Community of the Week: Wine Berserkers
In celebration of the fact that I’m leaving for a wine and culinary adventure in Italy in 3 days, I wanted to spotlight what is probably the most well-known online community for wine lovers: Wine Berserkers. Some fascinating stats about this forum:
12 years old
More than 36K members
More than 3M posts
What I love:
Berserker Day! This is a day when members can buy unique wine and wine-related products through an auction. (Check out this forum from Berserker Day 2021.) I highly recommend communities create an annual celebration…something like this event! Be sure that what you do to commemorate the day is in line with the interests of your community members. In this case, that interest is: buying wine.
Easy-to-find onboarding info. All of the relevant links that a new member, or visitor, would need are at the top of the page, above the fold: Register, Quick Links, Rules, FAQ, Membership, and more.
The amount of posts. The engagement on this forum is extremely impressive (just from eye-balling it…I don’t have access to any analytics). It’s not just the amount of topics and replies, but I’m also in awe of what looks to be a quick response time to topics. With so much content, you are bound to find the answer to your wine question here, or at least, you’ll get a response to your question quickly.
My wish list:
The user interface has me shaking my head. The site reminds me of the way forums looked in the late 90s. But what’s interesting is that the site STILL gets a ton of engagement.
Better navigation options. Right now, the home page has many many different sub-forums, but I’d prefer to see these listed in a navigation menu (potentially a drop-down). It would also be helpful to distinguish between what is an event, a program, and an area dedicated to discussions.
What are YOUR thoughts about the Wine Berserkers community?
In case you don’t hear from me…
As I mentioned above, I’ll be taking some personal time November 20-28 and plan to unplug from my work email, Slack, and social media. This also means there will be no All-Things-Community editions next week (including Community of the Week).
If you really need me, you’ll have to track me down in Piedmont, Italy where I’ll be doing a whole lot of this:
I’ll be back the week of Nov. 29!