A Winery’s Home Base: Blog or Website?

Once a winery decides to take the plunge into Social Media, there are two important things to consider.  First, what’s the strategy (or, as we say around here “strategerie”)?  Strategy is a long conversation, but, as Larry the Wine Guy mentioned the other day, one doesn’t want to get all tied up in strategy lest one never gets off first base.  But you do have to go through the exercise of who’s the target audience, what do you want to present to them, what do you hope to gain through Social Media channels, and many other check boxes.  We’ll be discussing that later, many times, I’m sure.  But there’s something else on my mind for today, and that’s one of the cornerstones of implementation.

At some point, you have to decide what your Social Media home base is going to be.  There are a lot of elements that can be put to use, like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, webpage, blogs, and others.  As you will find in the strategy session, none of these really stands alone.  To best leverage Social Media, you need to use one element for a home base, and use the rest of the elements to feed readers to it.

Denise Wakeman, among many SocMed experts, recommends that your blog be your home base.  You might respond that you already have paid for a nice website, so why go to the effort of a blog.  Answer that question by considering how often your website is updated, not just by adding product descriptions and the “media mentions” showing that the Wine Weasel gave your Roussanne/Pinot noir blend 91 points.  How often does your website provide fresh, interesting content?  Probably not that often, since it’s usually a bit of work to update/tinker with web pages; not just content, but making sure all the links still work and similar irritating, techie stuff.  Plus, you can’t dork with the Flash content, which is so not captivating.

On the other hand, a blog entry, whether two paragraphs or 1000 words, is readily prepared (FB4W is done in Word), loaded into your template, and push the button to publish.  OK, tags, categories and such have to be done (I tend to forget these…), but that’s two minutes.

So why is this important?  Your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn profiles link back to home base, your Tweets and Facebook status updates will occasionally link back, and Wakeman suggests that articles and media releases link back in the same manner.  So, do your followers, both new and veteran, land on the home page of your website (likely the same ol’ same ol’), or do they land on the blog that you posted earlier in the week, discussing something interesting along the lines of what Tablas Creek Vineyards did Friday: “Wine Clubs vs. Mailing Lists”.  Given that the idea is to have “stickiness” in your home base, where followers want to return and become part of your community, which would you choose?  If the home base is boring, what would compel someone who’s been there before to click on your Tweet or Facebook link?  

 If you agree that fresh, interesting content is essential for attracting attention and retaining followers, but you still feel tied to your website (it’s not the Flash, is it?), there’s something that could be even more important.  Yes, really, and I’ll talk about it in the next post: Search Engine Optimization.

Is Your Winery is Too Busy to Blog?

I open today with a “Thanks!” to Mike Duffy of The Winery Website Report.  In his well-regarded blog, Mike recommended “Facebook for Wineries” as a blog “which deserves your attention”.  Very cool for a two week-old blog!

On my quest to get wineries involved in social media, I’ve heard from wineries and other small businessfolks that they think that SocMed is a time sink.  Does this mean that they don’t have the time to establish new relationships and build a community?  Now, I truly believe that a good chunk of this is from not understanding the process (which is some work), and there are several of us out here willing to get you down that road.  But a lot of it stems from the “I don’t have the time to write all that” syndrome.  Either it’s too much work to stuff an idea into 120 tweetable characters, or, man, 200 words for a blog once or twice a week is a killer.  Consider this.

For a winery, what is the busiest time of year?  OK, I’ve not worked in a winery, but I’ve taken classes, so I think I know something.  Few things match the crazy unpredictability of harvest.  Unless you’re in the Central Valley, where you simply wait for the vine to collapse under the weight of the berries, then pick them up with a Bobcat for trucking off to Franzialand.  But I digress.  It’s a pretty safe bet that no one thinks they have time to write during harvest.

With this in mind, point your browser over to http://www.pinotharvest.com/.  This is a really cool project cooked up by Adam Lee of Siduri and Brian Loring of Loring Wine Company.  Starting in August 2008, they and assorted co-conspirators (I particularly enjoyed Wes Hagen, Peter Cargasacchi, and Frank Ostini) posted with some regularity about the trials and tribulations of Pinot noir harvest, generally in the Santa Barbara region.  For us armchair wine folks (think: consumers), this was of great interest.  Did it sell any wine?  I don’t know.  Did it create interest in the community?  Based on posted comments, it certainly did.  I, for one, learned a lot, and hope that the posts start again in August.

