Wineries and Social Media Part II

Back in November I posted some thoughts on wineries using social media. I singled out Gary Vaynerchuck, but it seems that every wine consultant has social media advice for wineries.

I took a different approach. I am not a consultant, and I am not in the wine business, so any advice I have would be meaningless. Instead, I wanted to gather the thoughts of a diverse group of wineries to see how they were using social media (focused primarily on Twitter, Facebook and blogs). I sent requests out to several wineries and actually got quite a few responses. Rather than forcing this into a boring interview format, I am going to post their thoughts in a more free-flowing form. This is Part II, I have at least one more post planned, although I may try for a fourth if there is enough interest.

One of the things that repeatedly came up in my conversations with the wineries is that social media is important, but only in conjunction with other avenues of customer service. Adam Beaugh (Twitter), Director of Social Media for Jackson Family Wines, talking about La Crema Winery (Facebook):

There is a fundamental shift in communication going on right now, but I believe there needs to be a healthy blend of both traditional and social media. Shaking hands in the tasting room, responding to customer feedback on social network sites, monitoring user generated review sites such as Yelp and more traditional created content all help communicate the winery's story, passion and commitment to our consumer base.

Passion is another common theme. Winery owners/wine makers who are passionate about their wine, also seem the most likely to use social media sites. Yann Todeschini owner of Chateau Mangot (Twitter) also talks about passion:

The social media is a good way to explain our job, our passion to the customers. The wine is not only a drink, it's an historical and cultural product, and we believe in the passion we can transmit to our customers.
If we speak about US consumers, it's quite difficult for him to understand French wine, appellation, grapes variety, ageing..too much technical words…the social media are use to demystify the wine, to the customers.

Along, the same lines, Bob Lindo from Camel Valley (Twitter) sees Twitter as part of the strategy to tell people about their wines:

We don't do much marketing because we are overwhelmed with demand. However, our mantra is: make the best possible wine, win awards and tell people.

Boxwood on Facebook

Most Loudoun County wineries have a presence on Facebook, Twiiter or both. Some are managed/updated better than others, but it is good to see that most of them at least make an effort. Two wineries that are noticeably absent are Swedenburg and Boxwood.

Well, it looks like that has changed. The Boxwood Tasting Room has started their own page on Facebook.

Wineries and Social Media Part I

Rebecca Gibb has an article in Decanter discussing a talk Gary Vaynerchuck gave last week at Winefuture basically saying winemakers should be more involved in social media. From the article:

Gary Vaynerchuk, the relentless host of of US Wine Library TV, told the Winefuture conference in Rioja that wine producers are 'lazy', leaving retailers to talk to their consumers rather than doing it themselves.

He also slammed producers for failing to take advantage of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to communicate with their consumers.

I have not seen the whole talk yet, just bits of it (I'll post the full talk as soon as it is available online). Clearly, Vaynerchuck is generalizing, a great number of wine producers have blogs, Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. But, I question the underlying assumption that all wine producers need to have a social media presence. Rather than lurching from new idea to new idea it makes much more sense for wine producers to understand their customers and have a comprehensive marketing strategy.

If your customer base is a demographic that uses Facebook and Twitter and it will drive sales, then, of course it is a good idea. On the other hand, if there is no benefit, then why do it? Does Opus One really need to Tweet to attract new customers (there is an OpusOne Twitter account, but it is not run by the Opus One Winery)?

What I think is glossed over in the rush to move to social media is that there is a real cost in using these services. Setting up a Twitter account doesn't cost anything. But the person who has to update that account, who has to respond to questions, who has to monitor the brand on Twitter costs money and money spent doing that takes away from other, potentially more lucrative, marketing venues.

If you don't incorporate social media into your marketing strategy and just start a Facebook page or create a Twitter account you run the risk of creating a social media ghost town: accounts that sit there unused or not updated are potentially worse than not having any presence at all.

If you want to find a list of wineries on Twitter this web page is a good place to start. It is not anywhere close to complete, but you'll see most of the wineries listed on the page follow other wineries and so on...so you can expand your list pretty quickly.

The thing is, neither Gary nor I own a winery. So, while we can pontificate as much as we want, it boils down to what do the winery owners think. For the second part of this post, I am going to ask for opinions from different winemakers. Assuming any of them respond I'll put the opinions into a coherent post and get the perspective from the real experts.

I've added this blog to the Facebook blog network. If you have a Facebook account, I would appreciate it if you could click the link to the right and verify that I won this blog -- or something like that (not sure how this whole thing works).