The Social Winery

Conversational Marketing for the Wine Industry

Are Twitter Followers More Likely To Buy?

119500

A new report by ExactTarget states that Twitter followers are more likely to recommend a brand and twice as likely to buy than Facebook fans. This is exactly the oposite of my experience with Twitter and Facebook in the wine industry so I took a closer look at the story. And near the end you see the caveat that Twitter users are more representative of influencers and Facebook users are more mainstream consumers. This makes sense to me given the better engagement I've seen for Facebook pages than Twitter presences but it is likely to change as the new Twitter website is rolled out (more on that here soon).

Wineries: Any examples of how Twitter has produced more engagement or sales than Facebook?
 

Turning Fans and Followers Into Buyers

112908

There's an interesting post over at eMarketer today about how Twitter followers and Facebook fans are more likely to buy than those who are not connected with a brand on social networks. Not surprisingly, the most popular reason to friend up a brand is for discounts and promotions but the research also showed that almost 40% were customers and supporters who liked the brand.

Hundreds of wineries are on Twitter and Facebook today and many are using these connections to make sales. But I haven't seen a lot of promotions on either social network lately from wine brands looking to increase their followers and fans. I think this is a big opportunity so I'm going to take a closer look at what wineries are doing along these lines and post an update later in the week.

Getting Intentional With Twitter

One of the things I've been looking at lately is how to build an engaged Twitter following. Anyone can build a following through the dreaded mass-follow technique but it will not be very engaged or valuable in the long run. There are several tools and services out there that promise to dramatically grow your Twitter following this way and I recommend not using any of them because 4,000 unengaged followers is worse than 400 engaged followers. Or 40, really.

But to gain this type of engagement you need to be intentional about what you are doing on Twitter. It's pretty easy to get into some bad habits and end up with a tweet stream that even people you know will find boring (and I'm speaking from personal experience here). So I thought I would look at two successful people on Twitter I have followed for years to uncover their process. Each of these gentlemen have build very large and engaged Twitter presences through intentional action.

My first case study is Chris Brogan, the noted social marketing thought leader. He seems to spend a lot of time on Twitter but is very precise about how he approaches what he does on the service. I followed his tweets for approximately 24 hours to get an idea of the type of content on his tweet stream and put these into 4 buckets: Conversational, Status Updates, Promotional and Retweets/Shared Links. As you can see from the chart, Chris spends most of his time in direct conversation with his followers (78%). This is no easy task since at the time of this post he has over 126,000 followers of which he follows an astounding 90%. He tends to use his status updates for announcements, questions and statements, not what he had for lunch. Lastly, he is only overtly self-promotional 5% of the time. Of course, this is just a slice of time and these numbers could be slightly different tomorrow but I don't think the overall direction would be much different if I followed him for several more days.

The second person I looked at is Rick Bakas who works at St. Supéry winery in Napa. I looked at his personal Twitter account for this analysis which he built to over 40,000 strong before he got into the wine business. As you can see in the chart, Rick uses Twitter in a slightly different way. Over 50% of his tweets are conversational with retweets and shared links being used more than Chris does. This is mostly due to the volume of followers and I'm sure Rick would increase his conversational activities if his following was as large as Mr. Brogan deals with. Interestingly, Rick uses promotional tweets almost three times that of Chris but is still close to the 10% that most of us recommend as a target.

So I've learned that the best way to build a significant and engaged Twitter following is to be mostly conversational and share interesting links either directly from the source of through retweeting. As a guide, I would shoot for over 50% of your tweets to be conversational with 20% used for sharing links or retweeting, another 20% for asking questions and general status updates and no more than 10% being promotional (this includes announcing new blog posts).

If you are just starting out, you'll want to begin by following people with a shared interest. There are resources like Twitter lists and wefollow.com where you can find people to follow tagged by interest. To find conversations, use Twitter Search and drill into the advanced search in order to find relevant conversations. You can also find Twitter Search built into popular applications like TweetDeck. I think a great place to start is by answering questions or responding to threads based on relevant topics. 

Whatever your plan, have one and devote as much time as you can to it even if it's just 30 minutes a day. You will find Twitter a lot more engaging and will most likely grow your followers in the process. I'm going to start being intentional with my Twitter accounts and will report back what happens along with some other tips for getting the most out of this service.

(download)

Barter For Content; A New Trend?

Some wineries have guest suites that are typically used for wine club members, out of town employees and other special guests. But for much of the year these rooms sit empty. The guest suites at Michel-Schlumberger are some of the best I have ever seen (and stayed in) and they are using one of them to house Hardy Wallace who has just left his 6 month gig at Murphy-Goode. 

This use of a guest suite strikes me as brilliant on a couple levels. First they are bartering for some of Hardy's time in exchange for an asset they are not fully using anyway. Since they have two suites, they can still use one for other guests. Second, they are getting someone who has spent the past 6 months in the wine social media limelight and has built quite an online following. I think you are about to hear a lot more from Michel-Schlumberger on their blog, Facebook page and Twitter account.

More details are in the following video. Kudos to my friends at Michel-Schlumberger for thinking out of the box here. Perhaps we will see this sort of thing from other wineries who have similar assets.

Make Your Winery Memorable With Unique Accessories

I just received a shipment of wine from one of my clients, Casa Nuestra. In the package was an unexpected gift: wine clips. I've been a wine geek for a long time but never have owned these handy accessories. But I've used them over the years at parties as they provide a "3rd hand" for your wine glass so you can hold a plate in one hand and eat with the other. The Casa Nuestra model pictured here easily clips onto any plate and holds the wine stem securely.

What I like about these wine clips is I haven't seen them at every winery like branded corkscrews, glasses and shirts. And at $5 for four this is a no-brainer when customers are ordering wine. There is also a social aspect to these since they will be primarily used during parties, BBQ's and other gatherings.

What unique wine accessory do you sell that makes your winery memorable?

(download)