If these guys can post every couple of weeks, or more, during harvest, excuses about not having the time to engage in social media don’t seem to carry much water, er, juice.

Are Winery Blogs Dead? A Perspective.

A few weeks ago, Mike Duffy’s “The Winery Website Report” sported a headline that caught my eye (note: good headlines do that): “Are Winery Blogs Dead?”. Mike noted the following on the guy’s blog:
Hey everyone! Sorry I’ve been such a lame ass with the blog lately… I’ll try to update this blog more frequently, but to tell you the truth, it’s easier to just post things on Facebook. I prefer Facebook because it’s easier for you all to post pictures and comments. If you’re a Facebook geek, just search “Wind River Cellars” and become a friend.

Mike suggested that perhaps the more interactive environment of Facebook provides better opportunity for feedback and conversations, and then opined that following Facebook can be confusing (I’ll talk about this in a future post). However, Mike’s important point was “Of course, an untended Facebook page for your winery is just as bad as an untended winery blog. In the end, you’ve got to decide whether you really want to interact with people online”.

This ties in nicely with some comments that Denise Wakeman made during her presentation at the Social Media Success Summit last week. She essentially asked how a business owner could not be involved with social media as a means to build a community and enhance e outreach. She feels, as do many others with significant involvement in social media, that you need to engage social media from a number of angles (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Blogs), and that blogs are where you tell your story.

In considering this, I’d ask how a winery is currently telling their story and engaging their community. As I posted previously, if you’re skipping out on social media avenues, you have your print or e-newsletter (monthly, quarterly?), maybe some direct e-mails (how many do these?), talking to folks in the tasting rooms, going out to organized tastings, hitting the road with a distributor rep, and doing direct sales on the road. Forgetting the last two (since we’re really trying to address direct-to-consumer here), how much time does all that take? What’s it take, three or four hours to put your newsletter together? Think about how many blogs can come out of that newsletter material. And how much fan interaction comes out of the newsletter (comments and such)? Likely not many. Carefully done, a winery blog can provide wonderful insight into a winery, and fans love to know what’s going on, in real time. The newsletter might talk about canopy maintenance after harvest is over, while the blog can do it with immediacy; which will win more eyes and interest?

The point here is that all the time and effort put into traditional methods of marketing for your winery can be tweaked to provide good content for social media applications. You can really kill two birds with one stone here. You don’t like to write that much? Likely someone on staff does. Don’t miss the boat.
Here’s some homework. Check out these winery blogs, and think about how your winery could do something similar. I’ll be discussing these wineries’ efforts in future posts.

Tablas Creek: http://tablascreek.typepad.com/
Twisted Oak: http://www.elbloggotorcido.com/
Dry Creek Vineyard: http://www.wilmaswineworld.com/

A Few More Words on Viral Marketing and Wineries

In my last post, I drew a comparison between traditional marketing and viral marketing.  However, in my viral marketing example, where Flatulence Winery tweeted about getting grapes from Outstanding Vineyards, I came fairly close to stepping into the social media poo pile.  You use social media functions to provide information, establish trust, and create a community.   What you try to stay away from is overt marketing.  There’s a truism floating around out there, supposedly associated with some activities on MySpace, which essentially says that when marketers move in, the community moves out.  So do you that my example stepped over the line?

Recall that my sample tweet was along the lines of “Flatulence Winery scores Pinot from Outstanding Vnyd for 09; sign up to be the few to get it”, followed by a link to the Flatulence webpage with more information.  I’m thinking that I could have dropped the “sign up to be the first few to get it”; rephrasing the first section could have created interest without using the hook.  Maybe “Flatulence Vineyard is excited to score Pinot from Outstanding Vnyd for 09, maybe make 50 cases.”  There was no need for me to toot my horn with “sign up now or be sorry” type of stuff.  Remember, my scenario said I had a bunch of Pinot freaks among my followers, and they’d toot my horn for me by retweeting (forwarding) the tweet to their followers with something like “This is great!” tacked on to it.  It just markets itself. 

