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:

1. 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.
2. 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).
3. 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.

How To Add a Facebook Like Box To Your Website originally appeared on Acan Media. Licensed under Creative Commons.

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.

Add Email Subscription To Your Website originally appeared on Acan Media. Licensed under Creative Commons.

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.

Automate Posting To Twitter & Facebook With Twitterfeed originally appeared on Acan Media. Licensed under Creative Commons.

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.”

Which Facebook Page Classification Is Best For Wineries? originally appeared on Acan Media. Licensed under Creative Commons.

It has been exactly two weeks since Google announced their new social networking service Google+. And some early adopting wineries are already kicking the tires even if the service is still in a limited release requiring an invitation (more on that later). So I thought I would give a short summary of what Google+ offers wineries and some impressions after using the service for a few days.

First, Google+ reminds me a lot of Twitter circa early 2007 although it shares more with Facebook and Friendfeed than the popular micro-blogging platform. It has the same vibe as Twitter five years ago and many of the same early adopters in the wine industry are there right now attempting to figure out where it fits in our industry. Google+ is sort of a mashup of Facebook and Twitter but does not require the friend permissions system of Facebook making it more open and indexable into Google’s search engine. But to their credit, Google has also provided ways to post content to limited groups of people, a la Facebook.

The main difference from Facebook is Google+ enables you to build communities of interest called Circles using an innovative, game-like interface. Google gets you started with obvious Circles such as Family, Friends, and Acquaintances but you can create as many as you like. Even better, you can put people into multiple circles so you can both follow and message based upon interest or relationship. Once your Circles are complete you can choose to post to them or to everyone you are connected to. So for instance I can post wine-related content to wine industry contacts and bloggers and vacation photos to just my family and friends. This feature is much easier to use than Facebook friend groups which I abandoned quite a while back.

There are other innovative features to Google+ but the most interesting to me is Hangouts. These are ad-hock video conferences between up to 10 participants. Last Friday evening Rick Bakas hosted such a Hangout sharing weekend wine picks. Since most laptops these days come with video cameras, Hangouts are much easier to do and is currently totally free. I see great potential for wineries using Hangouts to connect with customers, hold small virtual tastings, and extend their customer service.

But like Twitter in early 2007, I don’t see an immediate need for wineries to adopt Google+ just yet. Later this year company profiles will be launched providing a winery with Facebook Page-like functionality. Until then I recommend only early adopters jumping in and creating a personal profile to join the conversation and check it out. If any readers don’t yet have a Google+ invite, just send me an email to acanmedia (at) gmail (dot) com and I will hook you up (Google profile or Gmail is required right now).

Google+ shows a lot of promise for being an alternative to Facebook AND Twitter. Once Google integrates more of their services to this social network it may surpass Facebook as the most engaging social platform for wineries. But it’s very, very early days right now. You can connect with me on Google+ here.

What Wineries Need To Know About Google+ originally appeared on Acan Media. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Facebook Page 201: Apps, Places, Deals & Beyond

For those who attended my session of taking their Facebook Page beyond the basics at the Direct to Consumer Wine Symposium today, I’ve embedded my slides above. I will be using this as the basis for a series of posts this week delving into advanced Facebook strategies. Stay tuned.

Note: Email and RSS readers will have to click on the icon above to see the slides at the blog or Scribd.

Facebook Page 201: Beyond The Basics originally appeared on Acan Media. Licensed under Creative Commons.

A new report by ExactTarget states that Twitter followers are more likely to recommend a brand and twice as likely to buy than Facebook fans. This is exactly the oposite of my experience with Twitter and Facebook in the wine industry so I took a closer look at the story. And near the end you see the caveat that Twitter users are more representative of influencers and Facebook users are more mainstream consumers. This makes sense to me given the better engagement I’ve seen for Facebook pages than Twitter presences but it is likely to change as the new Twitter website is rolled out (more on that here soon).

Wineries: Any examples of how Twitter has produced more engagement or sales than Facebook?

via eMarketer

Posted via email from The Social Winery

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Are Twitter Followers More Likely To Buy? originally appeared on Acan Media. Licensed under Creative Commons.

There's an interesting post over at eMarketer today about how Twitter followers and Facebook fans are more likely to buy than those who are not connected with a brand on social networks. Not surprisingly, the most popular reason to friend up a brand is for discounts and promotions but the research also showed that almost 40% were customers and supporters who liked the brand.

