February 20 2008
Tom from Fermentation has announced the 2nd annual American Wine Blog Awards.
Celebrating excellence in 2007, the American Wine Blog Awards are accepting nominations in the following categories:
Best Wine Business Blog
Best Wine Blog Writing
Best Winery Blog
Best Single-Subject Wine Blog
Best Wine Review Blog
Best Wine Podcast of Video Blog
Best Wine Blog
Best Wine Blog Graphics
It is a yeoman’s effort to coordinate and organize this, so regardless of whether your site is nominated or wins, we should all thank Tom for being the driving force behind pulling this together.
These awards bring a whiff of legitimacy to wine blogging, a medium that has increased its exposure level and its influence immeasurably in the last two years. The profile of wine blogging has increased so much so that I now believe that some of our premiere wine bloggers like Vinography.com, Drvino.com and Good Wine Under $20 have an influence commensurate or exceeding those of many newspaper wine columnists.
I don’t mean this to be a polarizing statement, and it’s not scientific fact, just my hunch that a Tom Wark, Alder Yarrow, Tyler Colman or Dr. Debs (her blog nom de plume) have an engaged and passionate audience that is equal to or greater than that of a wine columnist from any mid-major daily newspaper.
Consider that, as a baseline, if a major daily newspaper has a circulation of 400,000 and 5% of the audience read the wine column, than you have reached about 20,000 people. Do we think that Vinography.com gets 20,000 visitors to his site? Undoubtedly. Does Tom’s opinion act as an influencing agent equal to that of a newspaper columnist? Arguably so.
The smart newspapers like The New York Times and the Dayton Daily News incorporate columnist blogging, yet many others are still very afraid to engage online.
Now, this argument on reach and influence is apples and oranges to a large degree, but it is what my instinct tells me. If my hunch is correct, this is a major re-setting of the dynamic in wine media and even more reason to nominate your favorite blog and vote at Fermentation. Help act as a change agent in the evolution of wine media!
Every group of friends has that person that is the “straw that stirs the drink” (I know Tom will appreciate the somewhat obscure reference to baseball with that). Tom is the wine bloggers straw. In “Tipping Point” terms, Tom is a “connector” and a “maven.”
Wine blogging is at its “tipping point,” lets get the nominations out there and then vote for our favorites.
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