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!

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

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!!!

Explaining how Twitter can help you attract potential wine buyers, make your current customers more loyal and help your website’s Search Engine rankings — along with ways to gain more followers and some free tools you can download to make Twitter more manageable.

I have to admit, even though I have a Twitter account and have posted a bunch of tweets, until today, I really wasn’t sure what to do with it! I knew to send out a new tweet every time I posted a new blog topic or finished a new design, but other then that — what could I possibly post that people would be interested in? And then I read ‘Twitter Demystified for Business Users’ by Nancy McCord and Boy, were my eyes opened!

Getting to Know You

Twitter is not just about telling people what you had for lunch, its about expressing your personality and allowing your followers to get to know the real you!

Now I’ve met MANY of you small vineyard and winery owners and so know from personal experience what an interesting bunch you are! You come from all walks of life, a myriad of careers and life experiences and you use this rich personal history in your approach to the vine and/or wine making process. You want to share this with your Twitter followers!

So, if you were a history professor in a previous life and have decided to use your knowledge of the past to make wine using a little known historical technique, tweet your ideas and progress to your followers. (And since you can send in tweets from your cell phone, you can’t use "I’m never near a computer" as an excuse! )

Or here’s an interesting scenario I’ve run into a few times — a husband and wife team who’ve both worked full time jobs for a million years and have finally decided to make a leap of faith and start their own winery. Who WOULDN’T be interested in hearing about the trials and tribulations you experience during this grand adventure?

Tweet about how long you had to wait for label approval, what a nightmare it can be getting state shipping licenses or how your adult children won’t answer your phone calls anymore because they’re afraid you’re going to ask them to help trim vines!

Not only is this interesting, but it can also be fun and informative too!

Another thing I just learned about Twitter is you can tweet with pictures using http://twitgoo.com/. Just the fact that you ARE a vineyard or winery means you have access to a LOT of photo opportunities that wine lovers would find interesting. So, if you’re in the middle of bottling, take a picture of the line and ‘tweet’ it!
Your followers will LOVE it!

Power of the Millennials

Another reason to embrace Twitter is to reach out to that growing Millennial market we’ve all been hearing so much about. This is especially important to you small, boutique and micro wineries because according to Leah Hennessy’s phenomenal article ‘Where Millennials Are Buying Wine: Some Tough Love For The Wine Industry‘ most Millennials have NEVER been to a winery! They mainly buy their wines from grocery stores!!! So unless you’ve netted yourself a great distributor, you NEED to focus on Millennial Outreach!!!

"Talk to your favorite wine shop, encourage them to reach out to this age group.  If you are a winery and the shop carries your brands, offer to hold a tasting there geared towards younger drinkers.  If you are a retailer,  look into social media – even if you’re intimidated, all it really takes is a Facebook page.  Throw events, reach out to younger social groups in your area, get creative.  I know of a young BOOK CLUB in LA that has all their meetings at a wine shop with a tasting bar." (This is a quote from the Leah Hennessy article referenced above and be sure to think of Twitter as part of your social media repertoire.)

Search Engines

Search Engines (especially Google) do index Twitter (in fact, because the content is updated so frequently, tweets probably carry more Search Engine weight then web pages!) and so you want to be sure to link to your site in your tweets.

For example, if you’re offering a 2 hour Twitter sale on your ‘Willamette Valley 2005 Pinot Gris’, then be sure to link to your 06 Pinot Gris ‘Buy’ page. This way, when the Search Engines index all the various tweets your website will be ranked along with the keywords ‘Willamette Valley’, ‘Pinot Gris’ and so forth. (You can learn about more about Search Engines in my Demystifying Search Engines for Winery Websites post)

Getting Followers

Now that you’ve committed yourself to the Twitter experience (riiiiiiigggggghhhhhhttttttt), your next step is to attract ‘followers’. Here are a few ideas to make it happen:

• Post a link to your Twitter account on your website so visitors can immediately start following your ‘tweets’
• Make sure your Twitter username is on all your print materials.
• Start posting regularly!!!! (This is something I’m trying to do myself!)
• Be sure to respond to any tweets sent directly to you.
• Completely fill out your Twitter profile with a link to your main website and a picture (I won’t follow someone who doesn’t have a profile)
• There are TONS of wine enthusiasts using Twitter to express their love of wine — these are the people you want following you! So once you have your profile set up and a few tweets under your belt, use Twellow to search for Twitter profiles that involve wine and ‘Follow’ them. This alerts them to your presense and if they like your posts, they will probably follow you right back.
• Use the ‘hashtag‘ (#) in your posts. (I’m still trying to figure this one out, but I take it to mean words that are prefixed with a # are grouped and can be found and tracked back to you — and if I’m wrong, somebody PLEASE correct me
• ‘Retweeting’: Per Wiki Answers, to "retweet" is to repeat/quote someone’s tweet. Usually when you come across an interesting tweet and want to publish it as your own tweet so that people who follow you see it too – you retweet it. The syntax of your tweet should start with the abbreviation RT or the word Retweet followed by the username of the person who tweeted it and then finish with the content of the actual tweet. Example: RT @WineryMarketing Rachell is the greatest wine marketer of ALL TIME!!!!

A little nicety that can spread good will amongst new followers is to reply directly to each new follower with a little note saying something to the effect “Thank you for following us!”

Free Twitter Tools

Here are some of my favorite Twitter tools
and ones I’ve just learned about and plan on using regularly (I’ve listed them in order of importance — to me anyway

• http://tweetbeep.com
  Keeps track of conversations that mention you, your wine, your winery, anything — with hourly updates! You can even keep track of who’s tweeting your website or blog, even if they use a shortened URL (like bit.ly or tinyurl.com).
• http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta
  TweetDeck works like a ‘Twitter’ browser that allows you to organize the people you follow into various groups and then displays their tweets within each group to help make some kind of order out of what could very possibly be twitter chaos. I have the following groups set up: Wineries, Marketing, Technical and Fun.
• http://twitgoo.com/
  Allows you to add pictures to your tweets
• http://tinyurl.com/
  Shortens long urls so you can add them to your Twitter posts and still stay under the 140 character limit.
• http://useqwitter.com
  Qwitter emails you when someone stops following you on Twitter — it will even let you know what was the last post they read before they quit! So if you see a bunch of people quit after you posted "Robert Parker SUCKS!!!" you’ll know you have a lot of Parker fans out there and may have some serious making up to do.
• http://retweetist.com/
  A way to track your ‘retweets’
• http://twuffer.com
  Twuffer allows the Twitter user to compose a list of future tweets, and schedule their release.
• http://twitter.grader.com
  This is just a fun application that allows you to see where you stack up against other Twitter users. Twitter Grader measures the power of a Twitter user based on followers, number of updates, and posting frequency.
• http://twitterfeed.com
  Posts your blog posts directly onto Twittter and other microfeed sites.
• http://twitoria.com
  Twitoria finds your friends that haven’t tweeted in a long time so you can give them the boot!

So, are you sick of everything ‘Twitter’ yet???!!!!! Until I wrote this article I never realized how many things started off with ‘tw’ and am thinking of adding a few of my own: ‘twittercide’ (death by twitter), ‘twitterphobi’ (afraid of everything twitter), the ‘Twitter Defence’ (Twitter made me do it) and
‘twitted out’ (sick of twitter).

But as much as it may overwhelm you, or even if you’re already sick of it, Twitter has proven to be an incredibly effective marketing tool. So why don’t we all just bite the bullet (I’m including myself here), and give it a shot?

Oh, and while you’re here, could you help me out and let me know what kinds of posts from me you’d be interested in? As some of you may or may not know, along with my passion for marketing, design and helping small vineyards and wineries, I also have 2 teenage sons, a housefull of animals (including a pig and a possum), a co-dependent relationship with my pug ‘Pugsley’ and volunteer regularly with at-risk teens and non-profit animal organizations.

So, should I be tweeting about EVERYTHING? Or only things relating to the wine industry? Please check what things you’re interested in in the pole below (because who wants to hear about the pig getting into the pantry when all you really want is more wine marketing advice! Select as many answers as apply.

Explaining, in very simple terms, why Search Engines are important to you, what the rankings mean, how Search Engines work, choosing your keyword phrases and using them to improve your Search Engine rankings, and ways to check your progress.

Disclaimer

This article is by no means the end-all, be-all of Search Engine Information!!!! They are such complicated beasties it would be as difficult to try and totally explain them as it would be to explain the U.S. tax system!

Instead, what I’ve tried to do is focus the article on those of you who may not be very familiar with Search Engines and to give you an idea of how they work and what you can do to help your winery website’s rankings — without spending a fortune at a marketing company.

Importance of Search Engines and Rankings

We all know Search Engines are important, but you may be asking yourself "How do they effect me and my winery?" Well, believe it or not, people are actually using the Search Engines to look for new, undiscovered wineries and wines.

For example, I just checked on Google to see how many people searched using the phrase ‘buy pinot noir’, and was FLOORED! An average of 1,600 people search using that term per month! PER MONTH!!!! How do you think it would effect your pinot noir sales if you showed up in the first few pages of these results? (And to be effective, you want to show up in the first 3 pages of the results for the keywords you’ve targeted.)

But how do you get on the first 3 pages? Well, first you have to know a little bit about how Search Engines work . . . .

Explaining the Search Engine Process

How Search Engines find web pages and content to rank for their search results is they send out little computer programs called ‘web crawlers’ or ‘spiders’ who browse through websites on the internet and, based on certain words and phrases in the web page’s coding and text, rank it for the keyword phrases it feels are most relevant.

For example, if the ‘spider’ reads through your ‘Vineyard’ page and encounters the phrase ‘sustainable farming’ a lot, then it will consider your page relevant for that keyword phrase and rank you for it accordingly. Of course, this is a gross simplification of the process, and does not take into consideration how much competition you may have for these same keyword phrases, but I hope it helps you understand a wee bit about how they work.

So, what do you do with this knowledge? Why, make sure every page on your site is rich with the keyword phrases you want to be ranked highly for! Sounds easy doesn’t it? NOT!!!!

Finding Good Keyword Phrases

You may be asking yourself, "Why do I need to FIND good keyword phrases? Can’t I just optimize my site for ‘buy pinot noir’ and get ranked high for that?" Unfortunately, no. The more popular a phrase is, the more competition there will be amongst websites for space in those coveted 3 results pages I mentioned above. For example, below you can see that over 4 million web pages showed up in the results when I searched using the term ‘buy pinot noir’ — that’s A LOT of competition!

Unless you are pretty dedicated to being ranked for this phrase (and when I say ‘dedicated’, I mean with both your time and your money) your chances of showing up in the top 3 pages is pretty slim. So now what do you do?

You are going to have to get creative with your keyword phrases and narrow your focus. You want to use keyword phrases that are popular enough by potential consumers to be worthwhile, yet not so popular with your competition that it is impossible to make it to the top 3 pages.

So, Instead of shooting for ‘buy pinot noir’, maybe you should focus on ‘willamette valley pinot noir’ or ‘award winning pinot noir’. And maybe there are keyword phrases out there people are using that you never thought of! (We are so involved with the wine industry it can be impossible to try and ‘think’ like a consumer and figure out what keywords they would use to look for wine.) So, to help you come up with keyword ideas is Google’s Adword Keyword Tool. (This is actually for their ‘Adwords’ customers but anyone can use it.)

When you click on the above link, you are taken to the page where you can enter in the keyword phrases you want to use as a starting point. In the below example, I used ‘willamette valley pinot noir’.

After you click on ‘Get keyword
ideas’ the following page comes up:

What you are looking for on this page are keyword phrase ideas you can use and how popular they are (like I mentioned above, you want a phrase that is popular enough to be worthwhile in pursuing but not so popular you don’t stand a chance of ranking in the first 3 page results).

After looking at the keyword results Google gave me I found several phrases I hadn’t thought of! One of these is ‘willamette valley vineyards pinot noir’ and with it averaging 260 searches a month, this would be a great phrase to pursue for your website! You KNOW at least 260 people are using it to search with per month, and when I searched for it using Google it returned only around 50,300 results. This may SEEM like a lot, but with a little work optimizing your site you have a good chance of rising to the top.

Take your time and have fun using this AWESOME Google tool! You may be surprised at the keyword phrases that pop up and the more specific keyword phrases you find the better your chances of showing up in the top 3 pages of the search results.

Where To Put Your Keyword Phrases

Now that you have your list of keyword phrases, what do you do with them? I’m going to go over where you need to insert these words and phrases and once you understand how this works, either you or your web designer can put them into action.

Home Page

Search Engines consider your home page to be the most important page on your entire site! (This is the page that comes up when people type in www.yourwebsite.com.) Because of this, you need to make sure your home page is chock full of keyword rich text! So, if you have an intro page that only includes a graphic and/or Flash animation with a link to the rest of your site, you could be missing out on many Search Engine opportunities.

Spangler Vineyards is an example of a winery who knows what keyword phrases they are targeting and do a great job of making sure their home page is rich with them. ‘Distinctive Red Wines’, ‘Vibrant White Wines’ and ‘Wines in Southern Oregon’ are all keyword phrases used in their main header and are popular enough terms to be searched for in the Search Engines but not so popular they’re impossible to get ranked in. These phrases are also used in the text that follows which makes the Search Engine ‘spiders’ think this page is even more relevant for these keywords — thereby increasing their chances of being ranked high.

Keywords In The Code

Something you may not be aware of is that much like the wiring for your home is hidden in the walls, the coding for your web page is hidden behind the visible face it shows to the world. To the right is an example of the coding that makes up a web page.

Those of you using Mozilla FireFox, Google Chrome or Internet Explorer can view the coding by pulling up a web page, right clicking anywhere on the page (except on an image or flash animation) and selecting ‘View page source’ or ‘View Source’ from the window that pops up. This will open up another page that includes all the coding for that page.

Why do you need to know this? Because within this coding section are some very important areas to the Search Engines: your Meta Title, Meta Description, Meta Keywords and Header Tags.

Meta Titles

Meta tags are snippets of code at the top of your page that can be used in a variety of ways. You want to use them to give your page a Meta Title, a Meta Description and Meta Keywords.

Below is an example of the meta tags on my home page focusing on my primary keyword phrase of ‘winery website’

As you can see, ‘Winery Website’ is the first phrase in my title, and focus this even more by including in my meta description the type of wineries I prefer to work with. If you are wondering why I did not include my company name in the title or description, this is because the keyword phrase ‘winery website’ has a lot more competition for high rankings in the Search Engines then ’4 the Grapes’. And ’4 the Grapes’ is used often enough in the site that I rank high for my company name anyway — make sense?

VERY IMPORTANT: Be sure to reinforce the keyword phrases used in your meta tags on the rest of your page! If you were using the above meta tag examples for your page, you would back them up by having ‘Winery Website” in your page header and also use it in the regular text of the page. This way the Search Engine spiders who are browsing your page can see you really do have relevant content for these keywords and will factor this in during rankings

Header Tags

Header tags are the HTML tags used to code the headers on your page. The Search Engines consider <H1> to be the most important heading on your page and the higher the ‘H’ tag the lower is its importance.

As you can see in the above example, I reinforced my relevancy for the keyword phrase ‘winery website’ by including it in my <h1> tag.

ALT Tags

Alt tags are part of the image coding describing what the image is about. They are mainly for folks who have their images turned off or for the seeing impaired, but the Search Engine spiders read these descriptions too and you can use them for your keyword phrases.

In the example to the left, the alt tag describes this picture as "Abacela, a southern oregon vineyard" which will help their ranking for ‘southern oregon vineyard’

Other Factors That Effect Your Search Engine Rankings

I know I’ve already given you a TON of information, but I promise, we’re almost done! The Search Engines consider 2 other factors when ranking your site.

#1 is how often you update your web pages (especially your home page). You see, they think if a website is updated often then the site owners are ‘obviously’ on the ball and should have their keyword phrases ranked higher then a website that’s been sitting, unchanged, for months. (I always recommend to my clients they update their home page regularly with the latest wine releases, new reviews and awards and listing any events they will be having.)

And #2 is how many outside websites are linking to yours. The Search Engines feel a site that has a lot of links leading to it from other sites MUST be important, so they will rank this site higher then a site that has no other sites linking to it. There are many ways to get other sites to link to yours but here are just a few to get you started:

• You can ‘trade links’ with other websites. For example, set up a ‘Visit’ page on your website and ask the various businesses you want to include on this page if they would link to you if you link to them.
• You can start playing with social media websites like Twitter and LinkedIN and post links to your site there.

How to check your progress

For my Grand Finali, I’m going to let you know a little secret on how to track your progress in the Search Engines — Web Position. This program will look through the Search Engines you specify for the keyword phrases you set to see if, and where you rank. It is a WONDERFUL tool and is considered the industry standard software for Search Engine marketers everywhere. You may think because of this it would be pretty expensive, but you can buy the ‘Standard Version‘ for about $150 and they do offer a free trial. Below is an example of one of their result summaries for my own site:

I hope I haven’t completely overwhelmed you, but by breaking down all the different elements of the Search Engines I’m hoping you have a better understanding of how they work and some solid ideas you can implement on your site to improve your own Search Engine rankings.

Regularly sending out eNewsletters is a PROVEN technique to instilling loyalty in your site visitors and turning potential customers into actual customers. But, if you don’t already have a huge list of subscribers to start with, how do you go about growing your list?

Growing your Winery Email List

• Have your ‘Subscribe to our eNewsletter’ form prominently displayed on your homepage and, even better, on every page of your website.
• Add to your list the email addresses of all the people who have ever purchased your wine online.
• When people order your wine over the phone be sure to ask for their email address and include them to your list.
• Have a ‘Guestbook’ or sign-up sheet always available in your tasting room and on your table at winery events where people can give you their name and email address.
• When discussing your wines with an interested party, ask them if you can add their email address to your eNewsletter list.
• If you belong to a regional winery/wine growing group such as ‘Dundee Hills Wine Growers Association‘ that collects site visitor emails, ask the website administrator to send you a list of all their email subscribers.
• Offer the chance to win a prize by subscribing and be sure to include the price (so they understand the value they are getting), a picture and, if possible, testimonials of how wonderful it is.

  Some potential prizes could be:

  • a cork-screw
  • a tasting kit (aka tasting flight) Since you probably can’t send wine, this could include a wine opener, logo glasses, wine glass sheet along with notes and a pen (maybe even some cheese?)
  • a logo wine glass
  • Some of your branded apparel
• Give new sign-ups an incentive to join by offering something they can download after signing up. (and be sure to include the price and, if possible, testimonials of how wonderful it is)

  Some examples could be:

  • A collection of recipes that can be paired with your wine in pdf format so they can be downloaded after subscribing.
  • A wine and food pairing booklet in pdf format so they can be downloaded after subscribing.
  • Maybe a ‘how-to’ manual on hosting a wine tasting? (Which of course would be in pdf format so they can be downloaded after subscribing.

  I know coming up with this material make take you some time, but it would be so worth it in the long run because not only does it increase your eNewsletter sign-ups, but it helps to build brand loyalty. Even better, once these digital files are put together, it will cost you nothing for them to be downloaded!

• Use Twitter to collect email by:
  • Including something in your Twitter bio like "subscribe to our eNewsletter to get more indepth info"
  • Responding personally to new ‘Followers’ with a ‘Thank you for following me, if you want more information be sure to sign-up for my eNewsletter’

Ideas for Using Your List

You want to PUBLISH REGULARLY (weekly or monthly) so your recipients have more opportunities to get to know you.  Since I know how difficult it can be to come up with fresh material for a regular eNewsletter, something I’ve done to help me out is keeping an idea file where I can store anything and everything that could be of interest. 

Here are some things I’ve come up with you can use in your eNewsletters (I know some are pretty obvious, but I hope I’ve included some stuff that was new :

• Post any wine awards and/or good reviews along with a link to where they can actually purchase the wine (if you have a shopping cart).
• Include any new wine releases along with tasting notes, food pairings and a link to where they can actually purchase the wine (if you have a shopping cart).
• Any wine sales and/or special offers such as free shipping. (And I always thought it would be good idea to offer a special ’2 day sale’ just for your eNewsletter subscribers to see if it increases your sales any.)
• Let your subscribers know about any upcoming events.
• Offer seasonal packages.  Examples of this could go on forever (Christmas, Valentines Day, etc…) so maybe shake it up a bit with a little known special day?  For example, did you know December 5th is Prohibition Day?  This is as good a reason as any to offer a ‘Happy Prohibition Day’ package!



• Winery specific information
  • Let folks know when and what you are bottling — and include pictures!!! (Remember, you want your recipients to get to know you and what better way to do this then with pictures.)
  • If you use one of those traveling bottling trucks, maybe let your subscribers know about it and explain how they work (I know I was fascinated when I first found out about the traveling bottling trucks and was amazed how they fit all that equipment into a truck!)
  • Let them know when you are barreling down.
  • Let folks know if you are considering using any new techniques or equipment such as oak alternatives or screw caps — and ask their opinion!!  Make them feel involved in the decision.
  • Let your subscribers know about any new personnel you’ve hired or any new milestones you’ve reached. For example, ‘Our 10 Year Anniversary’, or ‘We’ve just added a new winemaker, John Smith, to our team.  He is know for his . . .’
• Vineyard Updates
  
  • Let them know when bud break happens and include pictures with captions.
  • Do the same thing for veraison explaining what it is and include pictures with captions
  • Of course harvest is always a great time (if you aren’t too busy ) to let your subscribers know what is going on.
  • Consider letting them know about canopy management, what it entails, why it is done and, as always, include pictures with captions
  • If you do anything special with your vineyard, include that in a eNewsletter. For example, Domaine Drouhin has a ‘green harvest’ during the summer where they thin a lot of their clusters, and Sokol Blosser is certified organic which entails a lot specific vineyard practices they need to do in order to maintain their ‘certified’ status.
• Unique ways to use your wine
  • Pouring your desert wine over berries for a sweet treat!
  • Instead of buying ‘cooking wine’ in the grocery store, suggest they use some of your wine and why.
• And then of course you can always throw in recipes to be paired with your wine.

What to Use to Send Out Your List

I recommend NOT using your regular email program to send out your eNewsletters — it can really tie up your server and the more sign-ups you get the more unwieldy it will be to handle everything.  So I suggest using Vertical Response or Constant Contact to send out to your list.  The reason for this is:

• They are very inexpensive.  If you plan to only send out eNewsletters sporadically, then your best bet is to use Vertical Response because they charge per email address and you can send out to about 1,000 emails addresses for only $15.  Constant Contact charges a monthly fee so they are good for those of you who plan to send out eNewsletters regularly.
• They provide the coding for your web designer to add to your website so every new subscriber will automatically be added to your eNewsletter list.
• They make it easy to prepare and send out your eNewsletters and you can even schedule them ahead of time
• And I saved the best for last!!!  They can actually track how many of your eNewsletters were opened and, if you included links in the eNewsletter it can even tell you what links were clicked on along with how many times.  This information is PRICELESS for figuring out how successful your eNewsletters are!

What Is A Good Open Rate?

For those of you who ARE tracking your eNewsletters, I thought I’d throw in this interesting bit of information I discovered today:  According to Donna Gunter of ‘Get More Clients Online’, "a good open rate is considered to be 30-40%, which means that between 30 and 40% of your list is actually reading your broadcast."  This may not seem like a lot, but considering how busy everyone is now-a-days, and how many eNewsletters they must get, its impossible to think all of your eNewsletters are going to be read by everyone.

As always, I would LOVE to hear your thoughts. So if you have an idea for winery eNewsletters (whether its growing your list or ideas on what to write about), please feel free to comment this blog or email me directly.

In a nutshell, you need to give your visitors a REASON to come back to your site.  So think about it — what makes you return to a site time and time again? 

The usual reasons are:

1. They have something you want (whether its a product or information)
2. The site is easy to navigate
3. They update their site regularly (so you know if you return there is a good chance you will see something new)
4. You receive regular eNewsletters from them about new products/information or a special offer

So how can you apply this to your own site?

Give your site visitors what they want

Most visitors to your site are looking to buy wine and/or find information about you.  So make sure your site ‘gives them what they want’!

Offer a quick and easy way for them to buy wine online

• Allow them to buy wine directly for your site (I’m planning a blog article discussing orderform/ecommerce solutions for wineries.  You can vote to have this be my next topic here)
• If you don’t want to deal with an online form or ecommerce (believe me, I understand what a nightmare shipping can be), then at least list and link to where they can buy your wine. For example, at Capitello Wines they have a link next to each wine where it can be purchased from AvalonWines.com.

Provide detailed information on your wines

• Include a label and/or bottle shot
• Provide tasting notes and/or technical notes
• List any awards and good reviews the wine has received.
• Offer a printable version of the wine information (usually in pdf format)

Tell your Story

• ALWAYS include an ‘About’ or ‘History’ page telling visitors how you got started and why you are now making wine.
• If you use any special techniques, have a unique set-up, or anything else of interest about your winery and/or yourself, TALK ABOUT IT!!!! For example, Mark and Marie Jurasevich of Noble Estate Vineyard make all their own wine using top-of-the-line but tiny equipment! So small, in fact, that during harvest Mark loads his beautiful Italian press using 5 Gallon buckets! What makes this so unique to consumers is by processing his grapes in such small amounts, he is able to control EVERYTHING that goes into them (no stray leaves, insects or bad berries).
• If you are using organic or sustainable methods, say so!  And maybe even explain what that is.

Make your site easy to navigate

Have you ever searched a site looking for a specific product or bit of information and it took at least 20 minutes to find?  If so, then you KNOW how FRUSTRATING this can be! So make sure you aren’t doing the same thing to your visitors.

• Make your navigation clearly visible (don’t hide it in a bunch of design elements) and easy to understand (don’t use ‘clever’ wording)
• Try to keep your main navigation under 10 links — otherwise you can overwhelm your visitor. If you have a LOT of pages, then organize them into categories and sub categories.
• If you have a lot of pages on your site, add a search feature and/or a site map

To see how intuitive your current navigation is, have some non-industry friends and family (maybe even trusted customers) visit your site and go through the motions of purchasing wine or looking for information. Once finished, ask them about their experience — what was good, what was bad, and what could be improved on.

This is especially important because we are always so familiar with our own sites that things we just automatically know, site visitors could be fumbling with.

Update your website regularly — especially your home page!!!!!!!

Show your site visitors you have a dynamic website by frequently updating your home page. Don’t know what to put there? Here are some ideas:

• List any wine awards and good reviews
• List upcoming events
• Add any new wine releases
• If you’ve hired any new personnel, include their information
• If you have a blog, list your latest blog title with a link to the blog itself

Besides your home page, make sure your wine list and event schedule stay current and get rid of past events — nothing makes you look more out of date then to still have an event listed from months ago!
If you’re concerned about the cost to have these changes done regularly, or if it takes your webmaster a long time to make changes, here are some ways to update your site yourself:

• If your webmaster coded your site using Adobe Dreamweaver (this is the industry standard web design software), then you can download and use Adobe Contribute (which works in conjunction with Dreamweaver) to update your site as easily as a Word for Windows document. (You will need to get your site information from your webmaster in order to set this up.) What is so great about Contribute is you can try the software free for 30 days, and if you want to continue using it you can buy it for only $199.
• Another option is to ask your webmaster about installing a content management system (CMS) onto your site. Once installed you will be able to login online and easily edit the text sections of your site.

Contact your visitors regularly

With so many places selling wine, you need to keep yourself in the front of your customer’s minds by contacting them regularly via eNewsletters.

With online eNewsletter companies like Vertical Response and Constant Contact, you can easily collect visitor emails and send out eblasts every time a new wine is released, to announce a new promotion, if you have a new event scheduled, received a new wine award, or any other reason you can think of!

By doing this, not only are you making sure your consumers don’t forget you, you’re also giving them a reason to visit your site and hopefully buy wine!