Alcademics.com

Alcademics Wins a Best of the Bay Award

This is turning into a pretty good month. Alcademics was just given a Best of the Bay Award in the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

 

BEST LIQUOR LOWDOWN

Why is it that we like to read about food and drink so much on the Web? In no other Internet area, except maybe porn, is the meeting of the weightlessly virtual and the essentially physical so addictively fruitful. And while crackerjack local liquor expert Camper English's Alcademics site doesn't tear off your panties with glossy cocktail shots, his entertainingly detailed descriptions of the latest drool-worthy liquors will have you practically licking your screen. Over the past four years — besides visiting more than 70 distilleries, blending houses, and bodegas in 14 countries — Alcademics has helped refine the Bay Area's cocktail-blogging niche with some much-needed worldliness and a willingness to look deeper at what's in our highball. (English's degree in physics helps here.) Now you can drink to feel smarter!

www.alcademics.com

 Thanks SFBG! All the awards are here.

Camper English Wins Best Cocktail Author at Tales

I'll post more when I can get to a computer (I lost my power cord) so long story short: Hooray for Me!

I win the best non-book cocktail author award last night at Tales of the Cocktail.

That is awesome.

Please Vote for Alcademics in Saveur's Best Food Blog Awards

I am delighted to be a finalist in Saveur Magazine's 2011 Best Food Blog Awards.

I would love to have your vote to help me win. The voting form requires registration but takes about 30 seconds to do. Then you can skip right to the Best Cocktail Blog category to cast your vote.

My other finalists are equally worthy. They are:

• Cask Strength
• Cocktailians
• Drink Dogma
• Jeffrey Morgenthaler
• Kaiser Penguin

Still, I'd love it if you'd vote for Alcademics, the only one of the finalists that is updated daily.

You can vote through May 12th.

The form is here.

 

 

Working With Beverage Bloggers: DOs and DON'Ts

The other day I gave a talk on social media at the WSWA convention in Orlando. The audience was mostly distributors, brand owners, and PR professionals.

We had five people on the panel and just an hour to to talk, so naturally I was the last one to speak and we were already over our allotted time in the room. I had to make it fast so I condensed a ten-minute talk into about three minutes, which is longer than it will take you to read the rough outline of my talk below.

Working With Cocktail Bloggers: DOs and DON'Ts

DON'Ts

1. Don't call, unless you are asked to call. 
2. Don't send packages without your information or sell sheet. Mystery booze is nice but won't help you get press.
3. Don't treat every blogger the same. The National Enquirer isn’t the same as Cat Fancy; it's the same way with blogs. Different bloggers publish different sorts of content- one person may review your blueberry vodka, another may publish recipes with it, and another might write an industry trend piece about the rise in berry flavors. Familiarize yourself with the top blogs and pitch accordingly.
4. Don't think a blogger is obligated to write about your product just because you sent a sample or a recipe. Instead of following-up with “When will you be posting?”  try: “I hope you enjoyed the sample. Is there anything I can provide you with?” (Also, bloggers aren't obliged to respond to emails- we're busy too.)
5. Don't block access to information. If a blogger has a question that only the master distiller can answer, do your best to get that answer. Be a conduit for information, not a roadblock.

DOs

1. Do create shareable content and shareable media, and give it away. Shareable content includes brand histories, tasting notes, distillery profile, and especially recipes. (And hire somebody to create good new recipes.) Shareable media includes photos (bottle shots, cocktail pictures, party shots from events, cell phone snaps from bar visits), videos (How-to-make cocktail videos, distillery virtual tour, live tasting with distiller), and projects (send out tools to help bloggers build their own content: a comparative tasting kit, home blending exercise, cocktail ingredients, bar tools,  punch bowls, etc.)
2. Do Provide Incentives and Rewards. These include Samples: send large size ones and send them often. Someone reviewed your product positively? Send even more! Admission: to press events, parties, out for drinks with the brand ambassador, etc. Bloggers don't get as much love as traditional journalists, so a little bit of love goes a long way. Money: Some blogs charge for spirit reviews, recipe development, and of course ads, but you can also hire bloggers to cover events, to photograph cocktails, or to be the party photographer. Fame: If a blogger posts something about your brand, use your own social media tools to retweet, post on Facebook. etc. to drive traffic to the blog. The blogger gets more hits and the brand gets more attention. It's a win-win. 

I focused on just my top tips. I welcome your additional suggestions in the comments.

To see the slides from all speakers for this presentation, follow this link. Mine are last.

Speaking on Social Media at the WSWA April 12

I'll be speaking on a social media panel at the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America annual Convention on April 12. 

Last year I also attended the convention. I learned what the WSWA is and what goes on at the convention, with some notes about the strengths and weaknesses of the three-tier system. I also looked at how the convention is changing and plans for the future. 

Here's the tentative title and info:

Social Media Marketing:  It’s Not an Option, It's Mandatory

 Forget the theory and the lectures, this hard-hitting panel will give attendees the street smart perspective on social media marketing.  Whether you’re a supplier, wholesaler or retailer, social media marketing must be an integral part of your marketing strategy,  The panel will provide the straight scoop on:

-What does success look like?

