Social Media: Navigating The Landscape

Posted by Richard Beaudin on Jun 9, 2009 in Social Media | 0 comments

The landscape of social media is anything but straightforward:

1. Social media continues to evolve and change not only each day, but sometimes hourly. Unlike the photo above, social media and networking is not “written in stone” or constant by any means. Social network sites, wikis, blogs and microblogs, and bookmarking sites appear, evolve and sometimes disappear overnight.

2. As suggested in #1 above, social media and networking refers to a large number of potential activities on the net. Here is a brief list of the possibilities:

Personal Social Network Sites: These are sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn where like individuals can connect either individually or through membership in one or more groups.

Focused (Wine) Social Network Sites: These are sites such as Adegga, Snooth, MustLovewine, Wine2.0 and many others whose members focus on wine in general. Here too there are groups within these sites that focus on specific aspects of wine such as tasting, varietals, distribution, etc.

Blogs and microblogs: Blogs are sites that “talk about” a particular subject (like ViralVines.com!. )In the case of wine it could be focused on value priced bottlings, varietals, wines from a particular region, winemaking, wine tasting, etc., or a combination of one or more of the above. Examples include Fermentation, ThinkWine, Dr. Vino, and many more. There are also microblog sites, the best known being Twitter, where in 140 characters or less a message (tweet) can be sent to 100 or 100o or 10000 followers multiple times a day.

 Media Sites: These  include sites for video upoad and review (YouTube, kyte), photos (zoomr, flickr), or audio (BlogTalkRadio, graperadio).

Wikis and White Label Social Networks: Wikis (pbwiki, wikipedia) are communities where users contribute directly to the site. White label Social Networks (Ning) allow anyone to build or start up a social network.

Collaborative tools: These are sites that support online collaboration including planning, calenders, and email such as Zoho, Zimbra, and Google (tools), as well as tools to support online events such as Webex, eventful, and zvents.

The key to successfully adding social media to your overall marketing is:

• ensure social media is not a separate activity; it needs to be an integral part of your overall marketing plan and activities
• understand (assess) where you are and what you expect from social media (set clear and measurable goals),
• understand the social media landscape – use tools such as mind mapping to help
• decide on how much or how little to invest in order to achieve the goals (where will you participate and how often),
• and then measure results.

Finally, you need to revise your activities based on your measurements. For instance, if you have decided to engage with multiple wine social networks and you realize through analysis that only two are providing the results you have set, you may want to drop activity on those that are not performing for you, and focus on only those two or investigate other potential sites.

There I go again … talkin up the grapes!

Social Media: where do I start?

Posted by Richard Beaudin on Jun 9, 2009 in Social Media | 0 comments

Assessment

Before stepping into the social media landscape, its important to do a self assessment. In order to be successful, the adoption of social media  should be well connected and integrated within the overall marketing plan and activity of the company.

You may feel some of the assessment is obvious. It may be. However, it never hurts to review goals and strategies. Times change, markets change, and personnel change.  Timely assessments help to get everyone up to speed and marching in the same direction.

Here are some things that should be part of your assessment:

1. What is your primary business mission, goal or objective? Yes.. I know it is to sell wine, but be specific: How much, though what channels, in what timeframe, etc.?

2. Do you have a presense currently on-line? Do you sell your wine online or is this site primarily an introduction to the winery and its wines? Do you make any special offers on this site? Do you list or promote events?

3. Describe your target audience. Yes, if  located in the  United States it includes those over 21. However, is it babyboomers? Millenials? Both? Others? This makes a difference in social media since specific targeting is not only possible, it is key. Your target audience will help determine where you will focus or not.

4. Are you currently engaged in social marketing? Are you or some of your employees active online? If yes, how experienced and knowledgeable are you? How much time are you currently devoting to social media?

5. If you or some of your employees are online, which social media and/or social wine  channels do you participate in? Why?

6. Why are you interested in focusing on social media/marketing? Is it primarily brand recognition? Direct sales? Driving more traffic to the tasting room? Reaching out to wine lovers that are also Green and/or organic supporters?

7. If you are active online, what is working well for you and what is not?

8. What are your competitors doing online? How has it impacted their business – for better or worse? If you are online, are you and how are you managing your reputation?

9. What are the results you expect from engaging in social media? How are you planning to measure these results?

10. What positive impact will your activity have on your current and/or prospective customers? This is your ‘giving back’. Again, social media is not about direct selling.  Its about dialogue and reaching out to current and prospective customers.

After the assessment … you’re ready to evaluate how to navigate the social media landscape. To be successful, you don’t have to play everywhere. In fact, you likely don’t want to play everywhere.  Like any other marketing activity you need to focus, test, measure, and adjust.

There I go .. talkin up the grapes again!

Social media…ready or not?

Posted by Richard Beaudin on Jun 9, 2009 in Social Media | 0 comments

Whether a winery, wine retailer, wine broker or other wine industry organization, marketing is an essential part of your business.

You may not focus on anything and everything that might fall under the term of “marketing”, but be assured, if you have something to sell,  marketing is part of the business. For some it is a major part, for others more of an after thought, but for all a necessity to ensure sales and cash flow.

Social media (sometimes confused with or used interchangeably with Social Marketing) is simply another option at your disposal – another choice within your marketing options such as strategy, branding, and competitive analysis.  Ready to include social media in  your marketing plans?

If you have read some of the more recent white papers from Vintank or Silicon Valley Bank, you are likely thinking about this more seriously than you may have been in the past.

So if you are thinking of including social media as part of your overall marketing strategy, there are certainly a couple of aspects that you need to consider (there are more but these two I believe represent an initial review):

1) Approach

Traditional marketing is direct. Your messages whether in print, mail, advertising, or other, are focused directly on selling. Using social media requires a different approach. Here you are sharing and opening a dialogue with your current or prospective customers. The good news is that unlike some traditional marketing activities, you can be very targeted in reaching your audience. The bad news is that direct selling doesn’t work very well. In fact, it is counterproductive.

To illustrate, think of what goes on in your tasting room (an integral part of your marketing activity).  Here you are engaging current or prospective customers in some kind of dialogue. In some cases that dialogue entails discussion about the winery or the vineyard, in others about processing methods, and in others the wine itself. In some cases it may simply be the weather and how to get to the next winery.

If the tasting room patron sees the dialogue as positive, it may lead to a direct sale then and there, or it may lead to a sale from a local retailer in the future. The main point is that the positive social aspect of the conversation predisposes this patron to continue to buy or to become a customer of the winery. Social media is simply the ability to have similar “conversations” with a like-minded targeted audience across the web.

2) Cost

There is good and bad news here. The good news is that for once this activity will not adversely effect cash on hand or cash flow. Social media activity is relatively low cost. The bad news is that although it is low cost in dollars (Euros, Pounds, etc.), it is high cost in time and attention. Social media is not a one time activity such as an advertising campaign or winery special offer. It is on going, frequent, and its success is highly dependent upon relevant and interesting content.

So… are you ready for social media? Stay tuned… the next blog will talk about self assessment and how to decide whether making the plunge makes sense, and if yes, how to manuever across the social media landscape.