Wine Marketing & Website Tips

Researching for this article made me feel like Alice falling down the rabbit hole — each FaceBook discovery and answer led to a NEW FaceBook discovery and answer! It was NEVERENDING! But on the flip-side, it also made me more excited than ANY OTHER MARKETING OPPORTUNITY has!!!!!

Where else can you easily set up a virtual business front, actively track down your target market and ask them to become part of your potential client pool just by having them do something as simple and unassuming as becoming your ‘fan’? I truly see this as an opportunity for you small, boutique and micro wineries to gain the same popularity as the larger wine brands — you just have to take the time follow through on it!

Because this turned into such a monster of an article, I’m posting it in two parts. This 1st part includes ‘Is My Target Market On FaceBook?‘, ‘Glossary of FaceBook Terms‘, ‘Types FaceBook Accounts‘ and ‘How to Setup Your FaceBook Page‘. The second part should be up in the next few days and will cover ‘Getting Fans’, ‘What Makes it Viral’ and ‘Maintenance’.

Is My Target Market On FaceBook?

Here are some interesting FaceBook stats provided by Richard Beaudin (who gleaned them from Isstrategylabs):

Glossary of FaceBook Terms

FaceBook has created a lot of its own terminology, and I found myself constantly scratching my head trying to devine what such words as ‘Poke’ or ‘Gifts’ meant — which lead me to this wonderful FaceBook Glossary.

Types of FaceBook Accounts

Currently, FaceBook has 3 types of accounts: Profile, Page and Group.

In a nutshell, FaceBook ‘Profiles’ are for the individual, ‘Pages’ are for a business or brand and a ‘Group’ is made up of a group of people united around a common issue or interest.  ‘Pages’ are a relatively new FaceBook feature so if you think you already created one, make sure. Its possible you may have created a ‘Profile’ instead and still need to create an official ‘Page’ for your winery.

For the purposes of this particular blog, I’m going to focus on the FaceBook ‘Page’. (But know you will need a profile in order to actively recruit a following for your business ‘Page’, so recommend setting up a profile at the same time you set up your ‘Page’.)

How to Setup Your FaceBook Page

Setting up your FaceBook Page is INCREDIBLY easy! Just go here and fill in the appropriate fields and check the appropriate boxes. (I had considered putting together a step-by-step tutorial with pictures on this initial process but felt if wouldn’t be necessary. If you’re having problems signing up and feel I should rethink the tutorial PLEASE let me know and I’ll add it.) But for now, here is the first screen in the ‘Page’ creation process:

Once you’ve followed all the steps you are taken to your new, blank ‘Page’ and your first order of business is to upload a picture and edit your information:

When uploading a picture, I know most of us are just going to put up our logo, (that’s what I did), but here is a little article I read by Nick O’Neill I think you’ll find interesting:

So now, (if I can find the time), I’m going to try and come up with something a little more interested then my blah logo!

Now that you’ve uploaded your picture and edited your information, I want to explain a little bit about your new ‘Page’. The initial page you are brought to is called your ‘Wall’, which is where you and your fans can post messages. After that is your ‘Info’ tab and by clicking on the ‘+’ next to your last tab you can add even more tabs.

The tabs you can choose from are pretty self explanatory and what is really cool about them is you can link directly to any of your tabs. For example, if you just had a successful wine club event you may want to send an eNewsletter to all your club members with a link to the photo album you created of the event.

You can also see, off to the right on your ‘Wall Page’, a link for ‘Settings’. This is where you can update the overall settings for your FaceBook Page.

The only setting you may want to consider changing is your default landing tab. Right now, your default landing page is your Wall.

But what if you don’t want the first thing everyone sees are all the messages posted by you and your fans? In this case, you can choose to have visitors initially go to your ‘Events’ page, ‘Photo Gallery’, ‘Info’ or to any other Tab you have set up.

Now that you have a basic understanding of what makes up your FaceBook Page, you should be able to add some pictures, post a few updates and then start hunting for ‘fans’ (which I’ll explain more about in the next section).

One more note on setting up your Winery ‘Page’: If you’re like me, you may want to get ideas for your ‘Page’ by checking out some of the more successful Winery Pages on FaceBook. So here is a list of the top 5 winery pages (per Richard Beaudin):

This is just a snippet from his article ‘Wineries Using FaceBook? You Bet!‘ and I recommend reading the whole thing if you get the chance.

Coming up next

‘Getting Fans’, ‘What Makes It Viral?’ and ‘Maintaining Your Page’.

Tags: boutique wineries, boutique winery, facebook for wineries, micro wineries, micro winery, Online Marketing, small wineries, small winery, small winery facebook page, small winery marketing, small winery page, social media, social media for wineries, wine marketing, winery page

This entry was posted on Monday, August 17th, 2009 at 7:39 pm and is filed under Online Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.