We are influencers, too

Social media data would define us as such. However, definitions aside, we try to do our jobs with honesty and your readers have evidently understood this.

DoctorWine has reached 27,000 followers on Instagram and over 92,000 on Facebook and so it, too, can consider itself to be an influencer. For sure, our numbers are not those of Italian Wines (Stefano Quagliarini), Enoblogger (Emanuele Trono) or even The Italian Wine Girl (Laura Donadoni), who are among leading Italian wine influencers, but they are significant and they are all real and we won them over one by one.

Much of the merit for this goes to Filippo Greco Garattini who manages our social media presence and who, in one year, doubled the number of our followers on Instagram. Then again, at the tender age of 66 and a step away from retirement, unless the law changes again, being referred to as an influencer has a certain effect for me, who has always, perhaps ingenuously, consider myself to be a simple journalist. But then I said to myself: if this is the term they use now, then so be it. The truth be told, one should never confuse content and container and if they use these terms on the social media then no problem. What is important is to continue to offer information and report on the world of wine, better yet with a style that is a little livelier and essential and with images that are as adequate as possible, which is more or less what I and our DoctorWine collaborators have always done. And this is what social media followers like.

Furthermore, in our case, those who follow us and those who interact with us almost always do so in a civil way and, for me, this is particularly important. We do not seek to set things in stone, we try to tell the story of those who passionately work in the world of wine and to indicate products, wineries and, sometimes, even restaurants that we like and do so in as transparent a way as possible. This despite the fact that recently someone defined me as a “sell out” without really knowing what they were talking about. If, at my age, I still need to work then it is quite evident that had I “sold out” I did so few times and badly. I am very proud of the fact that I am very bad at “selling out”.

All things considered, the vast majority of our followers (see, I know the lingo) seem to appreciate what we do, with comments that are quite often very positive. We are sincerely grateful for this and as for what we do, we try to do our job with care, with respect towards those who read us and with all the passion we can muster. The world of wine is the world we love because it is full of good people who work hard and we try to tell you about them. This without the pretension of having invented who knows what or to have saved humanity but rather only with the intention of telling you about sometimes extraordinary people and places. And perhaps also to inspire you to go and see them for yourselves.