Social Media for wineries..still struggling to confirm ROI

Posted by Richard Beaudin on Dec 13, 2011 in Lead Story | 2 comments

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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UPDATE: Wineries on Twitter

Posted by Richard Beaudin on Nov 11, 2009 in Social Media | 11 comments

Earlier this year (July) I provided some research as well as a survey regarding the top 50 wineries on Twitter that included the number of followers, follows, tweets, tags and location. The survey itself focused on how the wineries were using Twitter and what benefits if any they felt they were getting.

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.

The Dead Zone: What’s Your Perspective?

Posted by Richard Beaudin on Sep 9, 2009 in Wine Issues | 2 comments

There’s not a day that passes where you can’t find an article, blog, or story about the current recession and the negative impact it has had on a variety of industries. So its not surprising that many wineries selling high end wines (those selling for $50 or more) find themselves in the dead zone, so says a recent article on PressDemocrat.com. Likely more disconcerting is the notion that this dead zone may remain for some time to come as there may not be a return to the wine spending habits that were normal or customary just a short time ago.

This article as well as many others on the subject got me thinking: What are the consequences of not returning to our recent past and how will this effect the wine industry in the long run?

Well… I guess it depends on your perspective!

• If you happen to be a high end, well established winery that sells their wine for $100 and up (hey … maybe $500+), there may be little ill effect at all. Most of these wineries sell their wine only through their wine club or list, and often have a very long line ready to go. These are top end brands offering wines in very high demand with very small supply (some that come to mind: Screaming Eagle, Chateau Petrus, Grange, Vega Sicilia, Gaja, etc.). There will always be a market at the high end as there will always be those that can afford what they want at any cost.

• If you happen to be at the other end of the spectrum as an established bulk wine producer offering your wines at less than $10, you are in good shape! Based on the “trading down” that is taking place, you are likely seeing an increase in business. These are brands such as Bronco (2 buck chuck), Gallo, and Yellow Tail. These are the wines that are low cost, but wines that will inspire (you won’t have an epiphany from drinking them).

Neither of the above provide what I call good QPR (Quality Price Ratio): The first group may provide high quality, but at a highly inflated price while the second group provides a low price but seldom high enough character or complexity to warrant enjoyment beyond that of a simply quaff (drinkable but often very forgettable as well).

However, if you happen to be one of the thousands of wineries somewhere in between, this could be a major concern, especially if capital is short and cash flow is a big concern, as it is to the majority.

This is a capitalistic society and the main business of business is to make money or should I say profits  -  as much as possible.

• So from a third perspective I cannot fault those that  simply raised prices to what they thought the market would bear, even when their “product” often did not provide quality commensurate with that price. Sorry ..time to pay the piper – you won but now you loose.

• My main concern (fourth perspective)  are those passionate wineries that work to produce the best they can at a reasonable profit. These are the small and medium wineries that invest not only their money, but essentially their souls in producing what they love and then sharing that bounty with the rest of us.  I will sorely miss any of these wineries that don’t survive.

This is where social media and networking may help as a low cost means to promote these quality producers to help them survive through these difficult times. This was part of an article I read today in the NY Times regarding Gary Vaynerchuk of WinelibraryTV . There was a reference to the positive effect it has had on Sojoun Cellars (keep in mind a negative review could cause the opposite effect).

• While Mr. Vaynerchuk does not yet come close to Mr. Parker or the Spectator in his ability to move the wine market as a whole, his words do sell bottles. In an episode of Wine Library TV in February, Mr. Vaynerchuk raved about a Sonoma Coast pinot noir from Sojourn Cellars, a small producer.
•  
• “We took 500 e-mails and phone calls in 24 hours,” said Craig Haserot, an owner of Sojourn. “Nothing has put more people on our database and sold more wine than Wine Library TV, and it’s not even close.”

Note: here is a link to the Sojourn Cellars tasting episode on WinelibraryTV.

Now I’m not suggesting social media/networking will cure all the ills facing the wine industry (hardly), nor will it work wonders for everyone. However, it is another weapon in the marketing arsenal to get the word out so that more prospective customers will seek out these products, and if they are truly quality wines at reasonable prices, will return over and over as return customers.

So from the perspective of this wine enthusiast, amateur wine maker, and certainly passionate wine consumer,  I am hoping that the damage will not be too great for this last group as they are the future of the industry. (Oh… and my congratulations to Sojourn Cellars!)

