Social Media Signs

Its been a while since I talked about Social Media for wineries on this blog. In 2009 I posted some studies and surveys regarding the benefits of what was then a relatively new trend towards inbound (social media, blogs, etc.) versus outbound (PR, advertising, email, etc.) marketing for wineries. For these I focused on two of the top sites - Twitter and Facebook.

What’s happened since the 2009 articles? According to the #2 fastest growing software company, Hubspot, inbound marketing has been transformed:

- ..”the internet has turned what used to be a controlled, one way message into a real-time dialogue with millions”

-  “79% of adult Americans use the Internet”

- “78% of internet users conduct product research on line”

- “10.3 billion searchs are conducted every month on Google”

- “1/3 of US consumers spend three or more hours on line each day”

this the tip of the iceberg….

I can’t imagine that anyone would argue that social media today has not made a significant change in the marketing landscape. However, does the landscape change based on industry? Does social media affect markets disproportionally?

While I am a strong believer in the benefit that social media can provide to wineries, there would seem to be some evidence that the jury may still be out. In a recent Grapes & Grain Opinion Panel Research Report  highlighted on Snooth, 54% of the respondents strongly disagreed with the statement, “Online social networks influence what wines I buy”. A further 20% “disagreed somewhat”,  16% “neither agreed or disagreed”, 9% “somewhat agreed”, and only 1% “agree completely”.

Does this mean that social media and inbound marketing are all around us but that it is ineffective for some industries such as wine? I don’t think so, although I will say that social media likely has more relevance to medium to large wineries. I say that because many small wineries with limited fully allocated production spend most of their time focused on their wine club and tasting room. They don’t have a critical need to continually find a volume of new buyers (although this will vary based on their ability to retain current customers who buy their wines).

So, has there been any growth for the Top 50 Wineries since my first blog, Survey results: Top 50 Wineries on Twitter? Well, let’s take a look at several from the original study: *

Winery:                                Followers 2009                 Followers 2011 (December 12)

Eaglesnest Winery                     18,848                                           33,061

Teusner Wines                              6,852                                           10,869

TasselRidge Winery                     5,800                                             7,637

St. Supery Winery                         5,476                                            11,511

Lynfred Winery                             3,013                                              7,176

*The number of followers will vary based on different sites. For this comparison, Twellow was used.

St. Supery Winery

St. Supery hired Rick Bakas a while back to spearhead their social media efforts.  Rick was their first Director of Social Media (now a certified sommelier and with his own company Bakas Media).

Lynfred Winery

Fred Koehler, founder of Lynfred Winery is considered the father of the Illinois wine industry. Lynfred Winery has a wine club and tasting room, but also a newsletter, local events and even a Bed & Breakfast.

EaglesNest Winery

If I look at EaglesNest Winery (Dennis & Julie Grimes), they are approaching tweet number 20,000. Besides Twitter, Dennis and Julie also have their own forum, email list, and continually work hard to connect and involve customers in the every day operations of the winery such as Holiday events (Halloween and custom labels for Christmas as examples)  As a busy vintner, I cannot imagine spending that much time trying to connect with current and/or  prospective buyers unless there was evidence that it helps to drive additional winery sales.

When it comes to marketing, social media may not be the top pick for wineries yet, but it is making some substantial headway.

(It may be time to update the original survey….!)

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I thought it might be interesting to revisit the list to see what has changed if anything since the initial research.  I also thought I would investigate additional tools to help in the search, but found this to be somewhat frustrating:

(NOTE: Data below pertains to searches done on 5 November 2009.)

Twibs.com: Searched on “winery” and “wineries”. On winery I got a list of 10, but the information (followers, etc.) were way out of date. For wineries I got one entry and it wasn’t even a winery but a site that follows wineries.

Twellow.com: Searched using the same criteria. For “winery” there were 788 matches. For “wineries” there were 222. However, in both lists there were Twitter users that were not wineries. In fact for “wineries” the first 12 were not wineries, but instead wine related only.

WeFollow.com: Again… same criteria. For “winery” there were 283 listings and for “wineries” only 13 of which only 6 were actually wineries.

Twitter search (advanced): Here I used the same criteria, but since the search focuses on tweets and not necessarily users (bio or location), in the list of the first 50 only 2 were from actual wineries with the rest referencing wineries.

Several other tools that focus on the user are relatively inflexible. As an example, on one site when searching on “winery” and then “Argentina” – no hit. But when searching on “winery” and “Mendoza, Argentina” – hit! Problem: the search tools are sensitive to exactly what has been input by the user for location. So if a user inputs “Bordeaux” in the location box and one searches say on France or Medoc or Pomerol, the listing will not be found.

To add another bit of complexity, these tools are updated at different times and change often so it becomes difficult to make comparisons, i.e., the same winery listing on the same day may have different numbers associated with the listing on a different tool. Most of the time the numbers are close, but sometimes (as with Twibs.com) the numbers can be off by a magnitude.

Note: Regarding Wineries on Twitter

1. As with the initial research, it is only possible to gather data in a “moment in time”. Unlike other mediums, 24 hours can make a big difference in the numbers (case in point, there were 359 updates to the numbers on the day of the research on WeFollow).  With that in mind, the numbers below reflect the data as of November 5,2009 on Twellow / WeFollow).
2. The numbers on Twellow and WeFollow did not match exactly, but were always relatively close and did not seem to skew the placement
3. In both cases  listed companies that were wine related (such as tour companies, etc.) but were not wineries were not included
4. Listings  are based on tags. Both the tag “winery” and “wineries” were used to identify the listings.
5. As with the previous study, the research focuses on the top 50 wineries, with specific details and recognition for the top 5

NOTE: Update Section!!

