During my seminars in Napa and Sonoma last April I covered a number of social sites but really didn’t make recommendations on which of these wineries should choose for their online activities. In setting up a couple of new clients recently I’ve looked at the long list of sites I’ve used and pared it down to what I think is the right number for wineries to start with:
Blog – I like the capabilities of Wordpress and install this on client servers as the cornerstone of their social media activities. You could certainly also use the Wordpress.com hosted offering or Tumblr and point these free services to your custom URL as an alternative or to get started.
Twitter – As I mentioned the other day, this micro-blogging-messaging service can be used to drive traffic to your blog, web store or both. Even with the current growing pains, I still recommend this service above Pownce, Jaiku and Plurk.
Flickr or Picasa – I started with Flickr and continue to recommend this service but Picasa is a worthy alternative. Every winery should have a number of photos to share from events or taken for their website and print materials. These are easily linked back to your blog via widgets for visitors to follow. Bloggers and online journalists will also use these to illustrate posts about your winery.
del.icio.us – There are a number of ways to use this social bookmarking site but I use it to share links of articles, blog posts and reviews found online. Like Flickr, this can be placed on your blog sidebar as a widget so visitors can discover what other people are writing about your wines but much of the benefit will be realized on the del.icio.us site itself.
Facebook – Over the past two years, this social network has become the standard for all age groups although it still skews to younger audiences. This makes it a bit tricky for wineries to exploit but still a key component in a winery social media plan. In the future, the majority of your customers will use this service to share recommendations with their friends. It’s best to get a page going there for early adopters in your customer base to link on their profile.
YouTube – This is still the best site to share video which can easily be embedded into your blog. Not all wineries produce video but if you do, share them here.
Friendfeed – This aggregation service allows you to roll-up all your social media activities into one site/RSS feed and allows for threaded discussions on each post. This might also be the next big thing if Twitter does not improve their service up-time.
That’s it… yes, there are plenty of other sites you could add to the mix but I think 80%+ of your social media results will be derived from these seven. If you are a winery who has had success with other services, post your experiences in the comments.
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