Wine Marketing & Website Tips

To make social media effective for your winery, your posts and tweets need to reflect your personality and the personality of your winery — this is how you gain fans and hopefully, loyal followers and consumers. But do you have time to do all the social media marketing yourself? And if not, is it possible to outsource some of your social media responsibilities without losing your unique ‘voice’?

I am an AVID following of Donna Gunter’s blog ‘Get More Client’s Online’. What makes her blog so pertinent is her information is focused on small businesses — which easily translates to small wineries. This latest article of hers is a case in point: 7 Most Effective Tasks to Authentically Outsource in Your Social Media Marketing.

In this article, Donna explains what can’t be outsource, and what CAN — and knowing this may help you delegate some of your social media responsibilities so maybe, you can get a much needed break!

For you wineries that are actively utilizing your FaceBook Pages (and I do mean Pages, NOT Profiles), you may get some extra attention from Google! Per WebProNews, “Google Makes Facebook Pages a Higher Priority for Businesses.” So, if you were already active on FaceBook, then keep doing what your doing. If not, then this may be the impetus you need to start ‘FaceBooking’ regularly — I know I am!

The first part of my FaceBook article focused on why you needed a FaceBook page and helped you get set up. Now we need to get into the nitty gritty of things — attracting ‘fans’, understanding what makes it so successful (I call this ‘What Makes it Viral?’), maintaining your page and cross pollination.

Attracting Fans

I wish I could say that now you’ve built your winery’s ‘Page’ it will immediately start attracting tons of fans — but like everything else with social media, this is not the case.  Believe it or not, the way to actively market your winery ‘Page’ is by using your FaceBook ‘Profile’ to participate in a few choice user groups and creating relationships with these group’s main ‘influencers’ (the people who have the most ‘Friends’).

As wineries, the most logical place to start is to look for and join wine lover groups.  In FaceBook, try running searches using keywords like ‘wine lovers’, ‘wine fans’, ‘loves wine’, maybe even plug in your location, ‘sonoma wine lovers’. If you see a lot of ‘Pages’ and ‘Profiles’ mixed in with the groups, then click on the ‘Group’ link to the left and that will remove any results that are NOT groups. Now, start sifting through the results.

The groups I’d pay attention to first are those in your actual geographic location with a decent number of members because most of the members may be close enough to actually visit your winery and attend your events. For example, I ran a search on ‘texas wine lovers’ and here are the results:

With its focus on Texas and 542 members, if I was a Texas winery I would definitely join this group and start following the discussions and posts to their wall — see if there is anything you can add or questions you can answer. If appropriate, add your own discussion or wall post being careful to follow the theme of the other posts — after all, if you immediately start in with a hard sell, it will turn people off.

Once you feel you’ve established yourself as a non-threatening, helpful group participant, start researching who the most influential members are (the ones with the most ‘Friends’) and introduce yourself to them. This is explained in detail by Nick o’Neill in his article How To Win Facebook Fans And Reach Influencers and he also takes you beyond the initial introductions and guides you in how to turn group members into fans.

What Makes it Viral?

The ‘viralness’ of FaceBook is what makes it such an effective marketing tool. Once you have gained ‘Friends’ for your ‘Profile’ and ‘Fans’ for your ‘Page’, your updates will appear in their news feeds which will also be visible by all their ‘Friends’ & ‘Fans’ — thereby increasing your visibility to potentially new ‘Friends’ and ‘Fans’ (have I said ‘Friends’ and ‘Fans’ enough? I feel I’ve written this stuff so many times I’m going to wake up with FaceBook nightmares!)

For those of you who like numbers, here are some calculations made by Richard Beaudin in his article Building wine fans on facebook: A moment in time in reference to the top wineries on FaceBook:

Maintenance

To establish an effective FaceBook strategy that attracts followers and furthers your brand, active maintenance and participation must become a part of your everyday business life! You have to keep your ‘Profile’ and ‘Page’ current, post updates on what you are doing, respond to messages and actively participate in the groups you have joined.

Cross Pollination

Now that you’ve put time into your FaceBook account, you need to make sure everyone knows about it! Add a link to your FaceBook ‘Page’ from your website’s home page asking site visitors to become ‘Fans’. To make this even easier, you can have your web designer install a FaceBook ‘Fan Box’ widget on your site that allows people to become your FaceBook Fan right from your home page! To the right is how the ‘Fan Box’ looks on my home page.

In Conclusion . . .

