Winery Marketing: Where’s Your Winery’s Media Site?

Fox Run Vineyards Winemaker Peter Bell

One of the things I absolutely love about the wine public relations business is that there is so much to learn.  Therefore, I love to incorporate teleseminars and webinars into my work week as much as I possibly can.  Yesterday, during a Bulldog Reporter teleseminar on blog pitching best practices, several bloggers revealed their likes and dislikes for receiving information to be considered for posts on their blogs.

One of the panelists made mention of how he is looking for information and he’s looking for it quickly.  He said that if you can provide what he needs to compose a blog post and include videos/pictures, quick facts and contact information, your chances of being blogged about increase dramatically. (As a blogger myself, I couldn’t agree more)

This blogger panelist gave an example of a great media room that delivers just what he’s looking for.  The Chrysler Media Site provides a drop down list of items called “What Do You Need Fast?” that includes images, bios, fact sheets,videos, logos, press kits and several other things that make it quick and easy for a blogger or journalist to pull updated, relevant information on the company.

Here’s the truth.  Bloggers and journalists are pressed for time, need fresh content and they need it now.  If you provide them with what they’re looking for and save them the time required to track it down or ask for it from you, they will appreciate it and they will see that you respect their time and have the foresight to provide them with the information that they want.  They will like you for it and they will pay more attention to your pitches in the future.

Here’s a wine industry example of a media room from Israeli Wine Direct.  Notice the links to their logos, fact sheet  and blog/podcast.  And their media contact information is clearly shown.  I would recommend adding some videos that are easily embeddable and reinforce your winery’s key messages and branding, bios with photos and a nice assortment of other images.  For a winery, wine technical sheets and images should be added.  And keep this information fresh and updated.  The bloggers on the call mentioned a study result that revealed that blog posts without photos or video are very often skipped over by readers, so they are hungry for them.

I wholeheartedly encourage you to put someone on this if you’re looking to increase your chances of receiving coverage on blogs and in the media.  Of course, then there’s the task of continually serving up creative and compelling “news hooks.”  But that’s for another post.