Blogging: Wine Marketing Under The Microscope

Tasting the blog: Innocent Bystander Wine Marketing in Review

Verdict - Sweet notes and with just a bit more development could pack a punch

Company blogs are tricky things. They need to reflect the company's personality, and that can be a hard thing to get a handle on.

Innocent Bystander wines have managed to achieve a great representation of their company's personality, the toughest part of blogging – but have they followed through with substantial content?

Innocent Bystander has always been good at company image. The name itself is full of character, and the winery has followed through in all its areas of wine marketing – a shadowy figure on the label, well-chosen sub-labels (Mea Culpa is a particularly smart one).

The company's blogging consolidates this work digitally. It entrances at a glance. Browse a bit, though, and you can see that the blog needs a little bit of extra attention.

Visual Characteristics in Blogging

Innocent Bystander have gone for a clean look in their web design and wine marketing with black text standing out starkly in plenty of white space - a fantastic choice for easy reading blog posts (especially on the smaller screen of a smartphone). What it also means for the blog, is that image selection is critical for drawing the reader's eye. Sadly when care hasn't been taken in this one area the whole page can look a little bland and unappetising.

Logistics to Navigate Your Blog

The labels for various areas of the blog are – frankly – genius (witty without being too clever to understand what the menu links lead to). 'Our dirt' discusses Innocent Bystander vineyards; 'The Bystanders' holds the bios of the main players in the company; 'Willing Participants' outlines partners and sponsorships. Mingled with these are slightly less poetic 'Happenings', 'Recipes' and 'Stuff we love', but combined with the others, the menu makes you want to explore.

First Impressions to Involve Your Blog Audience

The first thing to load on a blog, obviously, should be the most recent update/blog post (at the time of writing this, it was an overview of one of the company's vineyards), which is great content.

What wine fan wouldn't want to learn about the stuff their wines are made of?

One observation we made here was that the blog post was slightly too technical for the average reader; something all experts need to be wary of when blogging (unless you expect your audience to be other experts like you). Having a plan and content creation strategy helps you overcome the disconnect with your audience that can creep in when you're writing in a hurry to "just get it out".

Body - Blogging 101

Here is where Innocent Bystander's blogging really suffers, and it's a shame for such a well planned-out blog.

There just isn't the content to make it work as a wine marketing channel... a few well-crafted blog posts are dotted here and there with typical publicity material. While it's good to be informed about what's coming up in terms of their wines and events.

The tone of these publicity posts doesn't fit the character the blog is working so hard to create.

It's the digital version of an under-cellared Shiraz; such a disappointment.

Regularity of Blogging

This is another tricky area of responsibility when you decide to have a blog. Blogging really needs a long-term commitment of weekly updates; and few wineries or wine marketers can afford that kind of long-term time investment.

Innocent Bystander have tried to duck under this obligation by leaving the year out of their post dates (a natty trick that sadly only works for first-time visitors). To foster your online community you want to be regularly communicating with your posts, not pretending to be reliable.

Verdict: Innocent Bystander have planned their blog exquisitely, and only tripped slightly in the execution phase. In terms of digital wine marketing value, it would take a tiny bit of focus to get this blog achieving seriously outstanding results.