The Winery Web Site Report

How To Make $$$$ With Twitter

Here's the secret.

Hey, what did you expect?

Having just attended the Direct To Consumer Symposium (DTCS) on Tuesday, I can say that everyone wants to know how to forecast the ROI for social media.  It seems pretty clear that it's hard to measure (although there are definitely things you can measure, it's not easy to equate them with hard dollars in your bank account).

The big issue for wineries, large and small, is that Twitter (and other social media venues) takes time, which means a person.  And that person costs money.  And that has to get paid for, somehow.  Which brings us back to ROI.

Fundamentally, you either have to believe in social media, or you have to be big enough to afford the experiment.

I tend towards the view that social media has value, but it's primarily the sort of value associated with having a pleasant, competent person answering your phones.  

On the other hand, Rick Bakas of St. Supery gave a case study of using Twitter (plus a landing page) to sell 250+ cases of their 2003 Merlot (at $150 a case, including shipping, it was a terrific deal).  Of course, he also pointed out that two subsequent offers didn't garner as strong a result.  It appears that offers need to be spaced out to avoid "offer fatigue."

(Disclaimer: I bought one of those cases.)

So, how are you trying to make $$$$ with Twitter?

Wine Marketing Via Twitter

 

This post from StartupNation.com has several useful ideas for wineries trying to market via Twitter: 

I truly believe social media is the future for small business marketing and I hope you can find at least one of these ideas helpful in your efforts to engage online. Always be on the lookout for innovative new ideas to reach your customers and don’t be shy. A sincere, heartfelt, and playful “hello” to your customers will be appreciated more times than not. Just make sure you have the infrastructure in place to monitor, measure, and manage all those new customer interactions.

If your winery is active on Twitter (and even if it's not), take a look.

(And as long as you're at it, please take my 2010 Winery Sales survey.  Results will be summarized in a future post.)

How To Use Social Media

Guy Kawasaki, on American Express's OPEN small-business site, interviews Dan Zarella, the author of The Social Media Marketing Book:

In this interview I try to pin him down and tell me when to use specific social media platforms, services and practices to run a business.

If you're trying to decide between Twitter, Facebook, or a blog, take a look at this post.  

The AMEX OPEN Forum also has a RSS feed which is worth subscribing to (which is how I found this interview), as well as a section devoted to social media (including this e-book ).

Hashtags For Wineries

If you've used Twitter, you've probably seen a hashtag.  That is, a hash sign (#) followed by a sequence of characters, e.g. #wine. There's no built-in meaning to hashtags.  It's just a textual convention which has become an accepted part of using Twitter.  When people use the same hashtag to categorize their tweets, it becomes useful.

For example, Paul Mabray of VinTank has been know to include the hashtag #atomicfireball in his tweets.  Who knows what it means?  On the other hand, the #redsox hashtag has a pretty obvious meaning, and is used by enough people to break into the "Trending Topics" list you'll see on the right-hand side of your Twitter home page.

If you're curious about ways to use these cryptic constructs to promote your winery more effectively via Twitter, here's a useful and informative article: How to Use Twitter Hashtags for Business

As with all social media forms, Twitter hashtags require an investment of time (and thought) to pay off.  The article contains links to some tools and sites which can help.

PS - you can follow The Winery Web Site Report on Twitter as @wwsr, and me personally as @mikeduffy.

Beyond The Fail Whale

The University of Washington taught a course this summer entitled Beyond The Fail Whale: How Twitter Is Changing Organizations.

It appears that they created a book for the course, which includes a chapter-length case study about wineries using Twitter, which is the point of my mentioning it here.

The wineries used in the cases study include:

• Capozzi Winery
• Donati Family Winery 
• Eagles Nest Winery 
• King Estate Winery 
• Sobon Family Wines 
• St. Supery Vineyards & Winery 
• Teusner Winery 
• Twisted Oak Winery 

(links above are to each winery's Twitter home page).

If you're interested in how wineries are using Twitter to good effect, go read the chapter.  It looks like it was an interesting course.

Lazy Sunday: The $11,000.00 Tweet

A pretty cool example of how, when social media words, it *really* works.

Even for a winery, which can't create products on the fly, it does point to the value of having devoted followers (not just quantity, but quality) and making special offers to them.

Do you have your Facebook and Twitter information on a nice little sign next to the cash register in the tasting room?  If not, you're missing an opportunity to gain followers.  Of course, that little sign should also point out the benefits of being a Fan or a Follower of your winery (cool offers not available to anyone else, of course!).

Secrets Of The Twitter Master

You think you know how to use Twitter for your winery?  Take a look at Guy Kawasaki's explanation of how he uses Twitter.  Highly instructive.

Twitter Search For Your Winery

Twitter Search is the best way to keep tabs on what's being said about your winery/wines on Twitter. You'd be surprised.

