Whether you run a winery or a car wash, you can't go to an industry conference without getting an earful about social media marketing. It's the hot marketing topic. We've been working with social media for years, and we consider it a valuable tool, but we think it's important to be realistic and to recognize its shortcomings.
For the last few months we've been conducting a small social media experiment. We set up accounts on Twitter and Facebook to promote Texas Hill Country wines (www.twitter.com/hcwine and www.facebook.com/hcwine), and we backed up those social media streams with a simple website at www.hcwine.com. We learned three important things. First, it is possible to accumulate a sizable Texas-wine-oriented audience in a short time. We already have more than 2,500 followers, and the numbers continue to grow. Second, when you include a link in a social media post, the number of followers that will click through is small (we've been tracking). It is the visible message, not a linked destination, that matters. Third, even though we offer Hill Country wineries a free communication channel that reaches thousands of people interested in Hill Country wines, and even though we regularly remind Hill Country wineries of that fact, very few wineries send us news to put before our audience. We have to dig out the information on our own. That surprised us.
Maybe we shouldn't have been surprised. The greatest obstacle to social media marketing is that it's not a great fit for every personality. In the great social media conversation there are a great many listeners, only a few speakers, and even fewer speakers with anything worth saying. Since the speaking role doesn't come naturally to everyone, we used to think that it made sense for businesses to outsource their social media messaging to professionals. Professionals like us. But we changed our mind. Outsourcing is expensive, and it's impossible to generate top-quality results without a day-to-day presence at the winery. A winery needs to handle its social media outreach in-house. As a first step, a winery needs to figure out whether social media are a good fit for someone in the organization. You can ask a staffer to study up on the best practices in social media marketing, but if the personality isn't there, it's not worth the effort.
We're working with the assumption that many Texas wineries want to try social media marketing, or want to improve their present effort. So we've put together more than a dozen quick social media practice tips, and we'll pass one along every week or so along with other newsletter content. Here's the first:
Tip: Always Make a Gift
Every post must contain (or link to) something of value—something as simple as a helpful piece of information. In a business context, tweeting that you like horror movies has no value. Posting “Our 2009 Chardonnay is delicious” is vague puffery that helps no one. “$5 discount on online orders of 2009 Chardonnay” is better. “We’re bottling on Wednesday, come visit!” is better yet (because selling on price is a bad idea, because your winery and tasting room are your most powerful marketing assets, and because building customer affinity is critical). If your winery is featured at a wine festival, let people know. A simple note about something interesting that happened at the winery may work just fine, especially if you’ve developed a story line for your followers (again, affinity--we'll talk more about developing a story line in a later tip).
More quick tips to come. Stay tuned.