We can all think of examples of winemakers branching out with something small, scoring bits of fruit hither and yon, and making great wine with it (I think of Auteur and Anthill Farms).  Then, bingo, you luck into some Rochioli fruit: you’re excited, you let your followers know, and they’re excited, and so on.  And social media, here Twitter, has given you a simple and effective means of passing the word.

I’ll close today calling your attention to the cool little drawing that I, um, borrowed from another site (love the Google image search).  It’s useful to have a graphic depiction of the potentially viral spread of your message.  Now, such virality is never guaranteed; it’s the product of good content, a loyal community, a well-developed social media presence, and just a tad of luck.  So what you see here is your viral marketing target.  Does that make you want to stick your toe in?

Understanding the Viral Spread of Your Winery’s Message via Social Media

Today we’re going to try to get a handle on this “viral marketing” thing, and what it can do for wineries.  Viral marketing is a primary reason for wineries to become involved in social media.  The term “viral”, on its own, suggests disease, like a cold.  You know, somebody comes to work with a cold, sneezes in the lunchroom, five people get a cold, sneeze while out shopping, half the store gets the cold, and pretty soon, the whole town might be sick.  Social media can work in the same way, but nobody catches a cold.  Consider the following comparison of traditional marketing vs. social (viral) marketing.  Do note that I’m not a marketer; this is a consumer’s perspective.

Most wineries periodically put out a newsletter, either via snail mail or e-mail.  They feature info on winery happenings, new releases, critical reviews, and similar.  It’s clear that a reasonable amount of thought and time goes into the content.  So off they go, to all the fine folks on the mailing list…generally, the same people that got the newsletter last time, less some opt-outs and plus some opt-ins and new fans.  I’d wager than the total number of recipients tends to be pretty static over time.  Now, ask yourself when was the last time you forwarded a winery newsletter e-mail, or made copies of a mailer to give to your friends.  Yeah, same for me.  There’s not much spread with this process.  Now, let’s consider a different type of outreach.

For a moment, forget the brain-freeze you get the first time you look at a Twitter message stream; it happens to us all, and we can fix that.  Just consider that you can send a short (<140 character) note, called a Tweet, out to a few dozen people you know on Twitter (you’d be surprised how many friends and acquaintances are on Twitter). 

Maybe your note says how you’re finally about to source fruit from a well-known vineyard, but not that much, so people need to get on the list if they might be interested in a new Pinot from “Outstanding Vineyards”; you provide a link to your webpage that describes the whole deal. It looks like this: “Flatulence Winery scores Pinot from Outstanding Vnyd for 09; sign up to be the few to get it.  http://bit.ly/otsdng”.  And half the people you Tweet are certified Pinot freaks who think this is great, so they Retweet it.  Retweeting is simply passing on the note to their “followers”, and the followers who like it Retweet, and so on.  Heck, within a few days, your Tweet could be seen by a few hundred Pinot-lovers, many of whom might not have heard of your winery before, and they click to your site to check it out.  But what’s important is that someone they know thought enough of your Tweet to pass it on, sort of a Social Media stamp of approval, which prompted the followup.  This expanding passing of info from one person to many is “viral” in the Social Media context.  When’s the last time that a winery newsletter was passed around like that?

As we look at Twitter and Facebook, we’ll see how easy it is for good news about a winery to spread in this viral manner, and how it can compliment traditional marketing practices.  How many of you are doing something like this now?

Why Wineries Need to Embrace (ok, accept) Social Media: Communication Breakdown

To start our journey to Social Media awareness, I’ll first explore the current state of winery communication as it relates to the consumer.  It seems that a number of developments have conspired to silence what I call the “house voice” (not to be confused with the house palate).  How does the winery effectively speak for itself?