As mentioned above, because Twitter searches on Tweets and not account, conducting a search on Twitter alone is rather difficult. Unfortunately, when using other search platforms other than Twitter there is always the possibility that a winery will be missed if it has not registered on that site. For this reason I have setup this UPDATE SECTION in order to provide recognition for winery that has been missed. If you are a winery and you feel you should be in the top 50, please send me a note at richard@viralvines and I will add you to the section.

• Hahn Family Wines:  1156 followers (Thanks Philip for making me aware!)

Top5 Wineries on Twitter

The top wineries in the previous research (July 2009) were:

So .. how did these same wineries fair in the latest search on Twitter (as of November 5, 2009)?

Let’s take a closer look:

On WeFollow there are two lists. The first focuses on the most followers and the second on the most influential. (NOTE: I searched high and low to find a clear definition for what “Most Influential” means. I checked on WeFollow, DIGG as well as other sites and never did come up with a clear definition. Suffice it to say there are criteria perhaps such as number of tweets, status of followers, etc. that are factored in.) The search on Twellow focused only on the most followers.

So looking at the most followers, #1, #2 and #4 were consistent across both sites.  There were differences as you can see for #3 and #5. Looking at the numbers, this could well be an issue of when the sites update the numbers since often there are only minimal differences in the number of followers and so one updating before the other can skew results.

The #1 slot was taken over by Crushpad Winery with 63,455 followers. This was the largest change (3096%!) as Crushpad Winery was #9 on the initial research with only 2049 followers. This number no doubt is a partial result of the recent announcement (10/15/2009) of a relationship between Twitter and Crushpad to make wine to benefit  Room To Read, San Francisco, CA, a charity that attempts to build librairies and schools in developing countries.  Bit of a sidenote here: I have to give him credit.. when Michael Brill is not managing the company or driving the forklift (as he was doing when I was working the sorting table for a couple tons of Pinot about a year ago), he’s coming up with some innovative ideas and relationships.

This takes nothing away from EaglesNestWinery that slipped (kind of an oxymoron here)  from #1 to a very solid #2. Using the word “slipped” seems out of place since  EaglesNestWinery (way to go Dennis!) actually increased their followers by over 200%  from 8883 in July to almost 19000 in November. Dennis Grimes is always hard at work at the winery and working social media. I only regret I was not able to take advantage of some of the invitations to help out during the harvest.

The #3 slot goes to either Tercero Wines (7605) or Rimon Winery (7770).  Tercero Wines is a very small operation producing Rhone varietals in Santa Barbara (well done gentlemen!) and Rimon Winery is based in the heart of the Galilee Mountains of Israel producing wines from pomegranate juice. I couldn’t resist checking today (11/10/2009) to see if there were any updates. Rimon Winery is still showing 7770 followers while Tercero Wines is now showing 7788. I’ll therefore let the reader decide who is #3!

Continuing, the #4 slot from down under is Teusner Winery on both WeFollow and Twellow. Teusner Winery produces some very nice dry and sparkling wines in the Barossa Valley from Sauvignon Blanc, Grenache, Mataro, and Shiraz (just saw their tweet regarding the 2008 Riebke Shiraz in Adelaide Advertiser Top 100 for 2009 – well done!).

Lastly we have the #5 slot that goes to St. Supery  in Napa Valley (OK .. Rick did you have anything to do with this?…My guess is YES :-) on WeFollow and to Tassel Ridge Winery from Leighton, Iowa on Twellow. Again, when the numbers are this close the #5 slot could go either way.

Let me first say Congratulations to all of the above wineries!

Regardless of the results, the good news for all of the wineries (all of the top 50) is that between July 2009 and November 2009, they all increased their followers by at least 100%. My sincere hope is that the increase in followers was accompanied by an increase in interest, in sales and most important, profitability.

Here’s the complete list of the top 50 wineries on Twitter as of 5 November 2009:

Again … congratulations to all!

2009 Business Social Media Benchmarketing Study

I also thought I would take this opportunity to highlight some of the results of the 2009 Business Social Media Benchmarketing Study by Business.com.

Although not specifically focused on the wine industry, it does provide some interesting insights for those looking towards incorporating and benefiting from the use of social media.

Here are some additional highlights:

•  46% of adults now participate in social networks.
• Interest in Twitter as a business information resource is growing
• There is value in inter-relationships among social media
• Among the 1,197 respondents indicating their company maintained a profile on one or more
  social media sites, 80% maintain a Facebook presence and 56% have a company account
  on Twitter
• The average company has a presence on three different social media site

Notwithstanding the challenges and time constraints putting in place a social media strategy as well as execution for small to medium sized wineries, there is no doubt that social media activity can provide substantial benefits at relatively low costs.

As indicated on the chart to the left, engagement with prospects, lead volume and quality, brand reputation, and at the top of the list, revenue can be positively effected.

However, the study did also indicate that a company can over reach when it comes to social media spending too much time on too many sites, resulting in a less than stellar return.

Several other studies are planned and it will be interesting to follow up on these to get additional insights into how, when and where a company, particularly small to medium wineres,  can best take advantage.