I was recently contacted by a nice fellow by the name of David Cray. He seems nice, anyway, from our brief email discussions (it’s probably because he’s Canadian – they all seem to be nice, don’t they?).
Anyway, David is an Associate Professor at the Sprott School of Business at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, and along with colleagues Louise Heslop and Alex Ramirez, is studying (in his words): “how [wine] blogs operate and what differentiates between a successful blog and one that is less so.”
Well, I’m interested in that big-time, so I took the survey they’re using to help capture some of that data, and nice-guy-Canadian David asked me to pass along the survey to you out there in blog-o-land, in the hopes that you’ll take 15 minutes out of your busy day to help their cause. To encourage participation, David also told me that there’s a prize involved:
“The name of anyone who completes the survey will go into a draw, with the winner receiving a $500 gift certificate at the wine store of their choice; those who complete the survey before November 15 will go into an additional draw for a $200 gift certificate. The questionnaire is at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/SZ76K86. “
I’m guessing the combination of academic curiosity and prize winnings will get a few people moving (though David didn’t confirm if we’re talking U.S or Canadian dollars here…), so here’s hoping that you can help David and his friends. David will be reporting on the findings on his blog so we can check out the results (more details – in David’s words – after the jump).
Personally, I’d be fascinated to see differentiators for wine blog success undergo the scientific treatment – how about you?…
“The authors are three faculty members of the Sprott School of Business at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. We got interested in how blogs work a couple of years ago and decided to concentrate on blogs in an area that interested us, i.e. wine. I’ve been to a couple of wine bloggers conferences which convinced me that I should have taken up this line of research a long time ago.
We are trying to collect data from three distinct types of people associated with wine blogging, those who create and maintain wine blogs, those who contribute to wine blogs and those who only read them. We can contact blog creators directly through their blogs, but getting in touch with the other two categories is much more difficult. That is why we are asking people who have wine blogs to mention our study and the prize draw for those who complete the survey.
The results will eventually be reported on our website, http://wineblogresearch.blogspot.com – Our main aim is simply to publish a few academic papers on how blogs operate and what differentiates between a successful blog and one that is less so.”
Cheers!
