Well done to the intrepid group of communicators dedicated to the fermented product of a different sort. It seems that the UK beer world continues to attract great writers and a strong community of committed individuals who are establishing a dominant position in the Wikio rankings for June in the “Beer & Wine” Category (I think they may name it differently on the site, but that’s where we are heading).
In a dim and distant past, wine blogs used to compete closely with food blogs for attention, and bloggers like Andrew Barrow at Spittoon used to rank extremely highly in a broader “Gastronomy” category. But as audiences expanded and developed, food grew MASSIVELY and left us trailing in their Google Page Rank wake, and so the kind folks at Wikio decided to create a new home for us alcoholics (creators of alcoholic beverage related content, I mean).
Today, wine blogs are not performing as well on these rankings. Why?
In brief, I think that the wine blogging community has not developed the range of styles available in other media, and the established wine writers have yet to really grasp the blogging thorn and create individual blogs in the way that the beer community has.
It is also true that a lot of the interaction with these bloggers now takes place on twitter, and I don’t know if Wikio and their ilk take full account of this (but presumably this happens for beer as well).
So, a sneak preview of the June results are below. Congratulations, once again, to Pete Brown for top place and to Zythophile for jumping 13 places to number 3, and Rabid About Beer for jumping 19 places to number 9.
The highest ranking wine blogs are Wine Conversation, Drinking Outside the Box, Bordoverview and Spittoon coming in between 15th and 19th.
The question is, what can we wine bloggers do about the profile of wine? Well, as Baldrick might say …
“I have a cunning plan ….”
Watch this list in the coming months and see if we can do something about this, but more importantly, check out the wine blogs on the list, spread the word, leave a comment and share a glass.
Slainte!
June 2, 2011
Did you know they have their own conference. Just like the wine bloggers…http://beerbloggersconference.org/europe/
June 2, 2011
Yes I am aware of it though didn’t hear much about it, did you?
June 2, 2011
Not really. First I knew is when I saw a post by Fergus at Adnams after the event.