Social Issues, Social Media, and Wine

Posted by Richard Beaudin on Aug 28, 2009 in Social Media | 0 comments

Since the birth of this Nation there has always been social disagreement regarding the purchase, production, and consumption of alcoholic beverages. Certainly in the early years the consumption of alcohol was safer than that of water, which carried multiple diseases.   What was consumed? Mostly distilled drinks were available as fine wine was not affordable and locally produced wine was of very poor quality often sweetened and fortified to over 20% abv.

So it is not surprising that opposing views were solidified – those whose life style included alcohol and those that strongly opposed it, all culminating in a failed  ”noble experiment” (Prohibition - 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act).

Although repealed in 1933, the results of Prohibition are clearly still felt today as these “Blue Laws” continue to regulate State by State, the purchase, distribution, and consumption of alcohol including wine.

Its with this backdrop that today’s social issues, social media and wine become interwined. How so? With regulations that often are State by State or even County by County, social media and networking bring these regulations to the fore, without which wine lovers might never be aware of the sometimes outlandlish patchwork of regulations that govern the industry.

For instance, laws that require sales of alcohol to not be within some particular distance from a church or school say in Texas, or laws that regulate the days and times of days alcohol can be sold, say somewhere in Alabama. One recently in the State of Maine allows  stores to offer a wine tasting, but requires that no children can be present.

Specifically, “An amendment to L.D. 498 by Rep. David Webster, D-Freeport, states, “Taste-testing activities must be conducted in a manner that precludes the possibility of observation by children.”

Dah, that’s about as logical as suggesting that if we refrain from all sex education in the schools as well as refrain from speaking about it in the home  that there will be no experimental sex before marriage. Yeah … right!

Well, if the sight of an adult tasting wine is detramental to our children, should it be that all restaurants need to have a special room for patrons to have their wine, beer, or mixed drinks.. from which they can run back and forth while eating. Or, maybe we ban all consumption in the home if a couple has children until the kids reach the age of 18 in fear that our children will become alcoholics as a result. (Funny that not all French,Italian and Spanish adults are alcoholics – after all, they grew up watching parents drink wine with dinner.)

Point of all of this: Social media brings social issues such as the purchase, distribution and shipping of wine  to the forefront as never before. It also highlights legislation that seems ignorant at best.

Beyond Google alerts, platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Wine2.0, as well as many others, provide insights into a constant barrage of wine related issues. Its not hard to stay informed today.

With the advent of online access and subsequent participation in various social media and networking platforms, I can only hope that the citizens of this Nation will educate themselves on the issues, and by doing so, focus more on laws that seek accountability for ones actions rather than trying to regulate behavior that of and by itself has no adverse consequence to others.

Survey results: Top 50 Wineries on Twitter

Posted by Richard Beaudin on Aug 7, 2009 in Social Media | 15 comments

50 Top Wineries on Twitter

UPDATE: The initial results were posted on 7 August 2009. Shortly thereafter, additional wineries completed the survey taking it from 62% to 68% response rate. All of the numbers in the survey have been updated as well as those in the slides. Please feel free to download the new set of slides.

For the most part, the additional surveys simply reenforced the initial results.

As with the earlier Facebook Survey, let me first take a moment to thank all of the wineries that took the time to respond to the 50 top Wineries on Twitter Survey.

I am happy to report that 68% of the wineries participated… a very high percentage for any survey! (Note: If more surveys are completed I will update this post)

Its one thing to gather data, but it is another to gain insight. As I continue to experience it, people in the wine industry are passionate about what they produce and the customers they produce it for,   and equally generous with their peers in sharing information and experience.

So … a very gracious Thank You! to those that took time out of their very busy schedules to complete the survey (glad I didn’t try this during harvest!).

Please note the following:

• The survey contained 10 questions aimed at gaining a better understanding of Twitter as a social media tool for wineries, the result of each is provided below.
• Many questions allowed multiple answers. In these cases, the numbers will not add up to 100.
• Several questions included the ability to “write in” an answer. These are identified below.
• There is a link at the end of this article that can be used to download a presentation with the results.

Question #1: How long has the winery had a presence on Twitter?

The majority have had a presence more than six months but less than a year (38.2%). Only one winery has had a presence more than 2 years.  14.7% had a presence more than one year and less than two.  Another 26.5% have been on Twitter more than three months but less than six months, and finally 17.6% have only been on Twitter for less than three months!

Question #2: Who is responsible for tweets and/or responding to messages?

