Increasingly your customers get their wine information online. They actively participate in social media. Twitter. Facebook. YouTube.

Social media marketing is important. But, after working with social media for a few years, our conclusion is that it's over-hyped. We think that consultants find it to their benefit to tout the latest techno-concept and to make you insecure about how to use it. That's not how we work.

Social media marketing is valuable, but it is not the most important marketing tool, it is not so mysterious as some proclaim, and it does not require $10,000 worth of guru sweat to make it work. Like search-engine optimization, it's mostly a matter of common sense.

The biggest limits to social media marketing are that it's time-consuming, it requires a certain touch, and it's not suited to every personality. Because of those factors, for a time we offered turn-key outsourcing of your social media outreach. We did it all for you. But we didn't like the results. It was expensive, and we found it difficult to create an effective stream without day-to-day involvement in the client's business. The truth is that you have to do it in-house and live with the limitations that result.

Now we offer coaching in social media marketing. We identify the best practices, and work with clients on their content and style. We show them how to build a following. It's a much better result for our clients at a much lower cost. That's how we operate.