In 2011, The Wine Management Institute of Dijon, in Burgundy, France launched a 5-year study on international wine blogs under my direction with the help of our 40 to 50 students coming from all over the world. The first year (2011) was devoted to American and Chinese blogs. We are on our way for the second year (2012) studying South European wine blogs, British, Canadian and Chinese (again) wine blogs. The purpose of the research is to draw a portrait of bloggers all around the world, a typology of blogs and a first approach of digital writing all over the world. The research aimed at helping the wine professionals to get to know this new strategy of communications and academics to have a better understanding of the practical aspect of marketing in the wine industry.

To read the full study in English.

Instead of looking back at 2010, I’d rather look forward to 2011.  Of course, I am not a guru and I will not try to predict in what shape the wine industry will be in 2011. But there are a few signs of what we might want to look at in the next few months: are there any specific trends we should keep watching?

The emerging markets, mostly China, were very much in the news lately. When in Shanghaï, I was amazed by the energy of the people and how fast China was catching up technologically. The wine business is a different story. A recent scandal about fraudulent and fake wines shook the international wine industry and put a certain damper on selling and buying wine in mainland China. The video of the Chinese authorities clashing down on trafikers was supposed to reassure the markets. Talking to my Chinese students gives me a more relaxed approach to the Chinese market. Young Chinese professionals are coming to Europe and the US to enroll in Wine MBAs programs or in tasting schools. They will go back to their country with a good knowledge of Western wines, will be able to teach the local wine consumers and become opinion leaders in the wine trade. The future of wine in China is bright.

My second line of thought for 2011 is on social media and blogging in the wine industry. Blogs are the basis of communication for a lot of wine professionals and consumers: producers, marketers, technicians, food lovers, wine lovers and many others.  They constitute the main stream of exchanges between people and are now relayed by social media. No blogger can even consider writing a post without having it relayed on Facebook and Twitter, thus allowing the conversation to be carried out on more open shores. Of course it makes the blogger’s work a lot more complex as he/she has to answer comments on the blog, on Facebook and follow the threads on Twitter.  Let’s not forget to mention the following of fellow bloggers who deserve attention for their brilliant articles.

Emerging markets and social media will get all my attention in 2011. I am absolutely certain that, in the Spring, I will have found many other more new trends to follow up and write about since the beauty of Internet is in its constant flow of innovation and novelty.

As some of my friends know, I started blogging  in French a few months ago. I decided to give it a try just before my French book got published. In spite of being located in France, I feel and work mostly like an Anglo-Saxon: I always get mildly irritated by the French way of doing business, their slowness in understanding social media and Web 2.0 strategies. But I must admit things are improving a bit and I look forward to confirming this impression during the European Wine Bloggers Conference held in Vienna from October 22nd to 24th. Why is that? I was checking the list of attendees today and I saw much more people from France than last year. There are also many Europeans attending, coming from UK, Germany, Hungary, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Belgium, Sweden. But the most striking thing is the number of people coming from outside Europe : China, USA, Thailand, India, Brazil, Australia, Mexico and even Mauritius.

What does it mean ? Just that the EWBC is becoming a recognized event among the international blogging community.  It also means the blogging community recognizes the need to gather regularly to discuss issues, strategies, new tools and maybe just meet up. I am looking forward to meeting people in real life I’ve been in contact with for months, sometimes years to put a face and a voice on this blog URL and name on Twitter.

Blogging has now been the topic of various studies. We all know the outstanding study conducted by Prof. Liz Thach on 222 wine blogs in English as well as her article on : “Do Wine Blogs Impact Your Brand?” in WineBusiness.com. There is also a very recent one conducted by a young French marketer, Jean-David Camus, on French blogs and bloggers. It shows that 80% of French bloggers write about wine when Dr Thach’s study showed 9 major blog types.

Chart created by Prof. Liz Thach

English-speaking wine bloggers are less focused on tasting notes than their French counterparts. Is this trend true for all European countries? This is one of the points I’ll try to find an answer to while in Vienna, because I’m convinced that the blogging world has undergone tremendous changes in only one year. See you in Vienna, Austria?

Two years ago, in January 2008, I shyly started blogging on wine, wine brands and innovation in the wine industry. My goal then was to update on   a regular basis the contents of my then to-be-published book, “Wine Brands”.  18 months after the publication and over a few hundreds posts, it’s time to move on to something different.  The blog had already by itself driven me to other places and horizons.

What’s different? The blog is still the expression of what I think important in the wine industry : new technologies, creative initiatives and brands, innovative software or strategies, new trends and new consumers.  I’m just moving a step ahead by integrating it more deeply in my professional practice. I’ll still be searching for new trends and new consumers, watching new markets but I’ll be more aware of the European side of technology. Weirdly enough, at a time when the European wine consumption is sharply declining, I sense some  growing interest in the French and European wine industry for innovation. A new generation of winemakers and vineyards’ managers is rising and opening the doors to a fascinating new world. Welcome in winebrandsblog.com generation 2!

