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.

Good News For Facebook Page Managers

Here's some good news from Inside Facebook for all of us that manage Facebook Pages. The API for updating them is now open. This means that you will be able to update your pages from clients like Tweetdeck and Seesmic.

"Today, however, Facebook is adding full Facebook Page support to the Open Stream API. Now, Page owners can use applications like Seesmic, TweetDeck, and others to post updates and content to their Facebook Pages. All you have to do is authorize an application to publish on behalf of the Page, and you’re all set."

Here's the details.

Meeting a Company's Goals With Social Media

Jeremiah Owyang in his post "Usage and Experience Doesn’t Equate to Social Expertise" makes an excellent point that just because you know all the latest whiz bang tools and you have a zillion Twitter followers doesn't mean you necessarily know squat about how to define a social media strategy that will meet your company's needs.

We all had a good laugh at Ian Lurie's 10 Questions to Evaluate a Social Media 'Expert' but this only helps to reinforce Jeremiah's point as most of the questions are experienced based.

With "social media experts" multiplying like rabbits the skill they need to demonstrate is how their strategies and tactics have contributed to meeting their company's goals.

How about just one question: "Tell me how you used social media to help your company achieve its goals?"

New San Jose Airport

After bad mouthing San Jose airport for years, the new terminal is pretty nice.

Richard

Posted via email from Richard Treadway's Live Stream

Wine Technology Symposium Focuses on Social Media

I was disappointed that I couldn't attend the most recent Wine Industry Technology Symposium in Napa last week. With all the emphasis on social media I'm sure I would have learned a lot.

One thing that came out loud and clear is that the new social media technologies are ideally suited to helping the wine industry build successful brands. A good social media strategy starts with good fundamentals. If you're not having a successful conversation with your customers using traditional channels then social media will make things worse not better.

Jane Firstenfeld & Jim Gordon of Wines and Vines give a detailed review of the sessions here

Pete Blackshaw gives a great summary of the key discussions below.

Who's Recommendation Do You Trust?

Here is some interesting data from Neilson that clearly supports the power of social media.

"Ninety percent of consumers surveyed noted that they trust recommendations from people they know, while 70 percent trusted consumer opinions posted online."

As you contemplate where you spend your marketing dollars this clearly supports taking some (large) portion of your spend on traditional media and putting it towards building your brand in on-line communities.

When will Internet Access be like Electricity?

My recent stay at the Westin Kierland reminded me we are still a long way from Internet access being treated like a service utility. The Internet service at the Westin was particularly expensive and very SLOOW. Additionally the business center charged for use of their computers by the minute requiring you to submit a credit card to a reader that held it for the duration of your session. It cost me $5 to login and print my boarding pass.



Additionally there was no free WIFI access in the lobby. When I complained to the concierge I was told the reason... to discourage Internet use. Well it worked, I barely used it. But that attitude is bucking what is surely the trend to a more readily accessible Internet. Think of it; Charging for Internet access in a hotel is like charging for use of the electricity. Think how many complaints there would if a hotel required you to swipe your credit card to turn on the lights? Why should Internet access be any different?

Coming Soon: Access Your Data and Applications Anywhere

I’ve often thought the time will come when you will carry all your data and applications in your pocket to be accessed whenever you need on what every computer and connection is available. This makes sense when you think about it. You don’t carry a TV around with you; you expect one to be in your hotel room. So why should you carry a heavy laptop around when you only need the power and the screen real estate on occasion. On my recent trip to Italy I lugged my lap top along and ended up never using it. My iPhone was all I needed. But I didn’t need to create any graphic designs or write any code.

I look to Steve Rubel as being on the forefront of the traveling user’s work paradigm. He correctly points out we’ll be using more devices not fewer. There won’t be a single device to meet all your needs. Certain applications require large screens and faster, larger computers others don’t. But what ever your computing needs you shouldn’t have to have your data distributed all over the multitude of devices that run the applications.

As Steve points out:

” With PCs and desktops everywhere we'll be soon booting more off USB drives. Linux, Google Chrome OS, Mac OS X and Windows, etc. will all run off portable USB drives that we'll tote from PC to PC (or in Apple's case, Macs to Macs). The OS and its entire suite of applications will run off the devices which ensures your data stays yours.”

Steve uses a PC desktop at work, at home a Mac, on the road a netbook, and everywhere else an iPhone. With all his data is in the cloud the majority of the time all he needs is a browser.

The day is coming where all you’ll need is a smart phone and a secure USB drive that will have every OS and application you use available for use on the device they run on.

I’m looking forward to it.

Social Media Content Creation and Dissemination Work Flow

As social media tools evolve and I become more experienced in what works and doesn’t, the proliferation of social networks has created a need to seriously think through my use of the tools and how they fit into my content creation and dissemination process.

Steve Rubel has recently shared his content creation and dissemination process in this post.

I started using Posterous after Steve explained how it created a hybrid between real-time Tweets and slower cycle analytical blog posts. Adding Posterous to my toolset immediately got me into trouble with multiple posts from duplicate services feeding FB, Twitter, etc. so I had to layout the information flow and decide which service should feed which network just as Steve shows in the graphic above.

All this suggests we are reaching the point in the evolution of the tools and the experience of the users that would enable the creation of a platform to manage content creation and dissemination and make the process much simpler.

Posted via email from Richard Treadway's Live Stream

On-line Media Report From Nielson - Video Exceeds eMail

From Nielson’s Global On-line Media Report. The Audience for video has increased 339% since 2003 and exceeds the email audience beginning in November 2007.

Social Networking is increasing steadily and now exceeds web-based e-mail usage. Social media is changing the way brands are marketed.

“the world’s leading marketers are realizing that at the heart of the social media movement lies a method to transform the manner in which brands communicate with their consumers.”

Highlights of the report regarding the two fastest growing subcategories -- online video and social networks – include:

• The number of American users frequenting online video destinations has climbed 339 percent since 2003.
• Time spent on video sites has shot up almost 2,000 percent over the same period.
• In the last year alone, unique viewers of online video grew 10 percent, the number of streams grew 41 percent, the streams per user grew 27 percent and the total minutes engaged with online video grew 71 percent.
• There are 87 percent more online social media users now than in 2003, with 883 percent more time devoted to those sites.
• In the last year alone, time spent on social networking sites has surged 73 percent.
• In February, social network usage exceeded Web-based e-mail usage for the first time.

Posted via email from Richard Treadway's Live Stream

Posterous - The Hybrid Platform?

I recently found Posterous while reading Steve Rubel’s Micro Persuasion. In that post he explains how Posterous is changing how he thinks about blogging. Posterous provides a hybrid between the immediacy of Twitter and the longer cycle required to create a well thought out post.

You can easily link it to your other social media networks like Twitter, Flickr, Youtube and Facebook and also have it post to your blog. All this is accomplished through email. You can control which posts are published to which networks by where you send the email.

I’m always looking for ways to be more efficient and if I can send a single email that updates my blog, puts my pictures in Flickr, posts to Twitter and Facebook and is this easy to use then that’s a good thing.

Posterous may well become my hybrid platform.

Richard Treadway

Posted via email from Richard Treadway's Live Stream

Goodbye Laptop, Hello iPhone

Dinning alfresco in Tuscany
Taken with my iPhone

We just got back from 2 weeks vacation in Italy. Being a high tech marketing consultant I've always had my laptop on trips, so this trip to Italy was no exception. I lugged the thing through airports and train stations and I didn't use it once. So finally it's abundantly clear to me that all I need is my iPhone. It fits in my pocket and it does everything.

I used it to read about historical monuments, convert currency, check the weather, locate services, get directions, take and show pictures, play music, tweet, text, read and send e-mail, check news and markets, follow the Giro, translate English to Italian, oh and also make phone calls. It's really is true that whatever life throws at you "there's an app for that."

The one thing that's a painfully missing function is "cut & paste" and now finally the new release of the iPhone will have it.

Goodbye Laptop, Hello iPhone.

Jeremiah Owyang on Social Media Strategies

Jeremiah Owyang

Yesterday I attended Jeremiah Owyang's web seminar "Social Media Playtime Is Over: How Brands Must Focus In A Recession." Jeremiah has been covering social media and on-line communities for Forrester for the last year and he offers a unique perspective on the state of the art best practices. In his position as a researcher he gets a first hand view of both corporate practices and vendor product strategies.

Here are some important insights from the seminar.

• The opportunity to use social media despite the recession is NOW. While the media maybe over hyping services like Twitter (Oprah and CNN vs Ashton Kutcher) with 3/4 of the US based on-line adults using social technologies this is a trend not a fad. We can expect adoption to increase during the recession as more people are between jobs and tapping into free social networking services to create and enhance personal brand.
  
• The companies surveyed are increasing their spending on social media programs but as a percentage of their overall marketing spend it remains small as most programs are not strategic.
• Most corporate use of social media is experimental with no clearly defined best practices and with many efforts underfunded and sporadic. Over 60% of the companies surveyed have budgets under $50,000 that are not dedicated but come from previously allocated marketing and advertising budgets.
  
• Jeremiah then offered 7 tactics that can fuel experimentation. These included:
  
  1. Socialize content - Make your existing connect available to be republished
     
  2. Word of mouth with Twitter - Establish Twitter accounts as communication channels
     
  3. Aggregate existing content - Provide a unified view on syndicated content relevant to your audience
     
  4. Crowdsource your support - Empower your users to provide answers and content for your community
     
  5. Sponsor bloggers - Give your customers a forum to talk about your brand and products
     
  6. Sponsor events - Not only provide venue and cover expense but actively participate
     
  7. Let go with APIs - Provide APIs into your service to allow others to build Internet properties using it in unique ways.
     

Bottom line is that we must treat social media as a long term strategy with the appropriate metrics and measurable returns and staff it with resources dedicated to its success that include a constant improvement feedback loop as best practices evolve.

Welcome To Corker Club

Welcome to Corker Club. CorkerClub is dedicated to helping Wineries effectively use social media to strengthen their brand and engage their members in meaningful conversation through an on-line community. CorkerClub advises wineries and wine regions in the formulation of their social media strategies and offers marketing services ranging from social media training to building and managing custom on-line communities.

Over the last year social networking has grown considerably and the availability of, and participation in, on-line communities is expected. CorkerClub specializes in the effective use of on-line communities and social media for wineries and their regional organizations. CorkerClub’s full range of marketing services helps wineries get the most out of their social media strategies.

In this blog I will be posting about social media trends and how they effect the wine industry.

You can also follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/CorkerClub