I have cable at my house but I hardly ever watch it anymore.  Websites like Hulu and other sites where I can watch my favorite shows online have fed my need to watch what I want to watch, WHEN I want to watch it.  And, that is how I look at the online world in general.  I can now watch Days of our Lives at 2AM, while talking to others that are up on Twitter and while purchasing Christmas presents on Amazon.   I make up the rules.

This is the future of retail.   It is all about allowing your customers to customize what they want to read/watch/look at.  Social Media is more than just Twitter and Facebook ~ It is an overall change in the way we access information.  The brands that “get that” will keep our attention.

I would also like to add that I worked as a supervisor at Starbucks for over three years while living in San Diego, so I know what it takes to provide great customer service while managing employees.

Many times while working, I tend to twitpic images of what I am eating or drinking or talk about my surroundings.  Mostly I experience great customer service and while my drinks/food may not be outstanding, my overall experience is usually pleasant.

Then there is my experience at one specific place where I have tweeted on three separate occasions about my displeasure with an owner of a coffee shop in Santa Rosa.  I hesitate to call them out because even though I really hate what I have to listen to (I will explain soon), it is such a great location and it is quiet so it is a coffee shop I will be going back to again.  Anyone who lives in Santa Rosa reading this probably already knows which place I am talking about and most likely has had a similar experience.  And, if you ask me, I will gladly tell you their name.

Okay, imagine this:  You are sitting at your table, drinking your tea, eating a bagel at about 8:30 in the morning.  The cafe has two or three other customers on their laptops or socializing with each other.  The owner of the cafe is working from her own laptop at a table near by.  She gets up to talk to the barista and instead of taking her in the back room to discuss work matters, she proceeds to yell (yes, yell) at the young girl, telling her that if she didn’t do the order right she would write her up.  You look at the other customers who also can hear this woman yell and then look at the barista apologizing for her mistake, clearly noting that everyone is listening to the conversation.

Or, another scenario: One of the barista’s is 10 minutes late and the owner yells at her saying she was writing her up… Oh, in front of a short line of customers waiting to order their coffee.

Or, the owner yelling at one of the barista’s for leaving something in the food shelf out.

All of these obviously happened and all of these events could have really been simple matters that wouldn’t be a big deal if handled properly.  In this economy and this new media age, I am astounded that any small business owner thinks that yelling at their employees is a good idea.  In any era it is not good business practice, but with inventions like wifi, Twitter, blogs and Yelp, I am even more in shock.

Employees are usually the first contact that a customer has with a brand.  The servers and tasting room staff and sales people are the people that create an experience for the customer and they are also your best Word of Mouth advocates because they talk about their job to their friends and family, thus bringing in customers that already have a connection with the brand, which means that they will possibly tell their friends and so on and so on.   Why would anyone want to mistreat the people who can make our break your business?

Second, the internet has allowed me to voice my own opinion of this restaurant though Twitter, turning away several people I have talked to about which cafe it is… Even if their Yelp page has 8 comments, all with fairly good reviews (all commenting on the new decor) it is the repeat customers that  make a coffee shop or restaurant stay open.

Anyways, now that I am done with my rant on mistreating your employees, I will end it on a high note.  For restaurants or anyone in the customer service industry, the Food Channel has a few words on building your brand by connecting with your customers.  Also, I just came across an awesome blog called ALL THINGS WOM and their latest blog post on a hamburger joint called Mighty Fine Hamburgers in Austin, TX gave me hope that some small business people still do have the common sense to treat their employees and customers with respect.

We are traveling around the United States, conducing interviews with members of Generation Y that are over the legal drinking age (aka people 21-33).  The project is an attempt to get into their heads and find out what goes on up there when they go to purchase wine or beer at the store. To truly do a study, unlike any other, that focuses on the next generation of wine/beer drinkers.

This first leg of the project takes us from Tampa, through NOLA, Houston & Austin, TX, Southern New Mexico, Phoenix, LA and back up to Northern California — aka The South!

But, you can read all about that here: http://www.projectyine.com.

See you all in a city near you!

Like any disruptive innovation, social media has come at a time when everything in our lives — online and offline — has changed so dramatically. We could almost document the rise of social media over the past 18 months of turbulence in the US and abroad. So it’s no coincidence that social media will become the marketing be-all as we kick off a new decade: social media will be to 2010 what email was to 2000.

