Apologies in advance if this video gets preachy or pedantic, but I’ve gotten a lot of questions from wine bloggers lately about how to increase following and engagement, and openly asked recently via twitter and facebook if this info. would be helpful to others (almost unanimously the answer was "Yes"). This is what has worked for me, your mileage may vary. So I hope you’ll take it as a sort-of “tough-luv” bit of well-meant advice, and let me (and everyone else!) know your thoughts!
Cheers!
I’m happy to announce what most of you reading this already know, which is that I’m now a featured contributor to the video blog on Wines.com. You can check out my first installment, in which I brave the wilderness of my backyard to talk about the brouhaha surrounding the Natural Wine movement.
The idea behind my vid series over at Wines.com is to take the concept I tried out in “simplifying” the world of Port in about 5 minutes of video, and use that compressed-and-pithy format to dissect other aspects of the wine world, wine biz and wine industry. It’s a paying gig – modest, but fun, and it’s great to be working with the team at Wines.com again, who are an amicable (and smart, particularly when it comes to leveraging social media to engage their customers) bunch.
Does this mean fewer episodes of the already-too-infrequent 1WineDude TV?
The short answer is, “yeah, sort of.”
BUT… having said that… the “sort of” part probably needs a bit of embellishment…
Yep. Really.
I’m crazy excited to tell you that I will soon be authoring a freelance wine column on Playboy.com.
So now you have some legitimacy behind the “I’m just going there for the articles, honey!” excuse (you’re welcome!).
The folks behind Playboy.com reached out to me many moons ago, and the whole thing has been even many more moons in the making, so I’m thrilled to be able to get started – and humbled and honored by the opportunity to work with such an amazing brand. I don’t know how long this gig will last, and the column doesn’t have an official name yet (please shout out your ideas in the comments – I’ve got a feeling those will be very entertaining!), but we have some great ideas for content, which naturally will be exploring the more sensual sides of wine.
Now, I’ve never featured beautiful nude women on 1WineDude.com (though I’ve come close!), but I suppose you could say that there’s a bit of “spiritual alignment” in my writing style and the serious-but-accessible-and-slightly-irreverent take on the subject of wine that Playboy.com was looking for. To me, it’s a bit like Forbes.com bringing on Jeff Lefevre’s smart, analytical writing style, or how the populist, grounded voice of Vinography’s Alder Yarrow fits in so well with JancisRobinson.com. So you can add one more name to the list of home-grown wine bloggers being tapped by long-standing on-line brands.
There are a few things you probably should know about this Playboy.com gig…
Well… if this isn’t “proof that social media has forever changed the landscape of wine” (their words, not mine), then I’m not really sure what is.
Ok, so it’s not really proof, but it’s hard to deny the traction when someone like me makes the top 20 in a list like this. And #14?? Seriously?!? WTF?!??…
 on 1WineDude.com){kind=link}
