Beverage Bloggers: A Developing Relationship Between Wine Blogger Expertise and Twitter Followers

This pilot study examines how beverage bloggers’ beverage experience and certified wine knowledge influences their wine destination recommendations on Twitter. Microblogging a wine destination through Twitter is explored in this study. In the context of social media, the role of Twitter as a microblog in promoting wine destinations is specifically examined. The present study examines the food and beverage experience and wine credentials of bloggers through survey and correlations of their wine destination recommendations, travel habits and geographic home. This exploratory study finds that different levels of wine credentials have an influence on blogger's recommendation of both international and domestic wine destinations. The analysis shows that the increasing number of wine credentials possessed by a blogger influences the number of followers they have on Twitter.