Here's a quick introduction from the nice folks at CommonCraft:

Each Twitter Search has its own RSS feed, which means you can keep tabs on lots of distinct searches using your blog reader (e.g. Bloglines.com)

If you've got some additional Twitter Search tricks, please leave a comment.

Promoting Your Wine 2.0

Every time he says "book,", you say "wine."

 

Twitter Search

If you do a Twitter search, you may find that people are talking about your wine:

How do you respond to questions or issues they raise?

Alas, you *can't* DM (direct message) someone who isn't following you.

BUT... 

Even though you can't DM someone who doesn't follow you, you can @reply to them. (see http://help.twitter.com/forums/10711/entries/14023)

If you use Twitter's search function directly (from the right-hand pane of your Twitter home page, a relatively new feature), you can see that each result has a "swoosh" (reply to) button (mouse over each reply to see it). Clicking the "swoosh" button starts a new tweet with the "@username" already filled in for a reply.

(Note: using some third-party search notification applications, like Twilert, doesn't appear to offer this functionality.)

The resulting tweet will show up under the @username section in the right-hand pane of *their* home page.  Hint: you may want to look at @yourname on your own Twitter profile.

Alternative/Complementary approaches:

• If they have a hashtag in their tweet (e.g. #smithmadrone), then you can add that hash tag to a tweet of your own, so that it will "group" with those tweets. Presumably, if they tagged it, they're following results.

• You can follow them, and hope they follow you back, at which point you can address their question. If your twitter name is "SmithMadrone", it's likely they will follow you (in this case).

• And, of course, you can visit their profile and see if you can locate an e-mail or blog address. Time-consuming, though...

Obviously, you don't need to sign up for Twitter in order to see what's being said about your winery (http://search.twitter.com does the trick, and you can create an RSS feed for that search query).  As pointed out above, using a recognizable name for your "official" Twitter account can help.

Thanks to Smith-Madrone Vineyards & Winery for serving as my example, and Julie Ann Kodmur for asking the question that promoted this post.

Wine Marketing With Twitter

Dell Computer makes exclusive offers to people following them on Twitter, makes $1 million.

Here's how DELL did it (the image above is a sample "tweet").

There's nothing stopping your winery from doing the same (well, maybe not the $1 million part).  Why not try an experiment?

• Get  a Twitter account, if you haven't yet (choose a name like your winery name, e.g. AcmeWinery)
• Create a compelling offer (something you know will be popular with anyone)
• Make sure you set limits (one to a customer, must be a follower) 
• Make sure you set a time limit (one day) 
• Have a promo code that works with your checkout system
• Tweet the offer (with details available on your site or blog)

You want it to be a compelling offer because (a) you want to generate buzz, and (b) you want to increase your followers.  Don't make people order a case to take advantage of this offer (you can experiment with other offers later).  You want to set limits so that you don't get killed (and again, you want them to follow you).  A time limit prompts action, and limits your exposure as well.  The promo code makes it work with your online shopping cart.

See what happens.  Blog about it.  Leave a comment here to tell me what I got wrong. Try it again.

Hint to Inertia Beverages, eWinerySolutions, and Cultivate: make it easy for your clients to do something like this. Gosh, you might even write a blog post or newsletter item on how to do it.

(PS - if you haven't already done so, please take my one-question survey -- it ends Monday!)

Your Twitter Landing Page

If you have a Twitter account, under the "Account" tab of your Settings you'll find place to enter a More Info URL.  Now most people just enter the URL of their Web site address or their blog.  For example, Covered Bridge Cellars Twitter profile links to their blog, as does El Jefe. On the other hand, Sol Rouge links to their winery's home page.

But there's something better you can do.

People who click on that link are expecting more information about you.  Don't just throw them onto your home page.  Create a Twitter Landing Page, specifically to address the questions of someone considering following you (or wondering whether to block you from following them).

Here's a terrific example of a Twitter Landing Page from Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net, who also wrote this great post about how to create a Twitter Landing Page.  Although ProBlogger focuses a lot on how to make money from blogging, it has useful information for all bloggers about building traffic.

Something To Shout About: A Checklist

If my wines were listed here or here, you can bet that I would do all of the following:

1. Create a high-quality image of the bottle with the award (suitable for the media to use)
2. Update the front page of my Web site  
3. Update the product page(s) for my award-winning wine(s) 
4. Write a post for my winery blog
5. Tweet the news to my followers on Twitter 
6. Send an e-mail to my mailing list 
7. Make sure I mention it in my next newsletter 
8. Do a press release (along with a nice bottle+award image)
9. Let my distributors, retailers, and restaurant know about it with a updated product PDF and shelf-talkers
10. Make sure that everyone in the tasting room knows about it (employees and visitors)

In every case, you have the opportunity to make a special offer to the people you are contacting.  For example, people who have already bought the wine might want to add to their cellar.

I can almost bet, though, that most of the award-winners won't do any of  these things.

Winning an award isn't just a time to feel good, it's an opportunity to advance your brand.

(Thanks to the Harney Lane blog for inspiring this post)