Blogging and Social Media for Wineries

 

"I don’t understand what it is."

Winemaking is a physically demanding career, so it’s no wonder that many winemakers haven't had time to explore internet marketing. Others may know what it is, but they may not realize it can be as important as more traditional methods of winery PR—like submitting samples to critics, making public appearances, and wooing wine writers.

Social networking tools can become your most powerful avenue for launching a new brand.  You can attract support, reviews, retailers, and customers.  Sure it's a new idea, but it's a movement that gives power back to small producers to craft and deliver your message.  The power of social media is being mined by boutique clothing manufacturers, GenX athletics, and the newest wave of energy drinks.  Why are you stuck in traditionalism? 

Let’s compare five different methods of winery promotion …

1. Critics

A positive review from an influential critic is one of the most powerful sales tools in terms of product ‘push’. But it can be a real crap shoot for a small, new winery that doesn’t have an established reputation. The results are unexpected and uncontrollable—you don’t know if you’ll even get reviewed, what the score will be, what the critic will say about the vintage as a whole, or how the competition will fare. Even if you do get a good review, the timing can be off—resulting in frustrated consumers pleading for a wine that is already sold out. Publication of the scores is a one-time instance. While the winery can continue to tout scores on its printed materials and website, the critic’s readership will only receive these scores once.

It is important to have a plan for garnering critical reviews. Good scores create confidence among three-tier buyers, help establish winery credentials and reputation, and justify pricing. Several critics have searchable databases of scores, which allow interested buyers to compare the scores and prices of your wines to other similar releases. What’s important to keep in mind, however, is that in planning your promotional program, you have no control over the message or the timing of critical publications. 

2. Major media – the wine publications

Like approaching a critic, this can be a dice roll for a new brand. There are hundreds of new brands popping onto the scene every year. Each of the major food and wine periodicals will publish issues only twelve times a year, and each issue will have room for only one or two stories about new producers. Once a story about your business has been published there won’t be any follow-up coverage as the media are constantly looking for the next new story and star. Again, this is a promotion exercise that can not be managed.

There are ways to improve your chances of gaining media attention—learning how to recognize a true story, timing, teaming, building a grass roots reputation and leveraging minor stories into a press campaign.

 

3. Outside pourings and appearances

Always an important—and effective—way to increase your exposure: events, festivals, winemaker dinners, marketing junkets, and distributor ride-alongs. Major events will hopefully result in a thick stack of retailer and distributor business cards; even a cozy winemaker dinner with a much smaller audience allows you to represent yourself and attract loyal customers and true fans. Travel, lodging, food, car rentals, promotional handouts and other expenses should be factored against the number of new customers when evaluating the effectiveness of an appearance. But a new brand should not be too critical of the overall cost effectiveness if you feel that you made a splash, gained some experience and promising contacts, and successfully created some awareness of your brand.

Now it’s time to do something with those business cards you brought home. You’ll need to call or email every contact—thank them for their interest, review your conversation with them, and ask for an order. Then what? You’ll want to put these contacts into a prospect spreadsheet and/or an email marketing program for regular follow up.

4. Blogging

A blog is an online journal, like this one. Basically, a blog features articles about the business, photos, and links to other sites. A blog can be set up to be interactive and welcome comments from readers at the end of each post. A blog can be enriched with a multitude of options—eCommerce links, widgets, polls, graphics—but the simplest definition of a blog is that this is your online business journal.

By creating a business blog, the winery controls the message—both the content and the timing. You can write about your vineyard, your cellar practices, your family heritage, your philosophy, and even share recipes and photos. You can schedule announcements of events, new releases, and wine club shipments. Your own coverage of your business can be very broad, and you are in control of regular and frequent messaging to your customer base. You are providing a site that welcomes interaction, and you have the opportunity to respond to comments immediately and publicly.

It takes time to set up and understand the software platforms, and it requires time and talent to write the posts, of course. Success also requires a commitment to posting and writing on a regular schedule. Readers will drop subscriptions to a blog that seems to be abandoned in favor of regularly updated sites. Nevertheless, winery blogs don’t need the fervor of the technology industry, where blogs are updated daily—winery blog readers understand that much of the work is being done in the vineyard and cellar. A winery blog can achieve an impressive readership with just two posts a month.

Blogs also frequently have a ‘blogroll’—a list of related or helpful sites that you recommend to your readers. As your blogroll list grows, you can ask for reciprocal links back to your blog from the sites you are linking to, and this creates a growing web of awareness and traffic to your site. It’s also much easier to convince a web writer to cover your new brand; you can submit samples to well-known reviewers and writers, create professional relationships, and build a grass roots campaign of awareness that you can then leverage into a promotional pitch to the major wine media.

Blogs have a dual attraction for businesses because they are viral (in a good way) and permanently visible. A really good blog post will continue to generate links on outside sources, which in turn will direct more traffic from those sites to yours. Two examples of really successful posts on the Dover Canyon Winery blog are How to Tell a Wine Geek from a Cork Dork, and the Inside a Wine Scam series. Both posts are linked in blogs and online periodical sites around the world.

 

5. Social media

Social media is part of the "Web 2.0" movement—which is a trend that utilizes increasingly creative and momentum-building ways to interact on the web. It includes sites like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and Digg. Social media is highly interactive, instant, and potentially viral (in a good way). It has many of the same advantages as blogging—consistency, frequency, and control of the message.

The interactive quality is ramped up. On Facebook, for instance, you can request links to "friends" or "fans" and people can also request that you accept them into your readership. You can sort your contacts into groups like media, retail, bloggers, and consumers, and send each group targeted messages. This is a powerful way to leverage readership of your winery sites: you can send instant messages promoting new content on your website and eCommerce site by making announcements on Facebook and Twitter. You can even include playable links to audio interviews (podcasts) and videos.

Another wise use of Web 2.0 applications is scanning the internet for mentions of your wine or product. Sites like BoardReader, BlogPulse, Ice Rocket, and Google Analytics will send you weekly emails with links to your winery mentions or online wine reviews, and let you know when consumers are discussing your wines on one of the many wine discussion forums. This gives you an opportunity to go directly to the site and thank the blogger, reviewer, or consumer; you’ll also have an opportunity to engage in discussions with a wider audience and establish yourself as a cool cat and an expert in your field.

Clever blog writing and social media management results in:

• self-generating contact lists
• opportunities to personally interact with fans
• increased visibility
• tailored promotions
• grass roots demand

What’s not to love? If you need a wine blogger and social media expert to manage your Web 2.0 presence, then you’ve come to the right place. Feel free to contact me at mary@centralcoastwineblogs.com.

Comments

[Richard Beaudin]

Mary .. in case it is beneficial to your readers, I recently did some research and surveys regarding the top 50 wineries on Facebook and Twitter (www.viralvines.com). It is interesting that none of the 50 on Facebook were in the top 50 on Twitter even though over 80% of the Facebook winners had Twitter accounts an over 96% of the Twitter winners had Facebook accounts. Keep talkin up the grapes!

[Mary Baker]

Richard, Viral Vines is a great site! Yes, even among my wine industry friends I see a lot of variation in preferences for one site over another. Single owner-winemakers with small brands seem to like Twitter as a real time, pocket-friendly interface with industry associates and fans, while family-run wineries seem to prefer the more predictable and visual environment of Facebook.

One thing I hadn't anticipated when I started CCWB was the number of people asking for social media lessons and coaching (which I now offer). There's a lot of awareness out there now, but the wine industry is a physical work environment, so individuals appreciate a "crush course" in using social media!