Breath(e) Media

About a month ago I was contacted by Joel Vincent from Vintank and Agent Red from the Wine Spies Below, both asking me to take Joel’s place (oh, Happy Birthday Joel) on a panel on Social Media Success for Wineries during the Wine Industry Technology Symposium (WITS).  I was not only humbled by the fact that they thought of me to take the place of someone I look up to in the industry, but I was also pretty nervous to speak in front of so many industry professionals.  Happy to say that the speech and sequential Q&A session were a success.

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.