Promoting Wine on the Internet: An Exploratory Study of the Portuguese Wine Blog Community

This study examines the content of Portuguese wine blogs and addresses two main questions: (i) which content and design elements of Portuguese wine blogs have more impact on the promotion of wine, and (ii) how can the content and design quality of wine blogs be assessed and improved. To answer these questions, a number of features of wine blogs are examined, and an initial attempt is made to describe the profile, uses and practices of Portuguese wine bloggers. Strong correlations were found between performance measures (posts, comments and traffic). In addition, it was found that one of the main marketing features that bloggers can offer was in rating wines. On the other hand, presentation features were found to account for very little regarding the performance of the blog. Finally, accessibility features, such as cross-references and RSS/Feeds that tend to increase blog traffic, are only used by a minority of Portuguese bloggers.