[ UPDATED: embed of the hangout vid is after the jump below ]

A quick blurb here to tell you that I’m going to be a guest on Plus Real Time tomorrow at 10AM EDT.

Plus Real Time is headed up by Randy Resnick, who is on the leading (bleeding?) edge of getting the wine world involved and engaged on Google+.

So far, I’m not yet one of the 100% converted.

I’ve been a bit of a hopeful skeptic when it comes to Google+. I love the idea of creating video hang-outs, mostly because it seems a great way to interview people (a notion I suppose we will be putting fully to the test tomorrow morning!), but I’ve just seen so little traction with Google+ in the wine world to date.

In terms of critical mass within wine on-line, Google+ seems to pale in comparison to simpler (and, notably, older) platforms like Facebook and twitter.  Even Pinterest seems to have an edge on Google+ when it comes to wine (though it’s still way early days for Pinterest – Gary V. is leading the charge in some ways there, and even he has yet to crack 5K followers).

Of course, you can only ever really get out of social media what you invest into it, and very few of us wine geeks have invested much time into Google+… yet…

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Actually, it’s not social media and wine that I’m going to be talking about here – it’s social media and engagement. Engagement with actual people who actually spend their actual hard-earned cash for the purpose of drinking actual wine…

It’s taken a while for me to respond to this plea for me to lighten up when it comes to social media’s place in the wine world. The delay is mostly due to me having been on the road, and otherwise waiting for the Universe to present a pertinent example of what I was talking about (it didn’t take long – more on that in a minute or two).

I’m not lightening up. If anything, I think we all should be making more of a fuss over this stuff, not less.

The best responses I can give to any challenge on the power of engagement in the wine world come from my own experiences. So let me talk to wine producers directly here for a minute or two (…or fifty), and share some of those experiences with them. It will sound harsh at times, but that’s because I keep hearing arguments that are the equivalent of telling me that my experiences didn’t happen, and I’m not a psychotic (at least, not yet) so there’s definitely something a bit screwed up here. And most of what I’m saying is not unique – it’s been said by others, I’m just culling many of the points together.

For those that don’t want to wade through the damn-near 1800 words that follow, the bottom line is this: if you are producing wine, and in this day and age you are letting someone like me (or any critic) dictate the majority of your brand message to current and potential customers in online engagement channels (twitter, facebook, etc.), then you need to audition for a Jim Henson Company project, because you’re acting like a Muppet…

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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?!??…

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I was recently interviewed by WineSpiralProject.com, as part of their series on wine industry innovation, in which they interview personalities in the wine world and ask them to share thoughts on the wine biz and how it can/should innovate.

Yeah, I know, I’m not 100% certain why they picked me either, but what’s done is done so let’s just roll with it, okay?

You can check out the entire series of interviews at this link; I’ll give the the super-short, edited-down-to-the-bare-bones-Cliff-Notes version of my interview right here:

Wineries are amazing at production innovation; Wineries suck at engagement innovation.

It’s not in bottling lines or fermentation vessels that we need an innovation push in the wine biz; we need innovation in adjusting the attitude that most wine producers have towards consumers. What do I mean by “engagement innovation?” Short answer: using the single most innovative outreach platform ever developed in the history of the human race – the Internet – to directly engage the people who buy their shiz. This may sound like common sense to you, but a lot of the producers I encounter seem to need reminding that those consumers – and not critics – are the ones who matter the most…

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