We’re starting this journey and mapping out a new course, making it up as we go along, friending each other — PR and Social Media — until we get it right. There are many lessons to be learned and like anything new, there are bound to be mistakes. Practice, after all, makes perfect. Companies big or small are not immune to public ridicule in having “tweeted” out of line or handled a social media crisis poorly. Corporate Tweeting now comes with a 25-page “how to” manual. PR companies, digital marketers and corporate Tweeters – we are bound to mess up along way. The point is that most of us simply don’t know until we try.

The article as a whole is a good one to read for any PR/Marketing person working at for a brand or at an agency getting into Social Media Marketing.  And, yes I am taking just one of the many points that author, Vanessa Horwell brought up.  But I think it is a valid  thought to bring up the idea that social media is NOT the marketing be-all.

It is not.

It is still just as much about the message as it is about the medium.  Social Media is a buzz worthy word, but it is a tool.  A simple and fun tool, yes.  But still — it is only a tool to get your message across.

As soon as people see them like this, the sooner Social Media won’t seem as scary to brands as it once was.

Below is a copy of the speech I wrote up…  I always have to write something down twice to remember it, so this was my “practice” and it may not be what I ended up saying during my 10 minute speech, but I will post the video of the entire session with speeches from the rest of my panel “rebel’s Agent Red, Tim Elliott, Evan Cover and Laura Levy Shatkin once it is up.

If anyone listened to the Facebook panel (post about this to come) then you heard Andrew “Boz” Bosworth talk about telling a story -  Well, wineries already have a story to tell and the tasting room staff  tells this story everyday.

Drinking wine is a social experience.  People love talking about wine and discussing wine online seems to be such a natural fit.  People are always talking about what they are going to drink or asking their friends for recommendations.  This is where you as a brand can use social media tools to make sure that bottle of wine that people are talking about or drinking is yours.

IT IS NOT EASY TO DO.  Creating relationships and influencing people is never an easy thing, both online and offline.  And it takes time.  You will see lots of sites trying to tell you to pay them and they can help take some of the time off, but honestly, nothing can replace an authentic connection – Just like in the tasting room.

What I did for the panel was to create 3 different time scenarios so you can see what can be accomplished depending on how much time is put into your efforts.

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.  Create a Twitter account and use Twitter Search to get real time results of what is being said.  Create Google Alerts for both your brand and competition to find out what is being said everywhere else (i.e., blogs, news sites, etc.). – You do not have to be ON Gmail to do this; you can get these alerts through any email address. (Side note: for wine specific social media monitoring, please use Cruvee, it is a great tool created by fellow panelist, Evan Cover).

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.

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.

Also, invite people to come into your winery or to a booth at a conference.  I got many emails saying come to my booth at this conference, but if one person actually tweeted me asking me to come check out their booth, I would have been there (and it isn’t just young people who are on these sites I would like to point out, all the demographics and studies done say that Millennial’s are not necessarily on Twitter and FB demographics are all over the board.)

Treat everyone who is in contact with your brand as if they are a wine writer, because now with tools like Yelp, Trip Advisor or easy blogging sites – EVERYONE is a critic.  It is up to you to make sure they talk favorably about your brand.   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.

Last, I want to talk to you about what can happen if social media marketing is an overall part of life at a winery.

Start off by creating a marketing strategy. You are not going to create a regular marketing campaign without having an objective and a strategy to meet that objective, are you? (Once again, this is where I have to remind you that social media is simply a tool to get your regular marketing message across – A social media strategy simply means that you plan out how you use these tools).

Second – Make sure everyone at your place of business knows about what you are doing.  You have no idea how many times I will go into a winery and they will not know that someone tweeted me about a special promotion in the tasting room for Twitter friends.  This has happened at both small wineries and big ones.

Have a sign in the tasting room (or conference booth) telling visitors to post pictures and comments on your FB Page, get your tasting room staff to tell people to do the same.  I would also love to see a winery who has a computer, open to visitors, in the tasting room.  This would be a great way for visitors to quickly become a fan on Facebook or follow on Twitter or to take a picture using a webcam.  Limit to 5 minutes and set online restrictions so people don’t take advantage.

Have links on your website – Make sure you can be found on Google Search.

