Wine Marketing & Website Tips

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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Interview with Leah Hennessy — Millennial, Owner of Millennier Wine Sales, author of the blog The Millennier: Wine + Millennials and all around AWESOME person! During our meeting we discussed what she likes and dislikes in a winery website, ways to attract Millennials to buy your wine and join your wine club and some basic marketing advice we should all implementing. What I love most about Leah is her advice is down-to-earth, easy to follow and, most importantly, actionable!!!!!

What do you consider to be the Millennial age range?

You can go to a dozen different places and get a dozen different age ranges for Millennials.  For me, personally, I consider anyone born after 1978 to be a Millennial.  But more important then age, what truly makes a Millennial are the shared experiences of a generation that have shaped us all in a similar way.

Why are Millennials buying wine?

Many of us have graduated from college and identify drinking wine as a symbol of our new mature, independent status and lifestyle. We’re basically like everyone else – we are looking for wines to celebrate special occasions, to share with friends and to drink with dinner.

Why do you go to a winery website?

I think that most Millennials don’t associate wineries with websites. So if I’m drinking a wine and see a url, or see that a winery is following me on Twitter I may go check it out. But I have to be looking for it specifically — I generally don’t just randomly search for wineries or wines on the Internet.

What do you look for in a winery website design?

Good design and information that is easy to access. And DON’T use the same design you’ve had for the last 20 years!!!  Look at your web design kind of like a hair cut — you might be really comfortable with the same hair cut you’ve been getting for the last 20 years, but by now you are looking PRETTY dated with that ‘do. Update it!  And just like a haircut, take a look at current magazines and pick out what you really like that is going on RIGHT NOW and incorporate those elements into your design. It will work wonders.

PS: We don’t mind scrolling down to read the whole page so don’t kill yourself trying to fit everything in one screen with no scrollbar.

Do you prefer Flash websites? (I’m asking this because many wineries feel to attract Millennials their site needs to be developed in Flash.)

You have to understand, I (and Millennials in general) are on the Internet ALL THE TIME. We just want to be able to access the information we’re looking for quickly and easily. So if the Flash is well done and I can still get to the information, then its fine. But if its over-stylized or unprofessional then I won’t be going back. So really, whether a site has Flash or not makes no difference to me — its all in how well put together it is and how much it excites me about the wine.

How do you feel about websites that open to music or someone talking to you?

Everyone I know HATES that — especially if I’m at work! Maybe because it reminds us too much of our old MySpace pages [that opened to music]. Whatever the reason, 9 out of 10 times it’s pretty annoying.

What irritates you the most about winery website’s?

Sites that still have old, dated designs, pixelated images, spontaneous music – also when a site does not have enough information, and/or when the site is difficult to navigate.  These things drive me CRAZY, but I’m always amazed at how many are out there. These businesses are shooting themselves in the foot by having these old or unprofessional websites representing who they are to a consumer group that they want to impress. When I sat down with Morgan First [Marketing and Community Director for 'The Second Glass' wine magazine and website, and Millennial Extraordinaire], the state of many winery websites is one of the first things we ended up discussing. Morgan relies on these sites for information on an upcoming articles and/or tastings. She wants to get her information quickly and easily and does not want to be bogged down with poor navigation, out-dated text, and slow loading graphics.

Millennials don’t need all the bells and whistles, but we do need a site that is professional looking, well designed, updated regularly, loads quickly and the information is easy to access.

What information do you look for in a winery website?

Where you are!!!! If you’re based in the Willamette Valley, Oregon, I want to know it. After that, I want your branding to make me excited about your wine! For anyone who doesn’t understand what branding is, it is your identity and your point of view that you show the world – this is what makes you stand out.

For example, Red Cap Vineyard’s POV centers around the young family that owns and works the vines in their Howell Mountain vineyard. They back this ‘branding’ up with pictures showing the family actually working in the vineyards and in their text with such headings as "Is Daddy Out Kissing the Grapes Again?"

After the home page, I go right to the wines section and look at the prices. If you are charging a lot of money for your wines, then you better have an impressive website.

What makes you want to return to a winery website?

I would go back for more information, to buy wine (especially if there was a sale or the shipping was free) and maybe to check out their blog and see new pictures — but I would only do this if I knew the blog and gallery were updated regularly.

What type of internet connection do you have?

Very fast. This is true for most Millennials and if they don’t have a fast Internet connection at home, then they would definitely have one at work.

Do Search Engines figure into your search for good wines?

Not often. I never blindly search for wines on the Internet. I have to have heard of a specific region, wine or winery before I will go searching for them on the Internet.

Do many Millennials access winery websites using mobile devices?

I do look at websites using my mobile device, but if your site doesn’t look good on my mobile browser its not a deal breaker. However, if you do decide to create a mobile version of your website, be sure to FLAUNT IT. Maybe even incorporate your technical experience into your POV.

I read about how Millennials live and breath on Facebook and don’t really even check their email — is this true?? If so, would an eNewsletter campaign even work with them?

If you are going for Millennials, then you should know that eNewsletters = junk mail. If you truly want a Millennial following, create a FaceBook ‘fan page’ for your winery, then utilize it as another mailing list. If you’re not sure how to do this, you can read my article on FaceBook for Wineries and if you still need some help then reach out to any Millennials you may know and have them show you the ropes. They can be your FaceBook expert and teach you its ins and outs as well as proper FaceBook etiquette.

Wineries are being told left and right to use Twitter. But how effective is using Twitter to attracting Millennial attention? Would their time be better spent focusing on their FaceBook page instead of twittering?

Twitter is a very important tool in your social media kit, and its not just limited to Millennials.  There are no where near as many Millennials on Twitter as there are on Facebook, and many Millennials "don’t get" Twitter – however, you can reach more than just Gen Y-ers on Twitter.  Businesses are reaching out to Millennials right now to increase sales – remember that, and don’t lose sight of the forest for the trees. There may not be a huge concentration of Millennials on Twitter (yet), but there are millions of other potential consumers there to connect with.

What other social networking sites do Millennials go to regularly in regards to wine?

Yelp is a review website and is incredibly valuable to anyone who goes out to a restaurant, a store and/or BUYS WINE. If you sell wine then I would see if you are listed on Yelp and if you have any reviews.

You suggest in your Millennial Wine Club Outreach article that wineries should offer a lighter version of their wine club to Millennials — wouldn’t doing something like this alienate their existing Wine Club members?

No. As long as your rules are clearly posted, then why should your existing members get upset? After all, I don’t get ticked off when my bank offers discounts to students! I understand where they’re at and why they need the discounts. The same goes for us Millennials. Most of us are paying off student loans or saving up to buy a house and may be more likely to join your wine club if you have a ‘lighter’ version that we can more easily afford. And we are very picky about what wine club we want to join. The club needs to offer good discounts, good shipping, good events and, most importantly, treat us with respect.

I can’t thank Leah enough for her insightful and informative answers to my questions! I feel she has given some specific, easy to follow ideas to help you reach out to Millennials and hopefully, make them loyal wine buyers!

As usual, your comments and suggestions are encouraged!!!