The Winery Web Site Report

Lazy Sunday: Social Media

This is a bit long for a Lazy Sunday post, but since not everyone is interested in social media as part of their winery marketing program (Lazy Sunday being reserved for things which some readers may find less interesting), I'm leaving it here.  It's OK to read it on Monday.

Social Media is loosely defined as media which take advantage of user participation and user-generated content (blogs, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Flickr, wikis, Tumblr, Digg, YouTube, etc., etc.).

Why Your Competitors Are Keeping Customers and Gaining New Ones Through Social Media

has interesting details about a company that cut its advertising budget by 80 percent when the company turned to social media over traditional advertising.

I must also point to Tim Elliott's ACAN Media blog (a social media approach to wine marketing), Udi Barone's BeesAndWine.com (helping wineries use MySpace), Twisted Oak's El Jefe, who Twitters more than any winery I know, and the folks at Inertia who regularly blog about social media.

Donati Family Vineyards has a social media site in addition to their main Web site, created by MyVineSpace.com (the underlying platform is Ning, a Web-based roll-your-own-social media-site service).

Of course, CellarTracker may be the best example of a popular, wine-related social media site.  If you're curious about what real people (not critics, but wine enthusiasts nonetheless) are saying about your wines, CellarTracker can be an enormous resource.  Go to the CellarTracker home page and search for your winery (e.g. Emeritus) in the search box at in the upper left corner (under the CellarTracker corkscrew logo).

(Also, see my previous post on using Twitter to track people's experiences with your wine.)

If you're interested in the use of social media to promote your winery, you may also find this list of interest: What Blogs Should You Be Reading?

What is your winery doing with social media?  Tremendous boon or waste of time?  And if you're a winery on Twitter or Facebook or MySpace, leave a comment.

What's Your Value Proposition?

To determine if your winery Web site has a good value proposition, Rich Page suggests taking a look at your site from a visitor's perspective (yes!) and asking these three questions:

1. Where am I?
2. What can I do here?  
3. What should I do here?

More details in his post.  As I've written before, you've got to think like a visitor.

Rich also publishes a free Web site improvement e-book that's worth a look.

A Holiday Gift For Your Fans

How about a nice calendar with either photos or label images from your wines (and, of course, a picture of the winery dog)?  Easy to make, not terribly expensive, and (done right) a chance to subtly remind your fans about your winery every single month of the year.

 

It's also an idea that a winegrowing association could take up on behalf of member wineries to promote their region.  Of course, it might help to have fewer than 12 wineries, otherwise it could get ugly.

(idea from Paperback Writer)

This Could Have Been Your Winery...

Hats off to the smart marketers at Kendall-Jackson.  They just got a bundle of free publicity for their wines (just Google kendall-jackson obama wine), all from a simple press release.

Keep your eyes open for opportunities to promote your wine in conjunction with the news!

Why Selling Wine is Hard

Seth Godin posts  Don't Sell to Bar Owners, something that, despite its odd title, has relevance to winery owners and sellingwine:

The universal lesson is this: every business has customers. In order to grow, you either need to sell more to those customers or find new customers....The biggest problem marketers make is misjudging their audience. The see the size of the market, but not its true nature: Their accessibility and eagerness. Their worldview and motivation.

You've really got to find the 1,000 True Fans of your winery, the market that is eager for what you have to sell.

Volute, In The Teeny Aluminum Bottle

In an effort to stay on the cutting edge of wine packaging technology, I've ordered the sampler of three 185 ml aluminum bottles of Volute Wine, one each of their Red, White, and Rose wines.

Their Unique Selling Proposition (USP) seems to be the "greeness" (greenitude?) of their aluminum bottle, along with the convenience of single servings.  A case of Volute (equivalent to three 750 ml bottles) costs $49.  The wines themselves are sourced from Bordeaux.

Trivia point:  Volute is the Latin word for "scroll."

(Volute also has a brand-new blog, which has been added to The List)

Six Good Tips For Winery Bloggers

If you sometimes find yourself stuck for things to blog about on your winery blog, here's a handy list of ideas from ProBlogger's Darren Rowse: How to Improve Your Blog When You Don't Have Computer Access.

(Ignore that "when you don't have computer access" part -- the tips apply equally well in either case.)

Update: broken link now fixed.  Thanks, Fabio!

Get Your Landing Page Makeover (Cheap!)

What's a Landing Page, you ask?

A landing page is any page on a website where traffic is sent specifically to prompt a certain action or result. Think of a golf course… a landing page is the putting green that you drive the ball (prospect) to. Once on the green, the goal is to get the ball into the hole. Likewise, the goal of the copy and design of a landing page is to get the prospect to take your desired action.

Wouldn't you like that page to work harder for you?  Well, for the price of a bottle of wine (donated to Heifer International), Roberta Rosenberg will do a Landing Page Makeover with you.

Let me know if you take her up on her offer.

(And really, unless your wine retails for $100 a bottle or more, you should probably kick in a little extra to the good folks at Heifer International.   A good critique of your site is worth at least that much, more if you actually do something with it!)

PS - she's making the same Makeover offer for marketing plans.  You've got one of those, right?

(via Copyblogger)

Lazy Sunday: Any, er, Starboard In A Storm

Stacy Buchanan of AmericanWinery.com comments on Peltier Station Winery's solution to the problem of being a domestic producer of port wine.  Some more background on the design is here.

I like USB port almost as much as Quady Winery's "Starboard".

Anyone know of other clever work-arounds?  Both these wines seem tailor-made for wine.woot.com.