Wine Bloggers Part 2

Wine Bloggers Part 2. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Word of mouth has always been a good way to promote products. You like a product, restaurant or bottle of wine and you tell someone about it. It’s the best and cheapest form of advertising. Ryan Pennington with the Washington Wine Commission says the Wine Bloggers Conference is really a form of 3^rd party endorsement.

PENNINGTON: In many ways the most powerful kind of third party endorsement. In the same way that getting a feature story written about your product is more powerful to the consumer than buying an ad. We think in many ways the 3^rd party endorsement of an average person through their blog or a more layman’s approach to wine can for some audiences be more powerful than an equal 3^rd party endorsement from a traditional wine critic or media.

For those that don’t know, wine blogging is basically a forum for people to share their love or dislike for various wines mostly through online outlets like Facebook, Twitter or a personal website and has become a very important way of sharing information. For 2010 the Wine Bloggers Conference will be here in the state.

PENNINGTON: We fed them some resources to look into potential venues and other sponsors and they developed essentially two scenarios, one doing the conference in Woodinville or doing it in Walla Walla. And then actually put that decision out to a vote of the blogging community.

Walla Walla was chosen as the site for the 2010 conference slated for June 25^th - 27^th. Pennington says that wineries from all across the state are invited to participate.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.