Over 78% of the respondents answered that there was a single person responsible and a single person normally tweets and responds. Another 9% said a single person is responsible but multiple people tweet and respond, with an additional 12% having multiple people responsible who also tweet and respond. None of the wineries had a presence without establishing ownership. In one case a winery had multiple accounts (again single person responsible), and in another although there is a primary person responsible, tweeting is shared with this person, the winemaker, and innkeeper.

Question #3: Is your Twitter account part of your overall marketing plan?

The question is really whether or not the wineries view Twitter as an independent activity where “tweets” are done on an ad hoc basis based on what the winery might feel would be of interest to its followers, or is it more planned out in conjunction with their overall marketing objectives or plan. Here the response was primarily split between work ad hoc (50%) and work to a plan but also tweet ad hoc (38.2%).  The remaining 11.8% work to a marketing plan.

Question #4: How often do you tweet?

As you may recall, the initial data collected on Twitter suggested that in terms of activity where more than 25 tweets in 24 hours = high, more than 15 but less than 25 = med, less than 10 = low , and 0 = none, there were 5 high, 4 med, 22 low, 19 none. We took this one step further in the survey and here are the results:

• More than 25 times a day = 6.3%
• More than 10 but less than 25 times a day = 15.6%
• More than 1 but less than 10 times a day= 56.3%
• Less than 1 time per day =9.4%
• Less than 5 times a week = 12.5%

One winery said they “tweet in spurts based on the activity at the winery”.

Question #5: What do you normally tweet about?

This is one of those questions that included multiple answers so … here goes:

• Winery News = Top choice at 97.1%
• New Product releases = 67.6%
• Awards = 50%
• Questions of the Day = 11.8%
• New varietals = 26.5%
• Harvest news = 61.8%
• Tasting Notes = 47.1%
• Wine Industry News = 58.8%
• Blog = 47.1%
• Other = 44.1%

In terms of other, here are the “write ins”:

• Weather, personnel quirks likes/dislikes
• Tweets that engage, RT’s, reply to mentions, questions
• Life as a winemaker
• Misc. of Interest, Personal, Food & Wine, Food Photos
• pictures from around the winery
• everyday hapenings
• general musings, obervations, rants
• Personal stuff
• WBC (Wine Blogger’s Conference)
• Real estate opportunities and wedding events
• Music, politics, general news, Facebook events, TV, other items of interest

Question #6: What tools do you use to help you tweet and manage your presence on Twitter?

Again, a multiple choice question with the ability to add other non-specified tools. The choices and distribution were as follows:

• TweetLater = 14.8%
• TweetDeck = 92.6% (Top Choice)
• Twhirl = 0%
• Twitterfox = 0%
• Twitterfeed = 18.5%
• WeFollow = 48.1%
• Tweetscan = 0%
• Tweetstats = 3.7%
• Tweetbeep = 0%
• Twellow = 3.7%
• Twitterback = 3.7%
• Hashtag = 11.1%

Although not listed, these Twitter tools were identified as also being used by the top 50 wineries:

• Tweetie
• iPhone
• Seesmic
• UberTwitter
• Twitter search
• Tweepularity
• Twitter Karma

Question #7:  In your opinion, has your presence on Twitter been beneficial to the winery?

Obviously a very important question. The results are very telling:

• 82.4% said “Yes”
• 0% said “No”
• 17.6% said “Not Sure”

Questions #8: If you answered “Yes” to the previous question, how has your presence on Twitter helped your business?

The answer to Question #7 was important, but only when combined with Question #8 that attempts to identify what the benefit is. Again, I asked the wineries to check all that apply (in question #9 I asked them to indentify the top benefit only).

Here are the responses with percentages:

• It has helped to manage the winery’s online reputation = 67.9%
• It has driven more business to our website = 64.3%
• It has driven new fans to our Facebook fan page = 50%
• It has driven new followers / fans / interest to other social media sites that we have built or participate in = 60.7%
• It has helped us engage more with our customers = 96.4%
• It has helped us to hone our business to the needs of our customers = 10.7%
• It has helped to drive incremental sales of our products in our tasting room = 35.7%
• It has helped to drive incremental sales of our products in retail outlets and/or restaurants = 46.4%
• It has increased participation in our wine club = 10.7%

As in previous questions, I provided a space for wineries to write in a benefit if not listed. Here is their input:

• Wine Blogger reviews, recomendations
• Created brand awareness for our new start-up, boutique winery
• It has helped me meet key industry contacts and media
• Helped us connect with other wine industry people outside our area in California. Also, connected helped us develop a relationship with wine blogger and writers
• We have people ‘pop’ in the winery all the time now saying ‘I found you on Twitter’!
• Has helped us gain media coverage (print mostly)
• Mailing list sign-ups

Question #9: Looking at the answers selected in the previous question, what one benefit do you feel has been most important to the winery regarding your presence on Twitter?

