!