PR practices also work well in the Web 2.0 world.  Press releases can easily be changed to blog posts.  Hold contests and events for bloggers and consumers, tell them your story and they will tell the world.  The best contests I have seen are photo contests or guest blogging contests (with in legal restrictions).

Also, one thing that I haven’t seen in the wine world is a brand that has partnered with a restaurant or another company to work with bloggers to create contests of their own.  Food and tech bloggers are always giving away new gadgets, why not wineries and wine blogs? (This part has been updated after the conference because of my discussion with fellow panelists Tim Elliott and Agent Red over the legal issues of a winery giving away wine or winery related gifts – So please check with your compliance department for legal restrictions on sponsoring or giving away items).

So, if you listened to the Facebook boys or seen any tweets with the hashtag #WITS, you will know that the theme of this conference seems to be “TELL A STORY.”

Just know that social media is simply a tool for your story to get out!  It may be the hot topic to discuss right now, but it will not work if you don’t have the content or the story to back up your efforts.

I now FINALLY can officially tell you that my new part time job is taking care of Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey’s social media efforts.  Congresswoman Woolsey has been a very liberal, outspoken representative of most of Sonoma County and all of Marin County for the past 16 years and is just stepping into the social media world to bring her voice to the online masses. You may know her from her recent arrest for protesting genocide in Darfur, or for her outspoken speeches on the war in Iraq.

The website WoolseyforCongress.com has been redone and officially launched with a few new features and the new Facebook Page is up and running.  Her Twitter profile has been saved too, but that is a possible future project.

The new website has one new addition that I am VERY happy to be telling you guys about, it is a blog we decided to call a Progressive POV.

Each week I will be talking to her or someone on her staff and then writing a blog post from my own perspective about the issues that she is tackling.  No, I have no prior political experience, but that is part of the reason that the team chose me.  They want an outsider that can talk about the issues from a fresh perspective…  Not repeat the same (sometimes dreary) political press releases that you see on other politician’s websites. You can see Congresswoman Woolsey’s explanation of what we are doing here.

I did want to let you all know that after my first promotion of this new venture and maybe to tell you about a REALLY cool online contest or two, I will NOT be talking politics on shanaray.com (and yes, I will still be a wine blogger and social media consultant).

Thank you all for dealing with me and my mysterious “gig” that I have been talking about for the last few months…. I am asking you all to help me out and become a supporter on the Facebook Page,  spread the word about what I am doing, come to a fundraising event or add my weekly blog posts to your RSS feeder…. Or most importantly, donate to the cause.

*shana.

People expect me to entertain them once a week, you know, other than on Twitter, Facebook and in person. I need to live up to my statement of being funny by accident and sarcastic on purpose by letting you know what is going on in my world.

So, as some of you may know, I have a huge “gig” in the works that I have been very secretive about over the past few months, well, the website is taking longer to go live then originally thought (note to all brands out there – websites usually take at least a month longer than the original launch date) so I will not be talking about it yet.

What has been going on in my world though has been a lot of writing to prepare for my new project, a lot of consulting jobs and a few speaking gigs, including being on an upcoming panel at the The Wine Industry Technology Symposium (WITS) in Napa on July 17th.  Of course I will be talking about wine and social media.

I also have gotten a tattoo for the Sonoma County Tourism Bureau’s upcoming Sonoma Wine and Food Tattoo contest. The video is pretty hilarious, but thankfully I think they were gentle on me and didn’t post some of the really bad faces I made.  Though, I made the mistake of posting them myself (and posting them here again).

Sonoma County Ink

I mean, they have a salsa bar… Come on now?!!?!

For more information please email her at sheana@vom.com!

See you there!

“Great link, but now you’re making me read more than 140 characters… grrrr.”

I decided to try to see if I could shorten the post enough to still be able to prove my point, but just in a shorter format.

Let’s see:

Should you trust Social Media “Experts” who has only been on FB/TW for a few months? No! (88 characters)

Social Media is about adapting quickly, being honest and most importantly – about COMMITMENT and PASSION.  Newbies may not know this yet. (137 characters)

Social Media is a tool that takes time, so why trust those jumping on the Social Media Marketing bandwagon & claiming to be “experts”  (135 characters)

Any others?

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!

—————————————————————————————-

“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?