Central Coast Wine Blogs

Getting Ready for Wine Festival: Handouts!

  
When customers flock to your tasting room this coming festival weekend, whether they buy one bottle or one hundred, you'll want each customer to become an ambassador for your brand—and that means giving them information.

I usually recommend to clients that you craft a postcard handout.  Postcards, unlike full size tasting sheets or newsletters, can be affixed to refrigerators and bulletin boards.  And they're inexpensive to print—make the first side full color for impact, and the back in black-in-white to save money.  With a supply of postcards on hand, you can save your more expensive print newsletters for customers who buy $50-$100 or more.  If you have a spare laptop, set it up in the tasting room so visitors can subscribe to your blog and leave comments while they are there.  (You might want to cover the keyboard with a plastic protector.)

Make sure you've got all the winery contact information on your cards, including your winery blog address and Facebook or other social media identities.  Your goal is to get people to visit your website, subscribe to your blog, become your friend/fan on Facebook, and otherwise subscribe for future contact.  
 

#1 Wine Blog on Facebook's Networked Blogs

 

Central Coast Wine Blogs is now the #1 blog on the topic of wine on Facebook's Networked Blogs list.

The Dover Canyon wine blog, which I also wrote, has slipped from the #1 spot but is still hanging in there at #6.

Dubost Ranch Winery, another CCWB blog, has entered the Top 50 list at #44.

Other central coast bloggers in the Top 50 include Justin Vineyards & Winery at #49, and Elizabeth in SLO at #24.

On the 'Dating' Top 50, my personal blog, A Year by the Lake is currently #24 and rising.

Come on, central coast bloggers!  You belong in the Top 50 too.  Go to NetworkedBlogs today and submit your blog.  (You can also get a cool widget like the one at right to add to your blog.)

How to Write an Effective Press Release

　

A successful press release convinces a writer or editor to write about your product and business.

What actually happens to your press release when it arrives at the publication? I’ll tell you. An intern or editorial assistant downloads all the morning emails. Then she sorts them into piles. Then she picks up the biggest pile and walks it over to the advertising department. "Here you go," she says as she plops the stack on the advertising intern’s desk. "A hundred or so product pitches thinly disguised as press releases."

Print publications are in the business of selling advertising space to businesses like yours. This is the main source of their income. Therefore, if you approach the media with a message that you have a product to sell, your message will go straight to Advertising. Or worse—into the wastebasket.

"But I have wine to sell," you say. "New releases! I’m a new brand. I’m the hottest thing out there since Brad Pitt and they should be interested."

Um, sorry. They’re not. The wine industry churns out new labels like a Gallo bottling line. The fact that you exist and are anxious to sell product is not a story.

But you CAN capture a writer’s interest with a well-crafted press release, and there are only three things you need you do.

1. Identify a unique angle.

2. Position yourself as an expert.

3. Write a professional release.

Step 1: Identify a unique angle about your business.

It could be the start of a new trend, an unusual farming technique, experimental packaging—anything truly new or different. Here are some ideas: