The Serendipitous Beauty of iPhone Use Cases

It seems not a day goes by that I don't discover a new use case for my iPhone.  My latest happened driving home from San Mateo.  It was 1:30PM,  Terry Gross was wrapping up her interview with James Cameron and I caught the last 5 minutes.  Having just watched the Avatar I really wanted to hear the whole interview.  Then it hit me. I could use the new NPR iPhone App to listen to it.  So I went to Programs - Fresh Air - James Cameron - Listen Now, connected my iPhone to the car stereo and VIOLA listened to the entire interview.

How cool is that?

When iPhone users meet, the conversation inevitable turns to "What cool applications have you discovered?".  That exploration is even more compelling as the apps can be downloaded and tried right there and then. It's hard to imagine how the iPhone challengers will ever catch up.  Efforts by Sony Ericsson, LG Electronics, Samsung and 21 others to create an App Store for all their divergent phones will be lost in complexity and fraught with political land mines.

As I noted in "Goodbye Laptop - Hello iPhone" the iPhone experience has changed the way I use computers in many profound ways. Now I can't wait for my next serendipitous iPhone-user meeting to learn another life changing use case.

Fun With Clouds

Today I found a fun service called Wordle thats lets you create a word cloud from text you provide.  There are a lot of controls that allow you to change the colors, layout and font.  I had a fun time creating this cloud from the CorkerClub whitepaper.

Can Social Media Sell Wine?

Steve Heimhoff asks the question "Has social media ever sold anything, besides itself?" It's a great question and has prompted a good discussion on his blog.

There is a lot of evidence that making social media a strategic part of a winery's overall marketing mix makes good business sense. I've been working to create a concrete ROI for social media's use in wineries and in my research thus far I've have found a lot of evidence that a dollar spent on social media can be much more effective than a dollar spent on traditional media.

According to Nielson online we trust the recommendations of friends (90%) and online reviews (70%) a lot more than traditional media (62% and lower). A good wine review from a friend is going to influence me more than a good review by a known wine critic. Forrester's recent Social Technology report found that the prime wine buying demographic of 35+ year olds grew their online participation by 60% last year prompting them to conclude:

"... marketers can now safely create social media marketing for people ages 35 and older."

In a recent survey by Viralvines.com on Twitter use in wineries, in answer to the question "How has your presence on Twitter helped your business? 96.4% responded that "It has helped us engage more with our customers"

Furthermore the conversation about a winery's brand is happening even if a winery chooses to ignore it and that carries a real risk of negative effects. According to Nielsen BuzzMetrics 25% of search results for the worlds largest brands are links to user generated content. This extends to niche brands as well and a bad review without the appropriate response can have long lasting effects.

Forrester's Social Media Profile Tool

Last week Forrester released this fun social media Consumer Profile Tool.

The tools lets you query their 2009 data by age, county and gender and shows the percentages of participants in each of their defined participation categories: creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators and inactives.

This reinforces the point that any social media strategy should start with a good understanding of your customers and how they communicate.

See Social Technologies Ladder for an explanation of the categories.

Thanks to Forrester for providing this fun way to access their data.

50% of Online Adults Use Social Media Networks

According to a new research report on "The Broad Reach Of Social Technologies" by Sean Corcoran at Forrester 1 in 2 US online adults are in a social network and 4 in 5 use social media at least once a month.

Interestingly the 35 and older group saw the most growth at 60% over last year with 38% visit social media sites regularly. In the 35+ somethings group with 1 in 5 are creators and 70% spectators. The conclusion:

"... marketers can now safely create social media marketing for people ages 35 and older."

This should be another signal to wineries whose primary segment is the 35+ that the time is now to invest in social media marketing.

Wooldridge Creek Winery Introduces Keg Wine

Wooldridge Creek Winery has become the first to offer their wines in kegs for distribution in restaurants. According to wine maker and owner Greg Paneitz the savings is considerable and the wine quality is higher. The kegs keep the wine fresh as opposed to old opened bottles. The kegs also eliminate the need for bottles, corks and labels saving cost and the environment.

Are You Ready For Socialnomics?

Some very enlightening statistics on social media in this video from Socialnomics-Social Media Blog posted by c.net. While social media is possibly at the top of the hype curve there is no denying that it is driving a fundamental change in how corporations sell and how people make buying decisions.