January 17, 2006

more stormhoeky goodness

Decanter Magazine writes about the "Blogging Doubles Stormhoek Wine" story.

And one of my favorite writers in the Blogosphere, Anil Dash writes about it on the Six Apart Blog:

Last year, Stormhoek, a popular South African wine, started a business blog powered by Movable Type and sent out one hundred complimentary bottles of their wine to bloggers across Europe. With the assistance of well-known blog marketing expert Hugh Macleod, Stormhoek bet big on blogging, counting on the influence and voice of those bloggers to help get their message out.

The result? As you can see in Hugh's Movable Type-powered blog and in today's story on Decanter magazine's website, Stormhoek doubled sales of their wines.

PS. You should read the blog post Anil wrote the week after he got married. Possibly the most moving blog post I read in 2005.

PPS. Anil wouldn't know this, but it was him who got me using Movable Type. Long before he went to work for Six Apart [the company that makes MT software], I read his blog avidly; I was a real fan. Noticing that he was an MT user, I said to myself, "Good enough for Anil, good enough for me." This was the first time I ever came across MT. True Story.

Posted by hugh macleod at January 17, 2006 3:27 AM | TrackBack
Comments

Hugh, thanks for the link and for the extraordinarily kind words. One of the great satisfactions of working at Six Apart and working on Movable Type is seeing that it has an impact on the work people do. You've certainly made one hell of an impression on people with the creative stuff you've done since you started blogging, so I'm really glad for any small role I might have had in you getting started down this road.

Now the hard part for me is finding enough time to keep blogging as much as I'd love to. If for no other reason, I'd like to do justice to the people who've told me they enjoyed reading my site in the past. All of this is a big part of why working with MT and working with blogs still feels more like participating in a community than "just a job" to me.

Posted by: Anil at January 17, 2006 5:38 AM

The wine blogs are very interesting. We are the custodians of the first black white joint venture in the South African wine industry. We have just launched Soweto White & Imbongi wines.
I would like to communicate on a regular basis.

Posted by: Frans at January 17, 2006 8:36 AM

Anil, no worries, thanks for the mention. Yeah, I know all about that phenomenon, when your blogging propels you to somewhere that you no longer have time to write your blog.

Frans, thanks, glad you like it.

Posted by: hugh macleod at January 17, 2006 10:50 AM

I must say Hugh, I am impressed with your results. Please e-mail me how you can help our company, Royal Wine Corp., double its wine sales via blogs.

Awaiting your reply...

Thanks
-Eitan

Posted by: Eitan Segal at January 17, 2006 1:58 PM

Hey are you guys still accepting commments here?

Posted by: Riverbelle at January 20, 2006 5:02 PM