Hundreds of wineries are on Twitter and Facebook today and many are using these connections to make sales. But I haven't seen a lot of promotions on either social network lately from wine brands looking to increase their followers and fans. I think this is a big opportunity so I'm going to take a closer look at what wineries are doing along these lines and post an update later in the week.

Posted via email from The Social Winery

Turning Fans and Followers Into Buyers originally appeared on Acan Media. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Getting Intentional With Twitter originally appeared on Acan Media. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Some wineries have guest suites that are typically used for wine club members, out of town employees and other special guests. But for much of the year these rooms sit empty. The guest suites at Michel-Schlumberger are some of the best I have ever seen (and stayed in) and they are using one of them to house Hardy Wallace who has just left his 6 month gig at Murphy-Goode.

This use of a guest suite strikes me as brilliant on a couple levels. First they are bartering for some of Hardy’s time in exchange for an asset they are not fully using anyway. Since they have two suites, they can still use one for other guests. Second, they are getting someone who has spent the past 6 months in the wine social media limelight and has built quite an online following. I think you are about to hear a lot more from Michel-Schlumberger on their blog, Facebook page and Twitter account

More details are in the following video. Kudos to my friends at Michel-Schlumberger for thinking out of the box here. Perhaps we will see this sort of thing from other wineries who have similar assets.

Posted via email from The Social Winery

Barter For Content; A New Trend? originally appeared on Acan Media. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Wineries, Are You Leading Your Tribe? originally appeared on Acan Media. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Rick Bakas posted 7 Twitter tips for wineries on his Posterous blog yesterday. They include nearly everything a winery needs to build a thriving Twitter presence:

1. Twitter gives you 140 characters. Try to keep your tweets to 110. Leave room to people to ReTweet your post.
2. Talk with people, not at them.
3. Use the 1 in 9 rule – one out of 9 posts can be promotional, the other eight are conversational with actual people.
4. Use Tweetdeck – one of the best free tools out there. Allows you to set up search columns to monitor any term, including your brand.
5. Use link shortners – bit.ly is probably the most popular. Tweetdeck will auto shorten links for you. Bit.ly links can be monitored and measured.
6. Follow and be followed. Grow your tribe online by following folks you find interesting. Often times, they’ll follow back. That’s the beginning of building trust.
7. Build trust by being consistent with quality content. Spam and promotional marketing violates trust online.

I would add a few more items to his list:

8. Share interesting links to blog posts, articles, videos, photos and reviews. These informational tweets don’t replace the conversational tweets Rick is talking about but will make interesting content from time to time. This can be automated using Google Reader and Twitterfeed as I’ll blog here in a few days.

9. Hold Twitter tastings and Tweetups. You can get a custom setup at Taste Live or just do your own scheduled Twitter tastings (like with your wine club after a shipment with your winemaker). Tools like twtvite make it easy to pull together people at your winery or another venue harnessing the power of your Twitter community.

10. If you have an iPhone, use Tweetie 2 to stay connected when mobile. Yes, TweetDeck for iPhone is free and quite usable but I find Tweetie 2 to be the most elegant tool for Twitter on the iPhone (and soon, the iPad). It’s only $3 so it will not break your budget.

I’ve written a few other posts about using Twitter effectively you might want to check out, too. Twitter is one of the best ways to connect with your fans and customers to drive traffic to your website, blog or Facebook page. By following these tips, you will build followers and increase engagement as Rick has demonstrated in his work at St. Supéry.

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10 Tips for Wineries on Twitter originally appeared on Acan Media. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Gary Vaynerchuk on Consumer Expectations originally appeared on Acan Media. Licensed under Creative Commons.

I just received a shipment of wine from one of my clients, Casa Nuestra. In the package was an unexpected gift: wine clips. I’ve been a wine geek for a long time but never have owned these handy accessories. But I’ve used them over the years at parties as they provide a “3rd hand” for your wine glass so you can hold a plate in one hand and eat with the other. The Casa Nuestra model pictured here easily clips onto any plate and holds the wine stem securely.

What I like about these wine clips is I haven’t seen them at every winery like branded corkscrews, glasses and shirts. And at $5 for four this is a no-brainer when customers are ordering wine. There is also a social aspect to these since they will be primarily used during parties, BBQ’s and other gatherings.

