ShanaRay.com

This year marks the second annual 30 days of creativity event put on by my friend @let5ch’s marketing agency, Carmichael Lynch based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The idea is that each day during the 30 days of June, each person participating should create something. Anything.  Just be creative.

Search Twitter for some inspiration and to see how creative people are getting.

A calendar was created to inspire as well, and at first I was not planning on sticking to the theme for today, June 1st… But then the rain clouds cleared a bit and I decided to ride my bike around the Russian River Valley after I visited for a meeting to discuss Single Vineyard Night earlier in the day…

This video was done with Hipstamatic, Diptic and iMovie apps on my iphone and uploaded right away!!

Friday, April 16 has been named the official Foursquare Day.

To those who don’t use Foursquare, we are a bunch of crazed stalkers who tell people where we are at all times.  But for those in the ‘know’ it is a great marketing tool for people and businesses!

After tomorrow, anyone who comes in contact with myself or any of my other Foursquare/Twitter Sonoma County friends will see Foursquare in action.    Hopefully we can even show those who disbelieve that it actually is a great marketing tool, one that businesses should be at least paying attention to.

We will be swarming the Brasserie Lounge at the Hyatt Vineyard Creek for snack and drink specials for first time Foursquare friends, drinking wine flights at Cellars of Sonoma and hanging out at Third Street Aleworks for some beer and appetizers.

I wrote about the Hyatt Vineyard Creek in my Sonoma County Online feature on my Two Five Media blog a few weeks back because they were the ONLY business in Santa Rosa to have a special deal on Foursquare  (Now, Third Street Aleworks and Cellars of Sonoma both have specials).

The official Twitter name for tomorrow is @4sqday and the official hashtag for the Sonoma County Wine Swarm will be ….. #4sqSR or  #4sqdaySR. I am thinking the shorter the better though.

So make sure to tag your Foursquare check-in’s and tweets with the hashtag!  If you are a newbie or want to learn more, just ask me.. I will be sure to be at one of these three places tomorrow!

More details:

• The Hyatt is trying to get a swarm badge, which means if 50 or more people check in, everyone gets a badge.  First time check-ins also get a free drink.  There will be other specials too!
  • You can earn up to three badges just by checking in – First-time users get the Newbie Badge, if we get 50 people to check-in, a Swarm Badge and all check-ins to the Brasserie will get the FourSquare Day Badge (remember, Foursquare changed the rules, so you actually have to be there to get points of a badge!) More info, click here.

• Third Street Aleworks is doing happy hour pricing ALL DAY for check-ins… Oh, and if anyone takes away my mayorship they get a free t-shirt! (Not that I am gonna allow that!) More info, click here.
• Cellars of Sonoma is giving away a free flight of their wines to anyone who checks in!  More info, click here.

See you in Santa Rosa!

+Shana.

I just stumbled upon a great social media white paper.  The 26 page pdf SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING INDUSTRY REPORT: How Marketers Are Using Social Media to Grow is written by Michael A. Stelzer of Writing White Papers.  The report surveyed  over 700 social media marketers, asking them open ended questions about the industry.  If you don’t want to read the entire thing, go here to watch a video that explains some of the highlights.  After reading all 26 pages, I do have to say that I am concerned.

I have been told time and time again that the niche service I provide is a much needed one in Sonoma County (and the marketing industry as a whole) and that I need to help bring the Wine Country into the Web 2.0 world.  With so many “Social Media Consultants, Guru’s and Marketers”  that follow me online, I figured that maybe some of them might actually have some experience with the subject matter that they claim to be an expert on.  According to the report, I may be wrong.

The report justified my own personal commitment to social media and gave me a better understanding of what I should expect (or not expect) from my competition (aka those social media marketers that claim to know it all).  I have been using social media for years and my time spent on my iphone or on my laptop is almost embarrassingly high.  Honestly, ask my friends and they all will tell you I need to have my iphone within an arm’s length at all time.  A debate on if this is healthy or not is another subject.  Apparently (a  positive and a negative for me), my competition isn’t as dedicated and knowledgeable on the subject as I am. Here, I do want to state, that I know not all new social media people can be put into this stereotype and I am sure their are many respectable social media newbies out there. Right now it seems like social media marketing is the hottest trend and everyone is trying to jump on the bandwagon.

Some highlights of the report include:

“When asked to rate their experience using social media marketing for their businesses, a significant 72% of marketers have either just started or have been using social media for only a few months. ” What?? I know the industry is relatively new, but a few months, come on!

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“There is a direct relationship between how long marketers have been using social media and their weekly time commitment.  For people just beginning with social media, the median weekly time commitment was two hours per week. However, for folks who have been doing this for a few months, the median jumped to 10 hours a week. And for people who have been doing this for years, their median is 20+ hours each week.” The longer you have been involved with social media, the more you understand that it does take a lot of time… You also know it pays off.

“The longer you invest, the greater return you are gonna get”

- Michael Stelzer

So, to conclude, I will never claim to know all the answers.  That isn’t what social media is about.  It is about trial and error…. It is about being able to adapt and react quickly, it is about being honest with your consumers and most important it is about COMMITMENT and PASSION . I am happy to report that I can proudly say I am capable of all of this….  Can a social media guru who just started truly say that?

Yes, I am a Millennial.  I may get made fun of by my fellow wine blogging friends for being young, but I am the epitome of a Millennial Wine Drinker (this also includes not taking the time to edit my posting to realize that I meant to say epitome instead of epiphany).  Okay, well maybe since I did grow up in Sonoma County my palette is a bit more solicited than an average middle American youth’s palette.  Then again, maybe not.  I judge wine on the experience that I have within the setting that I am drinking the wine (hence why this wine blog is about my experience rather than the tasting notes of the wine) and I will even admit to purchasing wine because of an animal on the label, a clever slogan or even a bright colors (Fat Bastard Chardonnay fits all three of these criteria)

Back when I was working on the Clos du Bois campaign in 2007 (see some of my work here) I did extensive research on Millennial’s and their wine consumption habits, coming to the consultation that if you do not have at least a portion of your Marketing Plan that talks to the younger generation then you are missing out on the big picture.

While we may not all be purchasing ultra-premium wines and joining in on high end wine club memberships, we are wanting to learn about wine and are a very passionate and social group.

We have left the toga parties in our past (some of us) and are going to and throwing dinner parties where bringing a bottle of wine and a knowledge of what to pair it with is in full regard.  We have grown up with advertising, so flashy gimmicks that I mentioned above are not the way to win us over.   We are eager to learn more, but of course we want our teachings to be fun and informative.

I don’t want to say that wineries must cater to us, but there are some things that you could do to embrace a younger generation (as well as others you may be trading down during this recession).  Lisa de Bruin had started with some good ideas of how wineries could work with wine bloggers and I think that same thinking could be applied to the Millennial generation:

Maybe a lower end wine club with deals for those entering in to their first wine club membership?

****Or maybe just a deal for one wine blogging Millennial who has not found the right Wine Club to be a part of*****

Picture taken by Em Mota.

Or a social media strategy that gets your consumers active in contests and promotions of your wine?  *Cheers to Twisted Oak Winery and El Jefe for showing us that wine can be a lot of fun

I believe that the brands that acknowledge Millennials will have a great long term strategy.

The Zinquisition said it best in the blog post about the Press Democrat’s atricle on how us Millennial’s seemed to ruin the Barrel Tasting for some older visitors, in Madcap Millennials Long Live the Queen

“Think how far your marketing dollars go when the crowd gathers at your winery and HAS A GOOD TIME and then spreads the word via their own circle of friends electronically!”