Social Media Is About Conversation

There is a good post on Mashable today about social media that struck a cord with me. All too often when “social media” is mentioned in the wine industry, most think all they have to do is start a blog, claim their Twitter account and setup a Facebook page. While all of these things are part of a social media plan, they are just tactics to produce one thing: conversation.

Back 5 years ago, Stormhoek leveraged the conversation they nurtured in the tech blogosphere to change how people chose wine to take home for dinner. This led to increased sales and solidified the brand to withstand a near-death experience a couple years back. Although I don’t have any updated numbers, I think they still sell a fair amount of wine in the UK.

Blogging didn’t sell Stormhoek wine; the conversation started on their blog and other places spread awareness, their sampling programs got wine into people’s mouths and the rest took care of itself. They never really blogged about the wine but about getting like-minded people together to share some time accompanied by Stormhoek wine.

To those who think the Stormhoek story is old, dated and can’t be replicated today, just look at Le Beast. Same playbook, just updated. I think we’ll see that this approach still works if the social marketing is executed creatively.

Watch this space as I will be blogging about another case study I’m working on right now.