What unique wine accessory do you sell that makes your winery memorable?

Posted via email from The Social Winery

Make Your Winery Memorable With Unique Accessories originally appeared on Acan Media. Licensed under Creative Commons.

I’ve started to use Posterous, a free blogging service, to make posts on this blog. Some readers might wonder why I’m starting to use this service and not just post directly in WordPress, so here’s why. The short answer is it’s a lot faster for me to create a post in email than blogging directly inside the WordPress editor.

What Posterous does is create an easily maintainable blog but can also be used to auto-post to popular social sites like Twitter, Flickr and Facebook. So I think this might be a great option for wineries who want to blog but don’t want to invest the time and effort of maintaining a more full featured blog. All you need to do is signup for a free account (since you are on Facebook, you can sign in with your Facebook login), wire up all your social hubs (places like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and LinkedIn) and start blogging. If you want to use a custom URL you can easily set this up and I would also wire up your Feedburner and Google Analytics accounts so you can track visitors.

Since Posterous is optimized for email posting, you can post to your blog from any computer or your mobile phone. One scenario I would envision for a winery is a winemaker dinner or other event where you have taken a number of photos on your iPhone. At the end of the evening just write a couple of paragraphs in the iPhone mail app and attach a selection of your photos. Send to your special Posterous email address and in a few minutes a very nicely formatted photo gallery will appear in your post and your social hubs are automatically updated at the same time. I’m sure even the most busy winemaker or winery owner can find a few minutes to post via email 2 or 3 times a week. And Posterous just rolled out a new feature that allows groups to share a single account so everyone from the winery can participate on your new blog.

So give Posterous a try. It’s free and easy to setup and use but is also very flexible via all the ways you can post via email (which I found out with yesterday’s post which went to my personal blog and Twitter accounts and not where I originally intended). You can find out about all these advanced features on their FAQ and blog.

And did I mention you can post from your iPhone, Blackberry or another other phone that can send email? Yes, even you have the time to blog.

Posted via email from The Social Winery

Posterous: The Blog For Wineries Without The Time To Blog originally appeared on Acan Media. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Earlier this week Google released a new service on their Android mobile phone platform that immediately got my attention. Called, Google Goggles, the service works with the phone’s camera to search the product or location for more information. One of their use cases was wine (pictured here) where the user takes a picture of the bottle which starts a Google search for the item.

Most wineries have some level of search engine optimization (SEO) now but when this rolls out to more smartphones (like the iPhone) being the first or second link returned turns from nice to have to critical. I’m sure the folks at Google will have a way for you to pay for the first link but having this in the organic results will become more important, too.

A blog is a great way to build up your web SEO if you create compelling content on a regular basis. Having a Twitter presence also helps in the SEO department. More on this once I pick up my Google Phone in January.

Posted via email from The Social Winery

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Why Wineries Might Want To Look At Their SEO originally appeared on Acan Media. Licensed under Creative Commons.

As I’ve blogged here many times, WordPress is a great platform to build a winery website. But not every winery needs a large website, especially as they get started. So here is the recipe to start a WordPress powered website that will cost you $15 a year (actually, it’s only $14.97):

1) Go to WordPress.com and sign up for a free account. Choose the default option to start a blog.

2) In the WordPress admin back-end, create a page named, “Home” and another called, “Blog” (you might also want to create a, “Wines” and “Contact” page while you are at it).

3) Put whatever content you have on all these pages. Since WordPress.com doesn’t allow for added plugins, you will need to use HTML for such things as a contact form. Google Docs has this functionality for free so just paste your code into the contact page using the “HTML” mode (not “Visual”).

4) Go to “Settings > Reading” and select, “Home” for your front page and, “Blog” for your posts page (click the other buttons like the photo in this post if you want, too).

5) Go to, “Appearance” and choose a theme that best matches your brand and then upload a header picture to personalize (if you selected a theme with a header image).

6) Under, “Posts” delete the auto generated post and then create a new post to start your blog.

7) Under, “Settings” click on, “Domains” and enter your desired domain name into the box and click the button. If it’s available, continue with the form and pay your $14.97 to register the domain and set your URL to this custom address.