For many years, the success of a communication strategy on the Web was measured by the traffic on the site or the click on a banner. It might not be still true. Because of the growing importance of social media, blogs and micro chats, it is more important for a winery to be present on the Net through all those channels.

I was talking to a winery manager a few weeks ago. He was complaining that all his actions on Facebook, Twitter and other social media didn’t bring much traffic to his web site. We looked at the mentions his winery was getting on the Net and we agreed it was more important to be talked about than to get traffic on the web site. Why is that? Consumers are all over the Internet. They might not keep in mind a specific brand. but when this brand’s name appears on the Net in their favorite blog or forum, or is mentioned on Twitter, it reminds them of the brand. Q.E.D!

What does it mean for a winery? It means… a lot of writing. It’s not an easy job when you are supposed at the same time to harvest, make the wines, sell them or present them at Pro-Wein or Vinexpo Hong Kong, to be also blogging, interfacing on Facebook, filming your latest event or chatting on Twitter. But it is worth the trouble. It is rewarding and a lot more efficient than a simple site.

When writing Wine Brands, I met several wine entrepreneurs of the Web 1.0 generation – people who started their company or their venture in the mid-90s like Peter Granoff with wine.com. Those people were the pioneers of the industry and younger entrepreneurs – the wine entrepreneurs of Web 2.0 – owe them a lot because those guys opened the road to innovation and creativity.

But these entrepreneurs of Web 2.0 are very different from those of the first generation. They are younger, sometimes don’t come from the wine business and they are passionate about two things, wine and new technologies. They usually have a lot of innovative ideas, such as adegga.com, a site we talked about with one of its founders, Andre, on our Internet live radio show. There are also those names you might recognize as I mentioned them along the months in this blog: Crushpad, snooth, thewinespies, ablegrape, americanwinery, ewinewatch, TheMutineer, redpinkwhite and many others. There are also the authors of many blogs related to wine and new technology whose contacts you’ll find on openwineconsortium.

What is amazing is that most of those new adventures are… American, with the exception of Andre who is Portuguese. Is it that Americans are less afraid to be entrepreneurs than their European peers? Or is it a tradition in anglo-saxon countries to have a more entrepreneurial spirit? Or is it because the American market is so wide and so open it makes it easy? I don’t know. I’m not an economist but I saw this new generation of wine entrepreneurs grow and develop with a pleasure I meant to share with you.

Last week, I happened to read on my favorite wine community site, OpenWineConsortium, the name of Julie Brosterman who recently joined. I knew her name through her web site, women and wine, created about three years ago. I followed her as the web site grew and became more important, as the content improved and increased, as contributors grew into numbers and as followers and subscribers multiplied. Julie is about to launch a new version of her site very soon and go international.

Until last week I never had the opportunity or the pleasure to talk to Julie. I discovered a warm and open woman, passionate about wine and with strong and pertinent opinions on women and wine. What makes her site special? It is a community site, mostly centered on women as women are now recognized as an important part of consumers and wine professionals. There are radio shows downloadable on the site, an e-magazine full of news, stories and insights, various wine clubs, a blog written by Julie and even possibilities for luxury travels.

If you want to know more about what’s going on on the site, subscribe to the newsletter and you’ll meet a lively and strong female community on the web. Enjoy!

On the OWC group on blogs, there was a post lately asking if/how it was possible to make money with your blog. Indeed more and more people are writing blogs – as a hobby, sometimes – but more often in relation to their work field and their professional expertise. It would seem logical to try to make some money when sharing experience and knowledge with your readers.

Several studies on blogs, bloggers, brands and trends just came out this week. The market research from Via Nova Spheeris is strictly about French blogs but could open some threads of discussion. First a few figures: 38.2% of French bloggers get some income from their blogging activity; 32% would like to get some revenue out of their blog. For 42.5% of bloggers, advertising is the most obvious way of making money. 17% of them see their blog as a way to comfort their professional status and even to get in touch with the traditional medias (TV, press, radio).

French bloggers ready to advertise brands on their blogs trust the brands’ communication strategy: 82.9% of them think the brands’ communication is “informative” and 68.6% “modern”. But they regret that the brands’ request for advertising on their blog are not always relevant to their blog’s contents. Instead of getting money, they’d rather have products’ samples, invitations to events and/or advance information on new products and services. This strategy would allow them to keep their freedom in judging the brand.

This study shows how blogs are difficult to understand by the traditional brands used to traditional medias. A blog is a media where freedom is respected. That’s why the traditional medias feel threatened by this space of free speech and communities. The last market study conducted by Universal McCann on a panel of 17,000 web surfers in 29 countries shows clearly the exponential growth of blogs, podcasts and social networks as a direct competitor of the traditional medias. There are 184 millions bloggers in the world and 73% of the population read blogs. The video is now the most appreciated media just before the blogs (72.8%), sharing pictures (63.2%) and social networks (57;3%). Podcasts are now considered a major media by web surfers.

A brand can’t ignore those new media. They reach directly the new consumers: young people, women, international consumer. Why wouldn’t a company transfer its media budget to social network to touch the new consumers? It would seem a smart move but I’m afraid most brands are not ready to get in the 21st century… yet.