At the recent Wine Bloggers Conference there was quite a bit of dialogue about wine blogger credibility.  John Witherspoon at Anything Wine shared some post-conference thoughts about the topic, and I wanted to share some of my own.  In my opinion, the debate about credibility is really not just about credibility—or at least it shouldn’t be.

When someone asks me, “are wine bloggers credible?” I don’t know how to answer that question.  Credible against what measures?  If a wine blogger is claiming to be a certified sommelier and they are not, then clearly they aren’t credible.  But if you’re asking if someone is credible to give their opinion about wine, well that’s just a silly question.

Certainly some wine bloggers are more knowledgeable than others about wine and some have more experienced palates than others.  But part of the beauty of blogs is that you get opinions from individuals with different tastes, different backgrounds, different experiences and different niches.  You don’t get a homogenized perspective of what wine is supposed to be.  I certainly try to serve a niche here by focusing on finding good value wines, while some others may tell you that only expensive wines are good.

Considering the fact that there is no entrance exam and no licensing board for wine blogging, the measures of credibility are difficult to set.  It seems to me that credibility is a less relevant topic than integrity.  Be honest and transparent about your background.  Don’t pretend to know more than you really do.  If you’re new to wine that’s OK as long as you’re up front about it.  Your level of competence will show in your writing and you’ll attract readers who are at your level, while others looking for more advanced wine writing will look elsewhere.

In many cases, attracting readers will have less to do with credibility than style.  Which brings me to my next point.  What seems more interesting to me than either credibility or integrity is influence.  This is a topic I find worthy of further discussion.  Regardless of credibility, competence, integrity or other measures of elitism that old-world media luddites and highbrow wine bloggers alike will spew about venomously to discourage new wine bloggers, you can still have influence.

If you create good content that readers find interesting, you will have influence.  If you cater to a niche that is under served, you’ll have influence.

But how do we measure influence?  Is it by web traffic?  Visitor loyalty?  Commenting and social participation on blogs?  Or is it measuring purchase decisions motivated by blogs?  I think all of these are contribute to measuring influence, but the latter is what the wine industry wants to know about.  Do wine blogs influence purchase behavior?  And I think it’s an important measure to establish the relevancy of wine blogs.

Jeff Lefevere at Good Grape recently tried to conduct an experiment which could have revealed some of the influence of wine blogs.  But that experiment became clouded by a manufactured controversy about the experiment itself.  The idea was that a select number of wine bloggers recieved a sample of a wine before it was released and before the traditional media recieved samples.  The bloggers all agreed to write their reviews of this wine within a defined window of time.  The controversy swirled around the idea that the bloggers had been used as PR agents for the wine company and had been manipulated.  Controversy aside, I like the idea of this experiment as if the only publicity in market about a wine is found on blogs, then the influence of those blogs can be revealed.  It’s an elusive thing to measure and this is one way to find get a glimpse of influence.

Tracy Rickman, PhD student and one of the moderators of the credibility session at the Wine Blogger Conference is planning to do a study which may shed some light on the true influence of wine blogs.  I look forward to seeing the results.

I know from feedback I’ve gotten from visitors to this site that they have been influenced in a way that impacted purchase behavior, but I don’t know the extent of it.  I also know that I personally have purchased wines because I learned about them on wine blogs.  What are your thoughts?  Do you find wine blogs influential?

I say let’s drop the debate on credibility as it’s really going to vary from one individual to the next.  And it’s a debate that’s mired in elitism.  Let’s explore influence more, as it’s a better measure of the value of what we do.  That’s my opinion.  Cheers!