I believe few see how this will get them more sales! As wine bloggers we need to create a clearer picture of how the two relate, what simple things they can do to achieve some success, and how it will help them survive what I believe will be a prolong period of challenges for them.

Thank you for visiting my little blog world. You bring up another important point, however, I consider targeting specific market segments an activity that a winery would choose to do only after getting established on social media. Baby steps here. Getting a presence is really the first order of business, but that too takes time. I will mention a couple of first steps in another post I’m working on.

Incorporating social media into existing marketing often fails because traditional marketing has always been more of a monologue where the producer sends out a message, targeted or otherwise, to the consumer. Social media is a dialogue between both producer and consumer and consumer to other consumers. Suddenly everyone in your social network becomes a potential advertiser. Most marketing plans don’t really take that into account. Being aware of the differences inherent in marketing through social media will enable businesses to address them in changes to or complete restructuring of their overall marketing plans.

-Eric

Thanks for visiting. You bring up a good point about who wineries should turn to for social media. One of the things that the Murphy-Goode campaign showed other wineries is how effective a good social media campaign can be for generating brand awareness, but more importantly, it brought out the “experts” in droves. Some truly had a following and obviously “get it”, while many others claimed to have the experience yet are barely visible on SM and lack any understanding of the wine business. It reminds me of how everyone became an “expert” in creating web sites several years ago. So many of these web designers had created sites for themselves or friends and family and suddenly, they were web experts.

There is no easy answer on how to choose someone to guide you through the social media maze. I requires some research on the who you choose as a consultant, knowing what you want to achieve, and a bit of luck in finding the right fit. One thing I have noticed about the wine business that is different from many other industries is the level of cooperation and camaraderie among people who are also competitors in the marketplace, especially among smaller wineries. This internal network of winemakers, growers, winery owners and PR people is an excellent resource for finding help with social media. Something to keep in mind.

-Eric

The only thing I would like to add is that social media, although time consuming and requiring a different approach than traditional marketing, can be very targeted. You used an example above about Boeing advertising on television. The example is valid in terms of what Boeing is trying to do – increase brand awareness. However, in social media there is the ability to be very targeted with messages. As an example, you can target only people of drinking age, who are female, who live in Oregon, and have expressed an interest in wine. Bottomline is that the effort in social media can pay higher dividends if correctly understood, incorporated as part of an overall marketing effort, given suffcient resources to ensure proper support, and finally, provides high quality content that is of interest to the targeted audience that ensures an on-dialogue.

Part of the problem is that so many people position themselves as social media experts that even wineries that are interested in it don’t know where to turn. Big marketing firms may really be clueless about social media, a lone individual may know exactly what each winery needs to do, but how does a winery choose who to ask?