I was checking our “ping backs” a few days ago. Ping backs occur when someone links to our site. Sometimes it’s someone completely random selling sports shoes. Other times it’s a really interesting wine-related website.

Bruce McGechan has a blog called MyLocalWineStore.com. He’s a geek for statistics (like me) and decided to do some research on which blogs were the most engaging. Since he’s blogging for other wine retailers, he was looking at the best wine blogs for wine retailers. And guess who topped the list? Steve Heimoff of Wine Enthusiast? Nope. He was number four. How about Tom Wark’s Fermentation? I mean he is the guy who decides which wine blogs merit attention. Um. nope. He was number six. How about Dr. Vino? He’s a STAR! Seven. The Dude? Three. Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV with his 854,180 twitter followers! Number Two.

Give up? The post is called “Wine Blog Engagement Scores – a surprising result” And we were, indeed, surprised. Out of 28 top blogs, the surprising result was…..Another Wine Blog! Well, needless to say, we were blown away! As were our friends. And what was the criteria? Bruce uses the wisdom of Post Rank.

They define engagement as posting, commenting, subscribing and reading. It seems inexact but social media monitoring tools are like search engines early last decade – they are at the cusp of being accurate and extremely helpful but are still in rapid development.

He goes on to quote…

“PostRank measures engagement by analyzing the types and frequency of an audience’s interaction with online content. An item’s PostRank score represents how interesting and relevant people have found it to be. The more interesting or relevant an item is, the more work they will do to share or respond to that item so interactions that require more effort are weighted higher.

PostRank scoring is based on analysis of the “5 Cs” of engagement: creating, critiquing, chatting, collecting, and clicking. By collecting interaction engagement metrics in these categories the overall engagement score is calculated and the PostRank value is determined.”

Here’s what Bruce said, “The stand out is another wine blog with a score of 75 – holy cow they’ve beaten Wine Library TV! That’s some feat and congrats to Amy and Joe.”

Holy Cow is right.

But hey, it’s not US that makes us so “engaging.” It’s YOU! Our readers. That’s why we invite your comments, your contention. Your taking issue with what we post, or what our other readers comment. We LOVE you for that. That’s why we’re “Another” Wine Blog. We’re not typical. We try not to be banal. And we really don’t care what the “Cool Kids” think we should say. We think wine is for EVERYONE not just for those who have studied it. And that’s why we try to write with you in mind. The wine drinker. Not the wine writer. Not the Master Sommelier. Or the “Certified Wine Educator,” although we love you guys, too! But we’re really here for the average Joe (or Jane) who just wants to learn a little more about wine.

Seriously? We would like to thank the Croatians. We give you guys the mad props for our little notoriety. Because we think it’s your comments that put us over the top.

Continue to engage!

Cheers!

The WineWonkette