Wine business social media management includes three components: publishing, monitoring and analyzing the interaction of online participants. If you have been consistently posting to your winery’s social media sites, engaging your audience and cultivating prospects, then I congratulate you! But if you’re like most, you are still trying to find the time to connect with your social networks. You might even be wavering about whether or not it’s worth your time. If so, consider these eight benefits of promoting your small winery or boutique wine business on social media.

Additionally, if you’d prefer to be making wine, you may find that it is worth your while to get a staff member or family member trained, so that s/he can help you out. Whichever your approach, once you have developed a routine of generating posts, consider brancing out to publish in new places. Often times you can repurpose those tantalizing thoughts in multiple locations.

8 Benefits of  Social Media

1. Increase brand awareness
2. Stay in the forefront of your customers’ minds
3. Develop trust and cultivate loyalty
4. Find new prospects
5. Boost your SEO
6. Deepen your customer service
7. Wine customers expect you to be on social media
8. Lower traditional marketing costs

Social Media “Venues” Online

1. Social Networking Sites (Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram)
2. Collaborative projects (Wikipedia.com)
3. Social publishing platforms – Blogs and micro-blogs (Twitter.com, Tumblr.com)
4. Bookmarking sites (Pinterest.com)
5. Content communities (YouTube.com, Vimeo.com)
6. E-Commerce Sites (AmazonWine.com, Wine.com, Vinformant.com)
7. Geo Sites (TripAdvisor.com, Yelp.com)
8. Virtual game worlds (BBR.com/wine-game, Terroir-France.com/game/game.html)

In other words, there are multiple benefits to using wine business social media to promote direct-to-consumer sales and motivate you to get writing. Thankfully, there are also techniques to make writing your posts easier.

A Little (Free) Help from DigiVino

Wine business social media publishing is a full time job. Sometimes a new social media manager just needs a little boost. That’s why I created this simple tool: How to Write 30 Wine Posts in One Hour  shares simple techniques to employ in order to maintain a consistent presence online. Once your social media manager is over the writer’s block, consider our GO-U programs for training on how to leverage your social media presence to effectively grow your list. Unfortunately, simply posting is not enough. Wine businesses need an over-arching strategy that takes into account the latest trends and social network algorithms.

What About Crowd Sourced Reviews?

You may have an aversion to Yelp and similar crowd-sourced reviews, but consider this: whether or not you monitor what is written, customers will write reviews. The ostrich-approach leaves you in the dark, unable to steer the conversation in a favorable direction and implement damage control in the rare occurrence of a negative review. Tracking and responding to reviews, shows that your brand is pro-active, concerned and attentive. Often times wine businesses can appeal to critical customers for a “do-over” that results in an updated review after a more positive experience.

The Importance of Staying Connected Geographically

Also, consider this: the biggest difference between digital media now and 20 years ago, is that it has become fully integrated into the lives of your customers. They think: “I’ve got time to visit another winery! But where? I’ll try Yelp to find what’s nearby and highly rated… I want to visit Napa; I’ll see what that blogger suggested… My friend recommended this place on Facebook; I’d better go check it out.” Successful marketing today ties together the online world with brick and mortar through integrated campaigns.

Stunning Photography Can Be Captivating

In any event, a great boon to wine wine industry’s social media is that vineyards, wine, cellars and winemaking are photogenic subject matter, perfect for wine business social media. Engage and cultivate your target audience and be thankful we’re not in the porta-potty industry, which would be a much harder subject matter to write about daily. 🙂