by Tim Elliott on August 5, 2011
A Facebook page has become one of the most engaging social media tools for wineries so driving more people to “like” your page is a priority. Facebook has rolled out several social tools over the past few months and my current favorite is the Facebook Like Box. This tool brings your Facebook page wall to your website or blog but also allows visitors to “like” your page without going to Facebook. And it’s a very easy 3 step process to add your own Facebook Like Box to your site:
- Visit your Facebook page and get your Facebook Page URL. Hopefully this is a vanity URL you have set after your first 25 likes but a standard URL will work.
- Visit the Facebook Like Box page and fill in the form. You can make the widget the same size as your website or blog sidebar. Once you are done, click on the “Get Code” button and copy the iframe code at the top or XFBML code on the bottom (that’s what’s in my sidebar right now).
- Paste this code into your site where you want it. For WordPress sites, just paste into a plan text widget on your sidebar.
You can see this in action at the Cartograph blog. The only downside is the widget takes a moment to load since it’s coming from Facebook. I think this slight loading delay is very much worth it given the benefits the widget brings to your site.
by Tim Elliott on August 3, 2011
Really Simple Syndication or RSS is an enabler of the social web providing readers with automatic updates of posts to their feed readers. But not everyone wants to read via RSS so email services provide easy and sometimes free ways for delivering posts via email. My two favorite are Feedburner and FeedBlitz. I’ll cover each one and outline how to set this up on your website or blog.
Feedburner is a service that formats your RSS feed for various feed readers making it easier for visitors to subscribe. They also provide metrics on feed subscribers and have become the industry standard for measuring readership and engagement. A free service offered by Google, Feedburner also provides email subscription as a standard offering. To enable, just click on the “Publicize” tab and choose “Email Subscriptions.” Scroll down and activate the service on the first tab and then customize, “Communications Preferences,” “Email Branding” and “Delivery Options.” Feedburner provides a subscription widget but this takes up too much space in my book so either grab the subscription link and associate with an icon or use a plugin such as the WordPress Feedburner Subscription widget. The features might be limited for some but Feedburner will work for most websites. In fact, it’s the service I use to syndicate this site via email.
If your needs are for a bit more control, then check out FeedBlitz. Like Feedburner, their RSS to email service is free but is supported by ads. For a small fee based upon the number of subscribers, FeedBlitz will remove the ads and provides some other benefits. I use this for my wine blog and a client who wants to send out their blog entry at a specific time each day (Feedburner gives you a time range for the automatic email). FeedBlitz also offers more robust personalization options and very granular metrics for evaluating engagement (to be fair, Feedburner provides good statistics and integration with Google Analytics). FeedBlitz takes a little bit longer to setup than Feedburner but many will appreciate the expanded range of features at a very fair price. It is also perfect for monthly newsletters.
Whichever service you choose, adding email subscription to your site will expand your reach and enable your content to spread virally via email. And since many wine consumers are Baby Boomers who have been using email for years, adding this method is a no brainer for wineries.
by Tim Elliott on August 2, 2011
Producing content regularly on Twitter and Facebook is essential to driving growth and engagement. And there are plenty of tools to help automate the process of announcing new posts or sharing interesting links. One of my favorites is Twitterfeed, a free service that easily lets you publish any RSS feed content automatically to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and several other services.
Setup is easy, just enter your RSS feed in the first step and then choose the service you would like to pipe the feed content into. There are controls in the advanced section to set polling frequency, add a prefix, hashtag, or control the number of entries send each time. If you post to Facebook, Twitterfeed can be used to update personal profiles or Facebook Pages making this an easy way to pipe blog posts into that social network. Another interesting use case is posting your Google Reader shared items via the RSS feed found on your Reader public profile page.
Once setup, you don’t have to worry about posting feed updates manually anymore. If you have a creative use case for Twitterfeed, post them up in the comments.
by Tim Elliott on August 1, 2011
Click image for larger view
When signing up for a Facebook Page, you are confronted with a decision that seems fairly obvious: which classification best fits your business? And while it seems to make little difference on the surface, choosing a classification poorly can effect your results on the social network. So let’s review your choices and explore the best selection for wineries.
To start the process of building your Facebook Page just click on the “Create a Page” link in the footer (note: you can now create a Facebook Page without a personal profile if you prefer). You will immediately see six choices shown in the image to the right. The top three are the ones wineries should consider but I recommend the one on the far right titled, “Brand or Product.” This is due to two reasons. First, wineries sell products and build brands. Second, there is a “Wine/Spirits” category in the listing for only that option that will help people find you in search. Yes, wineries are also “places” but Facebook Places pages can easily be combined into any Facebook Page regardless of classification (more on that next week).
I’m sure many wineries might be wondering if they can change their classification but unfortunately this is not possible right now. Since many Facebook Pages were created when only one classification was available (“Company, Organization, or Institution”) I expect this to change. And when it does, I’ll be sure to write about it here. In the meantime, choose Brand or Product.”
A Facebook page has become one of the most engaging social media tools for wineries so driving more people to “like” your page is a priority. Facebook has rolled out several social tools over the past few months and my current favorite is the Facebook Like Box. This tool brings your Facebook page wall to your website or blog but also allows visitors to “like” your page without going to Facebook. And it’s a very easy 3 step process to add your own Facebook Like Box to your site:
