Social Media for Wine Marketing - Eastern Winery Exposition
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A 1 hour presentation I gave at the 2013 Eastern Winery Exposition on the relevance/ROI of social media, specifically targeted towards wineries and wine brands. Contact me for more info: Kris Chislett: kris@krischislett.com
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Social Media for Wine Marketing - Eastern Winery Exposition
- 1. Social Media Networking for Wine Marketing.
- 2. Kris Chislett • BlogYourWine.com - Online Strategy • MobileWineryWebsites.com - Mobile Websites • kris@krischislett.com • Cell: 904-472-1727
- 3. What is Social Media • Social Media is just the Internet. • One-on-One conversations online. • Social media is just “word of mouth”…. ON STEROIDS!!!! • Something you don’t have a choice in!
- 4. Why Social Media? • You don’t have a choice! • Products / services coming to find consumers. • Social Media is a requirement for brand growth. • The #1 website in the world is Facebook. • In 2008, Social media overtook porn as the #1 activity on the Web. • Good reviews and points alone no longer sell wine.
- 5. 92% of consumers around the world say they trust recommendations from friends and family. 47% of consumers around the world say they trust TV, magazines and newspaper ads. Advertising is Changing!
- 7. What’s the ROI of Social Media?
- 8. In Social Media…some …and some won’t! people will like you…
- 9. So Many Networks…Not Enough Time!
- 10. Hierarchy of Social Media Networks 1st Google + 2nd Facebook 3rd Social Search 4th Pinterest 5th Blogging 6th Twitter 7th Everything Else!
- 11. Define Your Goals • What are you hoping to achieve? • Are your goals realistic? • What is your timeframe? • Can you use other businesses as benchmarks? • Does it have a budget? • Will you need to outsource / hire?
- 14. The ROI of Social Media…
- 16. 1 in 10 Messages Should be a Sell Message
- 17. Social Search • SocialMention.com • Vintank.com • Immediately see who is talking about your wines / wine brand online. • Directly engage with your customers. • Starts at free, then jumps to $35 for more features.
- 18. Blogging • Not something to be taken lightly! • Abandoning a blog is BAD! • Posts ideally every other day, a minimum of once a week. • Built in to your existing website. • Keep posts short, sweet and full of images. • Google likes blogs!
- 19. The ROI of Twitter 7:18pm 7:19pm 7:21pm 7:23pm 7:24pm
- 20. Conclusion • The companies who survive will think digitally. • You have a limited control of your brand online. • Engaging/original/frequent content • Good points last a vintage, your story lasts a lot longer. • Don’t give up! • Invest in the future.
- 21. Thanks for listening! Any Questions? Owner at BlogYourWine.com Owner at MobileWineryWebsites.com Online Strategy Website/Mobile Website Design krischislett@gmail.com Cell: 904-472-1727
Notes de l'éditeur
- Welcome.My name is Kris Chislett and before we get started, I’d like to give you a very brief background into myself and what qualifies me to be speaking to all of you here today. I own and operate a couple of different websites relating to the wine industry.Firstly, BlogYourWine.com. This site serves as a general wine blog for myself. I’ve been operating the website network for the past four years, working alongside some of the largest wine brands in the country all the way down to some of the smallest. Essentially the website(s) serves as a mix of wine news, views and reviews, all written by myself. Some of the content is part of a paid editorial, some of it not.My next business is MobileWineryWebsites.com. This a relatively recent venture, although I’ve been designed mobile websites for a while. I’m actually giving a seperate lecture on this subject, which I also recommend you attend.Just to give you a little insight into the way I’m going to approach the subject of social media in the wine industry. I focus on the relevance. Just know that I know where you’re all coming from. I know what my audience is. I’m not going to recommend you do something if I don’t think it’s relevant to you specifically.I focus on the fact you’re on a limited budget. I don’t believe any of your last names are Gallo or Mondavi, so chance are that you’re on a restricted budget. It doesn’t take a marketing degree to help with any of what I’m going to talk about, in fact if you have a marketing degree it will probably hinder your progress due to you have preconceived ideas on how social media should be ran.In this presentation, and pretty-much ANY presentation I ever give, I will focus on the ROI, the return on investment. Again, I’m not going to recommend something if I don’t think you will see a return on investment for your efforts. I can’t say what that ROI will be and how quickly it will come, but there WILL be an ROI. And that’s why you’re all here right? You don’t just want to learn more about social media because you think it’s FUN to do. You want to get SOME benefit out of it, namely CASH.I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t. I’ve seen wineries try and fail, but more often than not I’ve seen wineries just not try at all.Why don’t wineries indeed all businesses not use social more?Top 3 reasons: Too busy, doubt the marketing impact, don’t know how to use it.Don’t feel bad if you’re not on social media, or if you don’t have a huge budget to throw at it. The big guys / wine brands are not better than you are. They might have the budget, but they can’t do any better of a job than you.In this presentation I going to give you an absolute blueprint as to how you should either start your social media efforts, or reinforce your current efforts…..and all of this in an accent which you’ll barely understand. But don’t worry! They’re be plenty of time for questions at the end!What I would also like to say is that….we’re all friends here. In the same way as talking about wine, there are no stupid questions, and in the same way as social media this presentation is going to interactive and require just a little audience participation. Nothing crazy. I’ll just need to get a show of hands so I know where you are at with your social media efforts …or not…and so you don’t feel left out, I’ll participate as well if it’s applicable to me.So let’s start now…can I get a show of hands for all the winery owners in the room? Any marketing people?Who else?
- First of all, please let it be known that I’ve grown to hate the term social media. The only reason I still use it is that everyone knows what it means to a certain extent. That’s why I don’t believe in social media as a term. Social media is just the Internet. Everything has become social media. Even news blogs that allow comments, because it’s essentially a two-way interaction. It’s another way of say “the conversations people are having online.” It’s Web 2.0.What scares businesses is that social media is interactive! It’s one-on-one marketing. The reverse of which would be a billboard on the side of the road, where you’re just taking a “shotgun blast” approach, and hoping that your message is heard. People can talk back. People can talk back! That scare businesses! Social media is “Word of mouth” ON STEROIDS!Seriously, how many people will disagree that peer reviews and recommendations have always been and will always be the most effective form of marketing? Even the most resistant people most resistant to social media have to admit that people have always trusted their friends opinions.Some of the networks I’m going to discuss, you don’t have a choice in. Your winery/brand/business has already been on a great number of the social networks, whether you know it or not. Whether you want to be, or not. For that reason, social media then gets combined with reputation management.
- So why social media?Again, because you don’t have a choice! People are already talking about you and your brand online…and if they’re not…that’s an even scarier thing!As a business you don’t have a choice on whether you do Social Media, the choice is how well you will do it!I talk to wineries all the time how are still resistant to sm… In 2010 I could sympathize. Now the excuse is a little thin.Social media is a fundamental shift in the way that a business communicates. Consumers no longer search for products and services, the products or services will come to find them.Social Media is therefore a requirement for brand growth, at least if you plan on being around for another 5 – 10 years.Why else social media?The #1 website in the world is now Facebook. A honor previously held by Google.In 2008, social media overtook porn as the No. 1 activity on the Web. You would think that people would have taken that as a hint! Social media is NOT going away. Sure the networks may change, but the Internet will forever be a social place.Good points / reviews are no longer good enough to sell a wine. Look at the number of 90+ point wines littering the flash sale websites. Sidenote: I have strong feelings about flash sale wine websites. From a branding perspective, they do nothing but hurt your brand. But that’s another presentation…
- Based on Neilson research from 2011, 47% of people surveyed say that they trust advertisements on TV, in magazines and in newspaper ads. A number that dropped by around 25% over the previous year, 2010.By comparison, 92%of consumers around the world say they trust “earned media,” such as recommendations from friends and family on social media channels.It’s estimated that people between 1,000 to 3,000 hear branded messages per day. With traditional media, that’s what you’re competing with.Social media is therefore all about being authentic. Social media brings in the element of trust…something which traditional advertising doesn’t have.
- Social media is not meant to replace traditional media.People still watch TV, but they fast forward the ads.Billboards…people are texting.Newspapers are onlineIn the car, downtown scenario…
- The ROI of social media. It’s a question that comes up time and time again! I’m always hearing wineries /small businesses tell me that “it’s not relevant to me” and asking “what’s the ROI?”Not that there’s anything wrong with asking that as a question of anything you’re investing time or money in, but it demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of whats social media and actually, what the term “ROI” means.I had a winery tell me that they don’t invest in social media, because the ROI isn’t as good as the billboards he’s doing. This particular winery owner told me that people in his tasting room are “ALWAYS” saying how they saw his billboard and therefore the ROI is better.So I asked him “What’s the ROI on your billboards?”“What do you mean?” he said. “I just told you. People are always telling me that they saw my winery on a billboard.”If I had to guess, I think it was probably more about the fact that he liked to see his wines on a billboard on the way into work. I think people forget that ROI is an ACTUAL number. It’s a $ figure. Return on investment. You can calculate it. The truth of the matter is that the ROI on traditional advertising is almost impossible to track without adding some kind of coupon or redemption code. Unfortunately (or fortunately as the case may be), they still haven’t figured out a way to get magazines, billboards and radio ads to talk back. At least with Social Media you are maintaining a dialogue with your customers, and know that you’re further reinforcing your brand by engaging with them.Throw up a billboard, pay for a TV ad, newspaper ad, radio commercial and what happens? It’s there for as long as you’ve paid for it to be there. Then it’s gone never to be seen again.Asking the ROI on social media is like someone asking me what the ROI on open the door when I go out to a restaurant with my wife. Why should I open the door for my wife? Quite simply, there is no immediate tangible ROI, at least not one that can be measured in $’s. Instead, what you ARE achieving is the strengthening of your personal brand integrity, and the long-term benefits of that will always far outweigh the perceived perks of a “quick sale”. The sooner that businesses understand that the better!
- A scary notion…but on social media…some people will like you and some won’t.You can’t just blast out a message and pray everyone will like what you’re doing. If they don’t like it, they’ll tell you. As I’ve already said, One on One marketing is here. It’s been here. No-one wants to admit. So many businesses initially want to resist it and some still do. I swear, I still talk to a huge amount of businesses who just think it’s a fad, that it’s for the kids and that it’s going to go away with a few years. It isn’t. The people that like you need…will, they need to be responded to, and their message needs to be spread via the various channels you have available to you. If they don’t, again, you need to talk to them and try to resolve the problem.
- So many networks, not enough time.No doubt you’re all busy people. I’m sure you’re like me in that you feel like there’s a there’s a new social network popping up every 5 minutes…and there are! There’s no way you can remain active on all of them, so which ones do you choose? Well, I’ve always been a fan of fishing where the fish are. If an app limits itself to iPhone only users, I ignore it until they make it for Android. Instagram for example. Sure you can check it out to see what all the fuss is about, but I wouldn’t recommend you spend any considerable amount of your time or money on it.Even if you want to try and get involved on as many social media channels as possible, setting up an account on say Facebook or Twitter isn’t hard to do. But that alone won’t do much to help your winery. It takes time and effort and you have to stick with it.
- So here we go. Probably the most important slide in the whole presentation!This is a list of my personal recommendations on where you, as a business owner, as a winery owner, as a brand, anyone with a bricks and mortar location, or not….need to be with their social media. However, I will rely on you to determine the relevance! If you can’t ship, do you need to be talking to people in Florida about your wines?Maybe…maybe not!My recommendations are going to be ranked:- How quickly they are to setup.- How quickly you will see an ROI.- Relevance to everyone, including small wineries / wine brands.- Amount of money needing to be invested to get started.Some of these I’m going to rush through faster than others.In at #1 Google+I’m sure I’ve already lost most of you who are already on social media and I’m sure some of you who aren’t!So let me explain….why is G+ in at #1? Well, because you need to figure out local before global.Google Plus used to be known as Google Places. #1 is the only point in here which PRIMARILY addresses your local audience. The other reason that G+ is in #1 is that when you when you search for a local business on Google, your Google + / Google Places listing will appear first. You therefore want to make sure your page has been “claimed” and the information is as optimized as it can possibly be. After we have fully understood the relevance of point #1, after we think we have it under control, and we are setup to receive email alerts every time a new conversation or review pops up for you brand, then we’ll move on to #2.In at #2, a little social network, you probably haven’t heard of it before…a small mom and pop operation…. but I’m going to mention it anyway…FacebookThis should be any huge surprise. Facebook dominates social media…but it doesn’t dominate search. Most of the time, people don’t go looking for your business on Facebook and Facebook Pages don’t even rank that well in Google Search. Why is that? Well, it obvious, isn’t it?!?! Google and Facebook HATE each other. Google OWNS search, and now they’re try to get into the more social aspect of being online.Ok, so we have our local pages setup, and now out Facebook page is setup and we’re posting frequently and talking to the people who are posting on our Facebook page.In at #3 social searchI might have lost a few of you with this one. By social search, I mean tracking conversations of your brand online. Every time someone mentions your name, you see it, and you are able to respond…should it require it. There are a bunch of different ways to participate in social search.In at #4 - PinterestShow of hands! Who has heard of Pinterest? Who maintains an active Pinterest presence? Who thinks Pinterest is mainly just full of people posting pictures of cats, how to do haircuts, and plan wedding that’s they’re probably never going to have? Me! Yeah….it kind-of looks like that on the outside. We’ll get to Pinterest in some more detail in a minute.Ok, so everything up to this point has been things that things that don’t take a huge amount of time investment. Everything after this point, everything else is just ancillary and I’m therefore going to speed through it fairly quickly. I’m not saying they’re not relevant, but you, in 2013, need to take care of points 1-4 before you’re able to move on…In at #5 – BloggingIn my opinion, every winery, in an ideal world should have a blog. The reason I say this is that it’s the absolute best way to tell the story of your winery and make that story stick. Truth be told, the only reason it’s not higher on my list of priorities for you is that it’s a big time suck. In at #6 – TwitterWho’s heard of Twitter? Who, as of today, is active on twitter i.e posting every day? Who opened a Twitter account, didn’t really get it and left it alone? Blogs are being taken more seriously as sources of traditional
- Before you decide to jump into social media, like a crazy person, it’s best to have a plan of what you’re trying to achieve. That way you know the direction you’re headed.This should be first and foremost. It’s also something you should keep reminding yourself of, not something that set yourself in the beginning and forget all about. - What are you hoping to achieve from being active on social media?Communicate more effectively with existing fans of your winery?Get new fans?Get more mailing list subscribers?Push people through your tasting room?Sell your wine?Making money via selling your wine / product can be one of those goals…but how are you going to achieve it?If you just walked up to someone in the street and “Said buy this”…what would they do? They’d punch you in the face.- Are the goals you’ve set for yourself realistic?It’s ok to say your only goal is to sell more wine, but how are you going to achieve that?It’s ok to say your only goal is to get more people through your tasting room, but how are you going to achieve that?- What is your timeframe for achieving these goals?Are you looking to get another 100 people on your mailing list within 6 months? That’s ok, but you need to make sure you are setting goals along the way. If something isn’t working after 1 month do you need to change you tactic and try a different method?- Does it have a budget?Yes. It HAS to have a budget. It might not be in the form of throwing your money at Facebook advertising. Your time is money. If you’re going to be doing your own social media, you need to work out what your hourly rate is and factor that in. Could you be doing something else that If you’re the winery owner, and you’re doing your own social media, maybe it’s the same as the General Manager of a restaurant working a few nights a week as the busboy, when in fact it would actually save money to hire someone, so that you can be used elsewhere in the operation. - Will you need to outsource / hire?I can’t answer this for you. Maybe you will, maybe you won’t. Chances are though if you’re in this class, you might at least need a little help “behind the scenes.”
- Google + is one of the newer social networks, though obviously Google has been around for quite a while. Google + was launched in June 2011. Don’t think about G+ as a social network, at least at first, but instead as of a “social layer.” Got that? It’s a social layer! No, first time I heard it I was thinking “Hmmm…cool term…I don’t know what it means…but I like it.” Essentially what a “social layer” means is that it ties together all the Google networks i.e. YouTube, Search, Google Calendar, Gmail, Google Maps, Picasa etc. Google + tie these all together and integrates with them.Sure, there’s a social networking aspect to it, but Google Plus is really Google’s version of Google. It’s the groundwork for a level of search quality difficult to fathom based on what we know today. The point is, once Google Plus has every blogger, every small business, lots of gamers, lots of YouTubers, etc., actively using the product, they will continue to use all that new data to make even more of their products more awesome.As soon as Google + launched I knew it was going to be huge. I can’t say I’m right all the time…and I still haven’t been proven 100% right on this one. People called me crazy. They still do.It’s undeniable, if someone if using a search engine, there’s a very good chance that it’s Google. It’s the most popular search engine in the world. They own the majority of search results on the web, and also have a huge influence on the way businesses are displayed. Google essentially has the power to make or break a business sheerly based on how they rank in search.Google + connects the dots (or at least has the potential to) for the search giant. If they can make it work, there are limitless opportunities for businesses which are opened up. I’m not too sure if it will grow to the same size as Facebook as a social network alone, but I think it will end up attracting a more mature audience.Of course Facebook isn’t going down without a fight! They are going to do everything they can to stop you from transitioning all of your photos and friends from its platform over onto Google +. As just one sign that Facebook fears the mighty Google, they quickly blocked contact uploads from Gmail, so that you can’t search your email contacts to discover which of your friends are on Facebook. A petty move I thought, but maybe it’s just one sign that Zuckerberg is fearing the inevitable…So, going back to G+ in this image…Google is starting to have the last laugh.
- Google +This is what a place page looks like on Google +, previously known as Google Places.Remember in the beginning when I said you don’t have a choice about being on certain networks? This is one of them. You’re already on it. And if you’re not, if you’re a business that bases a large amount of your income on getting people into your bricks and mortar location you especially need to be paying attention.This is definitively what I was talking about when I said that you need to deal with what you have going-on locally, before you start going global.This is an actual winery page in Napa…for what it’s worth it’s one of the top cult Cabs coming out of Napa.You can see all the info about the business … RAMBLE ON – there potentially can be more info in there, but this winery hasn’t done a very good job about filling it out.You can see the reviews down at the bottom and if you keep scrolling you’ll see more.You can see in this case the most recent one wasn’t so positive and it hasn’t been answered in over a month. RAMBLE ON – you have the option to publically respond as a business.The overlay that I just put in there is actually analytics that you can see from the back end. RAMBLE ON
- Contrary to popular belief, Facebook is not where Social Media begins and ends. I personally reach out to a lot more on Twitter than I do on Facebook. A 2011 study found that 47% of US wineries say that Facebook helps them generate sales. The other 53% either don’t understand it or are doing it wrong.With that said, Facebook is still the most popular social network and not having a presence, in some for on it, is a BIG mistake.This screenshot is from the same winery I used in the previous Google + example. A big name in Napa. This screenshot was taken in May of 2010 and they were only a few months into having a presence on Facebook. As you can see, they have 77 fans. They are now over 4,500 fans.I say ONLY 77 fans, but they still have people engaging with them as a winery, as you can see above.The problem here is that there is literally money walking out of the door in some of these posts.Let’s take a look at some ROI on Facebook.READ EACH POST AND no comment from the winery.You can see in this last post, this guy is looking to host a wine dinner using wines from this particular winery.Now, I’ve actually got some first-hand experience in this as in my time in restaurants I’ve hosted a few wine dinners from this particular winery. The sales on the night would easily reach over a few thousand dollars, and then you’d see another few thousand in sales of the wine used during the event. Not even including the fact that those 30-40 people in attendance at the dinner have a very good potential of being turned into brand advocates for the winery and would continue buying the wine for the rest of their lives, tel their friends once they heard the back story from the Sommelier or brand rep in charge of hosting the event etcetc etc. It’s therefore, based on what I know, it’s fairly easy to estimate that this unanswered Facebook post based on the price that this particular goes for, I’m guessing it was unanswered because I kept checking back and saw nothing to contradict that, could have EASILY cost the winery conservatively $15,000-$20,000. This not including the fact that this guy, if anything like me would have said “Screw it, if they don’t have time to answer my post, I don’t have time to carry their wines!”Last time I was in Costco, I saw the wines from this winery end-capped at DEEPLY discounted prices, something I’ve NEVER seen from these guys before. The moral here is that NO social media platform is an island. You can’t just set it up, throw up a few posts every now and then and hope everything will be ok. If people are taking the time to reach out for you, they need to be responded to AND QUICKLY! Getting back to someone after a month has passed doesn’t cut it. There’s no excuse for it, as every single social media platform has the option to ping your email if someone posts on your wall. That may sound like a nightmare, but if people are writing on your wall, tweeting you, +1’ing you on G+ it means that they care about your branding and what your posting. I think that deserves some mutual respect.We talked about the ROI of social media and how hard it is to prove. Well, here’s your ROI right here! It might not be as blatantly obvious as money IMMEDIATELY appearing in your bank account….but it’s certainly there!
- The one thing I’ll leave you with on Facebook is the concept of EdgeRank.EdgeRank is almost like going back to High School, with the cool kids getting all the attention and the nerdy kids no-one caring about, even though the nerdy kids can have just as relevant information.So what is Edgerank? Simply put, EdgeRank is an algorithm that determines which posts will go onto your Facebook news feed based on the popularity of your previous posts.So in other words, if you’re posting let’s say 3 times a day…but no-one is “liking” your posts….you’re the nerdy kid that no-one cares about. You’re going to have a low EdgeRank. You therefore probably should therefore analyze what you’re “talking about” online.This is a screenshot from my own Page. I have a couple of thousand fans on this particular page. The part that I want you to pay attention to in the line graph in the center of the slide. The 6,000 number is about on average how many people I’m reaching with my posts, through people sharing my content etc. The second number of 135,000 is a EdgeRank spike I had in November where my content was reaching 135,000 people, it was actually closer to 155,000 people in the end. To reiterate, the content I’m posting is reaching 155,000 people.That’s significant! So what did I post?
- This is it. It’s not my photo. I just something random I found, thought it was cool, posted it with the tagline of BEST. ADVENT CALENDAR. EVER!Now, what does this have to do with what I’m trying to achieve as a brand? Nothing. But you better believe that the content I post whilst I have this kind of EdgeRank will be highly targeting towards my brand. There is no hard-fast rule as to what you should post and how frequently, but just to give you an idea, I like to think that 1 in every 10 messages should be a “sell message.”A lot of people will disagree with me on that. What’s the point in posting if no-one sees it? The only other alternative is posting more sell messages and paying Facebook money to have them promoted.If you’re posting your hours of operation how many people are going to LOVE that post? How about adding a picture of the winery cat and then “Sam wants you to get to our tasting room ASAP! We’re open until 8pm today!”Needless to say, I could probably talk for a couple of hours on Facebook strategies and best practices…but I’m not going to!These are some of the images I’ve created, all relating to wine, none of which require too many Photoshop skills, that went viral. There is no reason why you can’t incorporate brands into these images? EXAMPLES!!!!
- I’m not going to spend very long on this….but “social search” is HIGHLY important to the success of your wine brand online.I originally started-off using socialmention.com. Simply put, all you do is go to socialmention.com, key in the name of your winery and it will have a bit of a think about it and then populate a list of every source that has been talking about your winery for the last few months. Of course, if your name of your winery is “Smith Family Winery” you’re going to get a lot of spammy results.Then came VinTank.com. Kind-of the same idea as socialmention.com, except VinTank is specific to the wine industry and has a lot more extra features.With signing up to a free account on VinTank and entering in all your winery info, you can immediately see all relevant online conversations and collect information on the people who are talking about your wines.The extra features associated with VinTank are that you can directly engage with your new and existing customers through their Social Connect Platform. You can connect your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and more of the most popular social web accounts for deeper engagement opportunities and connections.As I said, it starts at free and then jumps to $35 a month.
- Again, I want to move quickly over blogging, since it’s lower on my list of places where you need to be, but I also want to reassure people that start a blog on your winery website isn’t as hard as it’s made out to be…and it also have a lot more benefits than people think…but of course it takes some time and it’s not something to be taken lightly.Again, I would need at least a good couple more hours to go over all the intricacies and benefits of blogging…There are so many winery blogs out there that were started, and haven’t been updated in months. I would say that’s worse than not starting a blog in the first place. If you don’t think you can post at a minimum of once a week, don’t get started on one.My recommendation is that if you’re starting a blog, it must be built into your existing website. The reason being is that if you start blogging on an external website such as blogger or Tumblr, all the traffic will be going to that platform and not to your actual website. That’s BAD! If a blog is built into your actual website, it’s very easy to have people transition over to the rest of your winery content.First of all, the REAL purpose of a blog is not so that you can post 1,000 word essays on your thoughts on malolactic fermentation. It can be, but people probably aren’t very likely to read it all the way to the end and then share it. Your blog post for the week can sometimes be as simple as an image from you making wine with a couple of hundred words attached.From a search stand-point, Google likes blogs. Google like new content.
- This is an example of how I engage people through Twitter and this post will show you an example of the ROI of Twitter.What is going to follow is a few screenshots I took from Tweetdeck. This particular screenshot is from a column where I was searching for any time people have the words “wine” and “recommendations” in one of their tweets. Now I’m a busy guy…In this example, this lady was at 7:18pm looking for a recommendation on a Cabernet for a client….
- To conclude, the companies who survive will think digitally…but understand that social media is not the be all and end all of marketing.However social media cannot be overlooked if you don't innovate you're going to die Businesses need to learn to understand that you have limited control of your brand online. I know that’s hard to swallow, but if someone was to get online today and write something disparaging about your business online they can do. They can broadcast it among countless channels and you have very little power in doing anything about it. That’s why social search is so important. You need to know immediately as soon as somebody mentions your brand online, what they are saying and respondaccordingly. Great points or great reviews last a vintage but the story of your winery on business will last a hell of a lot longer.You need to understand that there is no cookie cutter approach to social media what is necessarily working for 1 company wont necessarily work for you.Resistance is futile. I hear it time and time again. We didn’t have any problem selling out of our wine this vintage. We don’t need to be on social media. We don’t need to advertise. Just because you sold out of your wines, doesn’t guarantee anything for the next 10 vintages. To think on such a short-term basis is insane! Don’t be disheartened and give up when you see a winery with 5,000 fans and you only have a few hundred. It means nothing and I’ll let you into a little secret. They bought them. They’re not organic.Invest in the future. Proving an ROI on social media is very much like tending to a grape vine. Vines don’t produce good fruit until the fourth or fifth year. The young fruit grows in year one, two and three, but doesn’t make good wine. This is how I look at building a brand online. If you nurture it, and let it grow organically, your online presence will produce fruit year over year.