New Year’s Resolutions for the Wine PR Professional

THE BOOZE BIN

By Laura Petrosky (@chronic_ally)

It’s a tricky thing with New Year’s resolutions. As a huge fan of making lists (yes, I am that type A personality), I embrace the challenge, year after year, of coming up with just the right amount of quantifiable self-improvements for the New Year. My rule of thumb is that if your resolutions take up more than a sticky note, you will probably not stick to them for the whole year (pun intended).

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Image courtesy of amberrisme.com

So this year, I thought I’d share 4 professional New Year’s resolutions with fellow wine PR professionals. What are your goals for this year? And, more importantly, how do you prevent them from waning just after January 31?

#1: Taste more, drink less: A glass of wine with dinner? Sure! But I recently realized that I tried “more of the same” instead of exploring different wines. This year, I will refine my palate and expand my wine tasting journal by stopping by one wine tasting every other month (at least). Beverage Media’s event calendar is a good place to find upcoming tastings in your area.

#2: Read on my commute: Meetings, reports, more meetings and client calls – let’s be honest: Reading wine or industry news at work often falls through the cracks. Lucky for me, I live in Queens and work in Manhattan, so I am dedicating every other morning commute on the subway to reading at least one client-relevant story. Here is a quick list of sources that co-workers and I recommend: Wine Opinions, Shanken News Daily, Wine Business, Eric Asimov’s NYT blog, Dr. Vino, Terroirist, Fermentation, 1WineDude, Palate Press and Vinography, just to name a few. If you crave more, Vintank has published a great list of wine blogs worth checking out.

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Image courtesy of TresSugar.com

#3: Follow more influencers on Twitter: Roughly 30 percent of Americans get their news from social networks, according to a 2013 Media Relations Strategy White Paper from Press Feed. Following examples of Twitter-savvy co-workers and fellow wine geeks @piamara and @forgetburgundy, I dedicate 2013 to expanding not only my own Twitter following, but to follow significant industry influencers for bite-sized, real-time 140-character industry updates. Ken Waggoner’s @alawine Twitter profile has great lists of Tweeters to follow for starters, but you can also browse WeFollow or IntoWine.com’s annual list of the top 100 most influential people in the U.S. wine industry list.

#4: Quality over quantity pitches: Yes, it’s a no-brainer to personalize pitches, but I think wine writers are a very particular breed of journalists. It’s not enough to know what they have previously written about, but a big plus to know what wine regions they are personally passionate about, how they like to receive and taste samples, what price point they favor, etc. Here is to digging extra deep into wine writers’ likes and dislikes before reaching out to them in 2013!

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Image courtesy of photobucket.com

The good news is that all my 2013 resolutions do indeed fit onto one (large) sticky note! What are your goals for this year? How do you keep yourself accountable, and, more importantly, how do you prevent them from waning just after January 31?

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