Please know that my two posts on FaceBook have barely scratched the surface of all it can do, but I feel I’ve given you enough information to help you understand how it works and to get you started. Now its just a matter of wading in there and doing it — Good Luck!

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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’.

When I proposed the topic "Ins and Outs of Social Media," I knew it was going to be a difficult beastie to tackle. But I also knew how important it is to the future of wine marketing for the smaller wineries and so when that topic won the vote (WHY couldn’t y’all have voted for "Common winery website mistakes?"), I started researching what would be the most beneficial Social Media (SM from here on out and NOT to be confused with S & M) avenues for you to pursue and how to utilize them.

Because this is too large a topic to tackle in one post, I’m going to break it up into sections with ‘Planning Your Social Media Strategy” appearing today, and then an indepth review of one or two Social Media sites will appear each following Monday. Since SM is especially challenging for small, boutique and micro wineries who do not have the budget for a marketing and/or social media director, my focus in these reviews will be how each SM site could (or could not) benefit you, briefly explain how it works, and some ideas on how to use it. Next week, I’ll be posting my review of FaceBook.

Define Your Goals

Although it may seem like a constantly growing, complicated entity, SM should be treated just like any other marketing tool in your arsenal and you need to develop a strategy on how to use it. Your first step? Deciding what you hope to gain from your SM efforts. Do you want more site visitors? More wine club sign-ups? Wine sales? Tasting room visits? Defining your goals will help you decide which SM avenues will benefit you the most.

Choose Which SM Sites to Pursue

Now you need to decide what SM sites will not only benefit you the most, but also which ones you would be able to successfully participate in. For example, although YouTube could help you in your marketing efforts, if you aren’t interested in videography this would not be a viable option for you.

After A LOT of research, I’ve put together a list of what I feel are the most important SM sites for small, boutique and micro wineries. Please know this is by no means a comprehensive list of ALL the SM sites out there!!! Its just the ones I feel we have heard the most about and/or have the most potential to help you achieve your goals. (I’ve included some that may not be very beneficial just because I’m sure you’ve heard of them and if I don’t list them, you’ll wonder why.)

This list could possibly change over the next few weeks as I start reviewing them and if I’ve missed anything, PLEASE let me know!

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Yelp
• YouTube
• Flickr
• StumbleUpon
• Winery Blog
• Cruvee
• digg
• Delicious
• Friend Feed (I didn’t think this one was a big deal until I found out it was purchased by FaceBook)
• Yahoo Answers

Set Up Tracking

Before you actually start participating in the SM of your choice, it is INCREDIBLY HELPFUL to have tracking tools in place so you can measure your SM effectiveness. The two tracking tools I recommend are Google Analytics and Google Alerts (which I discussed here).

By setting these up, you’ll know when and where your wines/winery are mentioned on the Internet and if this has affected your website visits. Both of these tools are free, only requiring you to set up a Google Account.

Decide How Much Time To Invest EACH DAY

Because Shana Ray of Breath Media explained this so well in her planning for her presentation for the Social Media Success for Wineries panel at the Wine Industry Technology Symposium, here is a direct quote from her website:

15 Minutes Per Day

"First I want to talk about the VERY bare minimum that is recommended – 15 minutes a day. This is the starting point of listening to what is being said about your brand and your competition online."

"Within these 15 minutes a day you may find time on Twitter to send out a few links to promotions you are doing or to great articles about your brand and hopefully reply if anyone says anything about your brand, but this doesn’t give you enough time to engage people."

1 Hour Per Day

"By putting in one hour a day, you allow for engagement with your followers and online friends. You can create actual relationships with bloggers, journalists and consumers. Do this both on Twitter and Facebook, but you can also do this on the blogs themselves. Take some time to read some wine or food or travel blogs and interact on these websites, many times you will get new followers simply by making a well written comment."

"Set some time each day in the morning when you first get into work and then in the afternoon to be on these sites – Ask questions, post links, have conversations and go beyond the small talk to get to know people."

You can read Shana’s entire article at here.

Get Started!

Beginning your SM campaign is more then just setting up accounts and participating. It also involves linking to your SM accounts from the home page of your website and getting everyone involved. Let your tasting room staff know about any ‘Twitter’ promotions and encourage visitors to post comments and pictures about your wines/winery on your FaceBook page.

Understand SM Success Won’t Happen Overnight

Building relationships through SM takes a long time — so plan to be in it for the long haul and try to make it a regular part of your business life.

Next Week: FaceBook

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