I’m a pretty active wine consumer, and my experience with wineries leads me to believe that the typical interaction between a winery and customer (current or potential) is pretty passive from the winery side of things.  Most wineries have a website, with degrees of sophistication varying between a one page “presence” to a full-on e-commerce site (hopefully without Flash…).  But unless I go looking for the site, it just sits there, waiting, hoping that something will trigger a visit and perhaps a sale, or at least a sign-up for the e-mail list.  I’d imagine that the website designers went for “search engine optimization” (SEO), so when someone Googles “Napa Oakville Cabernet”, there’s a chance of the site showing up in the first five or so pages (and how many of us drill down beyond the second page?). But, again, that’s if I go looking.

If I opt in to a mailing list, or maybe even join a club, I’ll get the occasional e-newsletter encouraging me to visit, attend a “members only” function, and, yes, buy some wine.  But that’s if I’ve opted in.  Once again, it requires action from me before they can get my attention. 

So what does it take, in the traditional sense, to get me to take notice of a winery?  In general, some sort of wine review from a trusted source, a recommendation from a friend, or a chance encounter at a restaurant or organized tasting will make me consider seeking out some additional information.  And I might not even search out the winery, instead heading to wine-searcher to see who’s got it for how much.  A winery could be sufficiently funded to where they can buy an ad in a glossy mag, but that is of zero interest to me. 

Overall, after making and distributing the wine, it seems that most wineries are out of the picture from the standpoint of getting my attention through their own actions.  To make the situation worse, the consolidation of wine distributors is putting the squeeze on smaller wineries.  Reps carrying books of hundreds of wines don’t have time (or incentive) to feature small production wines, and some distributors are dropping these wineries completely (although there are some cool distributors focusing on the little guys.  Yay!).  So how do wineries get their message out to potential fans without breaking the bank?  Social media, that’s how

 Next: Understanding the Viral Spread of Your Message via Social Media

The “Really Goode Job” Effect: Wineries Need to Consider Social Media

 In another week, the “Really Goode Job” contest will close, and the American Idol-like weeding out of the contestants begins.  It’s likely that by the time the successful candidate starts work in mid-August (by no coincidence in time for crush), few will care; in fact, the Good Grape opines that the contest has worn out its welcome.  Yes, the contest will fade, but the effects are here to stay.

I’d imagine that the contest has many wineries out there thinking “Whoa, that’s really getting them (M-G) some attention.  We need to consider this social media thing”.  One might ask what all the wine blogs and Tweets and such are about if wineries are asking such a question.  I follow quite a few blogs, and have yet to see even one from a winery. 

Look at Winebusiness.com’s list of the almost 50 blogs that their editors follow, and it certainly appears that none are authored by wineries; most are by critics, pundits, PR folks, retailers and the like.  Do note that I follow and comment on many of these, and enjoy them.  But where are the wineries?  Winebusiness.com does have a page of winery blogs (about 25 of them), but it seems like they are relegated to second fiddle, rarely if ever appearing as Editors’ picks.   At Mike Duffy’s The Winery Website Report, he shows that of the 2,700+ wineries he tracks, there are 191 with active or inactive blogs; so maybe 8 percent.  And that’s just the blogs; Twitter and Facebook participation (or lack thereof) are another thing altogether.

Since the social media/winery issue is of interest, I took a look at the dozen wineries operating under the umbrella of my wife’s employer, and found two on Twitter, six with some kind of Facebook representation, and virtually no blog activity.  In today’s communication environment, this, to me, is a problem.  I believe that a winery needs to integrate all three platforms, and being in only one (or none) doesn’t help your cause.

Based on feedback from my friends in the industry, it seems that many wineries are interested in social media, but don’t know where to start, how to allocate the time, or how to get people to pay attention to them.  I follow the blogs of PR pros Tom Wark and Jo Diaz, and imagine that they work at moving their clients to social media, but not everybody has good or progressive PR folks to guide them.  What to do, what to do?  Well…

This blog will explore the exciting new world of social media as it relates to wineries.  I’ll review the various blogs and Facebook Pages, and follow the Tweets as I find them, highlighting the good stuff (by name), as well as the “needs to improve” (anonymously).  I’ll discuss platforms, technology and tools than can be used in order to make the world of social media easier to understand and utilize. 

Hang on; it should be fun.

Next:  why wineries need to embrace (ok, accept) social media.