Do wine blogs have value? It's a hot question right now and people are taking sides. Wineries want to know how to allocate their PR and ad efforts. Print writers with dwindling roles want to know if they should go rogue, or at least round out their personal brand, by starting a blog. Magazines want to know if bloggers will kill them or make them stronger. Social media analysts want to know if blogging will be a legitimate sector in the new economy or just a distraction from real productivity. Bloggers are looking for positive reinforcement. Derrick Schneider represented the various points of view very well in the San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday.

Discussions about value inevitably turn to quantification of value. That has now generated arguments about whether or not individual wine blogs can stimulate sales through reviews of specific wines. Skeptics say no and some go on to dismiss blogs overall because it's difficult to prove that they move the needle. Proponents offer anecdotal evidence that blogs can indeed cause sales to spike. But no matter which side you take, sales generation is a very poor way to determine blog value.

First of all, wine bloggers are not generally trying to sell wine. They are sharing experiences and trying to stimulate conversation. Many bloggers do review wines and even attach scores or buying recommendations to those reviews. However, most bloggers – and you can include Gary Vaynerchuk in this – tell their fans explicitly to try the wines themselves and form their own opinions. That is not an approach designed to generate immediate or high-volume sales. Why measure bloggers on sales if they aren't trying to deliver them?

Most wine writers in print publications don’t deliver big sales either. Tom Wark’s quote in the aforementioned article speaks directly to this, "In the 20 years I've worked at public relations in the wine business," he says, "I've only been able to count upwards of 10 or so individuals or publications that, on their own, have the ability to make a significant difference in sales for a brand based on a positive word or review." Should we really judge bloggers by a metric which makes even established writers with huge print distribution appear powerless?

The usual reference point for generation of sales based on individual reviews is Robert M. Parker Jr.. His actual impact on sales, let alone his perceived impact, completely dwarfs that of anyone else. He is not a useful point of comparison.
But let us for a moment pretend comparisons to Parker could work. Let’s call him the perfect wine reviewer and measure everyone on a 100-point system relative to Bob. The value of a blogger then – her worth to readers, his ability to monetize – all hinges on that score. The natural instinct for bloggers would be to simply emulate Parker. Diversity would gradually disappear. The web would take on the look, tone and palate of Parker just as so many people claim has happened with wine because of the power of Parker's reviews.

Let's set blogs aside for a moment. How well can we measure sales generated by advertising? Not well at all. Sure, an individual online ad can click-through to a specific landing page or include an identifying tag. If the person who clicks on the ad goes through the entire purchase process immediately, that ad has created a measurable sale. This rarely happens. Typically prospective buyers click to gather information but don't immediately purchase. Most often, ads aren’t clicked on at all. Instead, they create “impressions.” Online advertisers usually pay for placement based on clicks or impressions. If online ad value isn’t determined by sales generation, why should we try to value bloggers that way?

And then there are print ads. Click on one of those and see how far you get. The value of print ads are determined by size, position, reach, frequency, the demographics of the readers, etc.. Most ads for wine and spirits in magazines are focused on brand building and generating product awareness, not driving readers to a special toll-free extension through which a sale can be made and tracked. If wineries don’t measure the value of their print ads according to immediate sales of a specific product, or even try to generate direct sales with them, why apply that standard to bloggers?  Are we supposed to be better at selling than ad agencies?
Newspaper ads and circulars placed by stores do drive immediate sales. However, there is usually a specific call to action (“buy now!”), a clear incentive (“10% off”), sense of urgency (“this week only!”) and point-of-sale (“BevMo! See page 3 for maps to your local stores.”). Bloggers are rarely in a position to provide anything more than a web link.

We could also discuss the facts that web sales of wine is very low in general, many wineries’ online stores aren’t well optimized, many states have laws against direct shipment or that a lot of the wines bloggers talk about aren’t in broad distribution. 
Clearly, not all wine bloggers carry equal weight. Whether you are trying to decide which blog to read, where to send wine samples, whom to offer a press pass, or where to spend ad dollars, it’s reasonable to try to evaluate the merit of bloggers relative to each other and to other media. However, bad metrics provide bad guidance. And do we really want bloggers to try to sell wine? There's enough debate about blogger ethics. How ironic would it be to force bloggers to shill in order to prove their worth?

This article is original to NorCalWine.com. Copyright 2010 NorCal Wine. All rights reserved.

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