by Tim Elliott on February 10, 2010
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.
by Tim Elliott on May 2, 2009
As I write this post I am preparing to update my woefully out of date list of wineries on Facebook. Since I started this list, I have tried to follow every winery Facebook page so I get a lot of email everyday. And what I mostly see is not pretty; in fact most of it is simply Spam. But since I have opted in to getting these messages, the more correct term would be Bacn.
Whatever you call it, a constant stream of messages will not keep your fans following you for very long as Joel Vincent demonstrated this week. And he’s right, show your audience value and they will continue to follow you. So here are some tips for wineries to use Facebook more effectively:
Send One Mass Message A Month: Think of Facebook as an extention of your email marketing efforts. The more you send, the lower the results tend to be. In fact, extensive email marketing will hurt sales as it becomes too intrusive. So put together a newsletter-like digest message with upcoming events, new releases, winemaker notes and whatever else fans might be interested in. Just sent this no more than once a month (quarterly would probably be sufficent for most wineries).
Target Your Fan Updates: Facebook has a powerful, but apparently overlooked, feature that allows you to send messages to people in specific geographic areas. So instead of sending all fans that event invite, just filter on those fans closest to the winery. To use this feature, click on the “Target this update” box and choose the location of the receipants. You can also get fancy with gender and age which might be useful if your event is targeting a specific demographic group.
Give Fans A Reason To Visit Your Facebook Page: But the most effective way to prevent Facebook bacn is to very sparingly use the update feature. If you produce engaging content regularly it is not difficult to aggregate this content on your Facebook page. I’ll be blogging next time on how to set up your page using a new tool called Involver.
by Tim Elliott on May 1, 2009
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.
by Tim Elliott on March 6, 2009
Image via CrunchBase
As a winery engages in conversational marketing one of the first places they setup shop is on Facebook. The social network provides wineries with a destination to foster community and engage customers directly. It also acts as an extension of a permission email campaign making things like events very easy to send to friends of the winery.
But Facebook also presents a winery with a decision of which type of presence, on a Page or a Group. Both offer similar features so it’s probably best to start with what makes them different. Facebook Pages present a winery to anyone on the internet, registered to Facebook or not. It’s content is also indexed into search engines like any other webpage. Facebook Groups, like personal profiles, require the visitor to join before they are able to view the content and participate. This feature alone is enough for many to just choose Pages but Groups also has a major advantage over Pages; bulk invites. This feature allows anyone in the group to pass group invites along to their network of friends giving the winery viral marketing benefits.
But two other features really make Facebook Pages compelling for wineries: visitor metrics and social ads. While Groups only gives the winery a count of membership, Pages goes on step further with page views and other visitor statistics. Additionally, targeted social ads can be launched on Facebook pointing them back to your Page (wine is no longer prohibited in their advertising guidelines).
Therefore I always recommend Facebook Pages over Groups to wineries if they are not doing both. Groups can still be used for hosting forum-like discussions (with wine club members, for example) while a Page is used to promote the brand generally. But if you are choosing only one, Pages is the best choice.
by Tim Elliott on January 20, 2009
Like many people, I watched the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States today. Just before President Obama was sworn in, one of my Facebook friends posted about the new White House website which both surprised and delighted me.
Our new President has a blog.
Yes, President Obama is continuing the social media innovation he demonstrated in his campaign for the Democratic nomination and then the Presidential election. And it makes sense since he achieved a goal few thought possible when he hit the campaign trail nearly two years ago. His use of conversational marketing tools got more people involved, energized his supporters and, more importantly, raised record amounts of money.
There is a lot wineries can learn from President Obama’s use of social media during the campaign. For those who want to dive deep, Edelman has written a detailed white paper on the subject. But the bottom line is reaching people directly via the internet and social networks is not an unproven technique or a fad. It’s real and it will help you sell more wine.
Now’s the time to go social… and stay tuned, as I’ll show you exactly how.
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