-Case histories with lessons learned that you can leverage right now.

- What are the wrong ways to use Facebook and Twitter, and how do you handle temperamental bloggers?

-Why  social media marketing needs to be a core strategy- the liquid in marketing’s bottle and not the label slapped on top.

- Should your distiller be tweeting?

The panel was assembled and will be moderated by Steve Raye of Brand Action Team. Also on the panel are Alyssa Rapp of Bottlenotes.com, Kit Codik of Liquor.com, Camper English of Alcademics.com (hey, that's me!), and Vincenza Kelly of ItalTrade/Vino 2011.

This should be interesting because Steve Raye is a social media marketing consultant, Alyssa and Kit do websites but interact with brands throwing large and small events, relatively, Vincenza coordinated the social media aspect of an event from the front end, and I'm a blogger and journalist. We have different needs from brands and their social media marketing, and thus will have different perspectives on what brands need to do to be more effective in the socia media space. 

I'm looking forward to it, and if you're attending the WSWA in Orlando this April I hope you'll join us there. 

Alcademics is Influential

According to a recent study by eCairn, Alcademics.com is the most influential English-language spirits blog and the third most influential alcohol blog entirely. Cool!

eCairn Conversation is a software tool for measuring influencers and conversations in social media. This allows brands to identify the separate online communities, look at what they're talking about, and see where they're located. This information/software can be purchased by marketing companies looking to reach bloggers and other blatherers on the web.

I don't know what set of metrics they use to measure influence. It's certainly not pageviews alone as I don't win in that race, and I'm sure other companies use different formulas to measure the same thing with different results. We can't say that this is the end-all-be-all of influence measurement, but an additional one. 

And like like Oscars or the Tales of the Cocktail Spirits Awards, winning doesn't necessarily mean you're actually the best, but it sure feels nice.

Here's how they described their study:

Tagging along with previous analysis of social media Tribes and Influencers (here, here and there), we looked this time at the socialcohol ecosystem .

Even if the wine & alcohol industry is highly restricted and social media has its set of challenges, matters like beer, wine and liquor generate quite a bit of conversations from the virtual streets.

Here, we pulled 200 influencers from our existing communities of English speaking influencers (~1500 for wine, ~1000 for beers and ~500 for liquor) to create our own cocktail of the tops.

And here are their results. (Formatting pasted from Brookston Beer Bulletin's website. Thanks to Steve Raye of Brand Action Team for pointing me to the posting.)

Top 20 Alcohol Blogs

1. Brookston Beer Bulletin (Beer)
2. Good Grape: A Wine Blog Manifesto (Wine)
3. Alcademics.com (Liquor)
4. Eric Asimov’s The Pour: NY Times (Wine)
5. Seen Through a Glass (Beer)
6. Pencil and Spoon (Beer)
7. The Beer Nut (Beer)
8. Catavino (Wine)
9. Art of Drink (Liquor)
10. Drink With The Wench (Beer)
11. Wine Spectator (Wine)
12. Mutineer Magazine (Wine*) [Listed as a wine blog, but Mutineer also covers beer and spirits.]
13. Trader Tiki’s Exotic Syrups, Bitters and Spirits (Liquor)
14. RumDood (Liquor)
15. AlaWine (Wine)
16. Good Wine Under $20 (Wine)
17. Wannabe Wino Wine Blog (Wine)
18. The Pegu Blog (Liquor)
19. Through The Walla Walla Grape Vine™ (Wine)
20. Palate Press (Wine)

Jay Brooks has some additional analysis on his site and I think shares the same sentiments.

Big Changes, Slow Changes

Usually in cocktail writing we think in terms of microtrends: the latest techniques (barrel aging cocktails, fat-washing), the latest categories (mezcal, pisco), popular flavors or ingredients (falernum, smoke), and the latest bar themes (high-volume cocktail bars, tiki).

We don't talk too much about the macro-trends. In my latest post for FineCooking.com, I discuss one of the biggest macro-trends: that cocktails are getting better in general, with fresh ingredients, respect for the classics, and more knowledgeable bartenders.

Also, there's a recipe for the Sage 75 from the Vesper Bar at the new Cosmopolitan in Vegas.

Big in Germany

I try to link to all my writing available online, but you really only see two-thirds or so of it. And even if you could see it all, most of us couldn't read it because it's in German.

I am a regular contributor to Mixology magazine, based in Berlin, and for this magazine I write these insanely long stories usually about a single cocktail.

I've written 2000 words about eggnog, 2500 on the Blood and Sand, and 4000 words on the Mai Tai.

All of it gets translated into German so when I see the print version I can't read it but I like to look at the pictures. 

One picture that I particularly enjoyed seeing was this cover illustration for my eggnog story.

 

I don't know if I've ever had the cover image before, so that's pretty awesome. (Update: Realized I've had it twice before- sweet!)

I shall now use this ego boost to get me through my next story, which is 2500 words on the Caipirinha, due tomorrow.