• It has helped to manage the winery’s online reputation = 14.3%
• It has driven more business to our website = 7.1%
• It has driven new followers / fans / interest to other social media sites that we have built or participate in = 3.6%
• It has helped us engage more with our customers = 57.1%
• It has helped to drive incremental sales of our products in our tasting room = 14.3%
• It has helped to drive incremental sales of our products in retail outlets and/or restaurants = 3.6%

In addition to the answers above, two wineries added that “Networking with others in the wine industry” and “Has brought more people to us” as being among the top benefits.

Question #10: Which other social media/networking  sites do you participate in?

This again was a multiple answer question where the percentages will not add up to 100 as follows:

• Facebook = 93.5%
• Linkedin =45.2%
• Wine2.0 = 41.9%
• Open Wine Consortium = 38.7%
• Snooth = 32.3%
• Your own Social Media/Networking site = 16.1%
• Winery Blog = 61.3

Lastly, there were some comments indicating Ning and MySpace as other sites where the wineries participated.

Summary & Comments:

General comment:

As noted in my earlier post Wineries on Twitter? How Tweet it is!, none of the 50 top wineries on Facebook were in the top 50 wineries on Twitter even though over 80% did have a presence on Twitter, and vice versa even though there was a 93% overlap. In a recent Mashable post there was a large number of comments  regarding when to use Twitter versus Facebook. Based on those comments, for many individuals the common denominator seems to be Private(family/friends): Facebook – Public:Twitter.

However, for a business (in this case a winery), this doesn’t necessarily work since in order to be successful, the family and friends of a business need to expand over time to find new friends (called sales!). From what I can see, either platform seems to be beneficial to wineries in that although there was no direct correlation between the top 5o on either platform, in the subsequent survey with both groups the top benefit was essentially the same – “It has helped us engage / connect more with our customers”. With that said, I did see slightly more saying that increased business was a benefit on the Twitter side, but that could be somewhat skewed since a higher percentage of the top wineries on Twitter  participated in the survey than the top 50 wineries on Facebook (68% versus 26%).

Summary:

1. Things happen quickly in social media / networking. So it was not surprising to see that 82% of the top 50 wineries on Twitter have not had a presence for more than a year, with only 1 winery having a presence over two years.
2. As with the survey of the top 50 wineries on Facebook, all of the top wineries on Twitter have a person(s) assigned to tweet and respond. None of the wineries leave this to chance.
3. Again not surprising that 88% responded that ad hoc tweets are used since Twitter is a microblog that thrives on relatively short (max 140 characters) messages. However, the more interesting news is that almost half consider the activity part of the overall marketing plan and strategy.
4. Does a higher number of tweets ensure success? From the survey, it certainly doesn’t hurt, but its not imperative since 56% tweet less than 10 times a day.
5. So if you are going to tweet, what should you tweet about? It seems  the top billing ( 97% of the top 50 wineries on Twitter) tweet about winery news. Not surprising. What might be more interesting is that 44% of the wineries also tweeted about non winery news… information, insights, personal musings, conferences, etc. that they thought would be of interest to their followers.
6. Those that are new to Twitter may find it odd that there are so many tools / applications that have built up around the social networking site. TweetDeck (downloaded on the desktop) took the top billing followed by WeFollow.
7. I see this question asked over and over again – Is investment in Social Media / Networking beneficial? Although the jury is still out across the board, for the top 50 wineries on Twitter the overwhelming answer was YES (82%). Further, based on the type of benefits listed it would seem that there was ROII - a combination of Return on investment  as well as Return on Influence.
8. See comments above
9. See comments above
10. As with the Facebook study, a very high percentage of the top 50 wineries on Twitter (96%) had a presence on Facebook and vice versa (+80%). Why the individual wineries chose Twitter versus Facebook is unknown (see comments above). Over time it will be interesting to see whether one or the other platform becomes the primary focus of wineries and/or whether one or the other results in more benefits. In either case, leveraging of these and other social media/networking platforms is making a positive difference for wineries that are willing and able to make the investment.

If you wish you may download a copy of the presentation 50 Top Wineries on Twitter Download the updated presentation here.

Finally, a big THANK YOU again to those wineries that took the time to participate in the survey!