Sure, you are limited to the themes provided but there are currently 77 and you can edit the CSS so there are a lot of possibilities. And the best thing is when you are ready to go to a self-hosted site all you need to do is export from the, “Tools” menu.

Times are tough but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a nice website or blog. All it takes is a bit of your time and some very inexpensive services (by the way, if you don’t mind the “.wordpress.com” at the end of your site URL you can build this same site for free).

The $15 DIY Starter Winery Website originally appeared on Acan Media. Licensed under Creative Commons.

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything here so I thought I would start back with a big story that broke last Friday. As you have no doubt seen elsewhere, Amazon has put their wine program on hold. While I’m disappointed with this turn of events, I’m not that surprised given the state of the economy and the collapse of New Vine Logistics, Amazon’s wine logistics partner.

Coverage in the wine blogosphere has ranged from somewhat optimistic to outraged to, well, depressed. I have a somewhat different view on this since Amazon is really not saying that much outside of the fact that they have discontinued their wine shipping program they had been testing for the past several months. In the email many of us received from Amazon on Friday, they never said they were pulling out of exploring the wine industry, just that they would not be resuming their test program. This leaves the interpretation open to the commentator and most everyone has concluded Amazon is exiting the wine industry.

I disagree with this opinion and think that Amazon has simply pushed the pause button. At some point in the next 18 to 24 months they will again look to establish some sort of wine program because many of their current customers want to buy wine from them. The simultaneous economic meltdown and collapse of their logistics partner just means they can’t figure out how to profitably sell wine within the current environment. A lot can change in the future from IBG’s revitalization of New Vine’s business to changes in legislation that will make wine an easier product for Amazon to sell.

Mark my words; Amazon will change the wine business. They will just not do so in 2009 or 2010 as most of us thought. Once the economic and regulatory situation becomes more favorable, Amazon will un-pause their program and will figure out a way to make money doing so.

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Amazon Pauses Wine Program originally appeared on Acan Media. Licensed under Creative Commons.

These are my links for July 21st through August 21st:

• Good Wine that Does Good
• Gallo’s social media strategy: First, do no harm
• How to Manage Twitter
• Why You Won’t Make Money With a Wine Blog
• Divining Markets within Beautiful Chaos
• What has blogging contributed to wine writing?
• UK: Concha y Toro unveils 50cl wine bottles
• Great Bathroom Wine Reading
• Video as an Effective Emotional Branding Medium
• Tech Trends Coming to a Winery near You
• Top 5 Wine Tourism Tips Iberia Can Learn from American Wine Producers
• Metrics for Social Media / Social Business
• Highlights from the 2009 Wine Bloggers Conference
• The 2009 Wine Bloggers Conference: a foundation for raising the collective spirit
• After the Dust Settles …
• The Coming of Age of Wine Blogging
• An analysis of the 2009 Wine Bloggers’ Conference
• Jancis Robinson Talks About Her Career in Wine at IPNC
• The Blob: Will the wine industry co-opt social media for its own purposes?
• How To Pitch a Wine Blogger

Bookmarks for July 21st through August 21st originally appeared on Acan Media. Licensed under Creative Commons.

[singlepic id=3 w=320 h=240 float=center]There are many in the wine industry who don’t believe in social media. Many others need more information in order to make up their minds. The rest are trying to figure out how to get started. But when I encounter those who are not on the social media bus, I simply respond with:

“Social media today is where websites were in 1994…”

As a marketer who fought the internet battles of the mid-90′s and then again in the dot-com years, I have developed a philosophical attitude toward such things. Either you get on the bus with us now or you will really want to know how to do social marketing in 2-3 years when that’s how wine is marketed; your choice.

I was reminded why I hold this opinion by a piece today at WineBusiness.com. Dr. Liz Thach of Sonoma State University lays out some very interesting data about how the Millennial generation is taking to wine. Money quote:

More than 65% said their preferred method to make a purchase decision is based on “word of mouth.” So where does the “word” emanate from? In most cases it is with friends in either face to face settings; online social networking forums; or via texting.

So online and mobile marketing is the way wine and everything else will be sold to Millennials who make up the largest block of consumers since the Baby Boomers. This may be the most compelling evidence I’ve seen about why wineries should get into social media. Many of their current and all of their future customers will demand it.

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Social Media Is The Future of Wine Marketing originally appeared on Acan Media. Licensed under Creative Commons.