Traveled to Paso Robles Wine Country today in CA and couldn’t help but notice the lack of social media use. Why? Not too sure since most social tools are free and who doesn’t want WOM marketing?
One winery is Justin Winery; see screenshot below of tasting room
They listed the main social media tools on their price lists but when I asked what the twitter URL was no one knew!
How can social tools help these businesses?
1. Wineries rely heavily on word of mouth – if a close friend recommends a winery I’m likely to try it. Geesh isn’t this the definition of what social tools are about…recommending people, places, and things?
2. Keep in touch with prospects and customers – if I didn’t buy wine at a winery what better way to keep me engaged? Don’t spam, but connect with me on social tools. For existing customers, enhance the buying experience. Use my purchases to customize social messages
3. Special discounts by using social tools – who doesn’t like to save money when buying an expensive Pinot noir? I do, so why not provide financial incentives for using foursquare, twitter, and groupon. Easy, easy way to keep customers coming back for more wine consumption.
Social Marketing and Wine mix so well that I can make my own award winning blend! As wine consumption increases, people become more social and ah ha! Social Marketing fumes are ignited and can be used to attract new customers and no cost.
Let’s hope wineries get “smart” and use technology to their advantage!
Cheers!
justin winery, justinwinery, paso robles, pasorobles, social marketing, Socialmarketing, wine, wineindustry
Social Deals is set to challenge the likes of Groupon and LivingSocial, but is Facebook doing the right thing? Let’s take a look at Facebook Places vs Foursquare, did it do justice and become a true challenger? Not really, yes I personally stopped using Foursquare, but not b/c of Facebook. FB places just become another check-in site (like yelp). It offered no real “reward” for checking in; at least with Foursquare department stores started offering promotion codes.
Now with Social Deals, Facebook has a lot of catching up to do. As a heavy user of Groupon, Facebook needs to stay on top of their competitive edge and run with it. Social Deals must be more user friendly, make it easier to purchase coupons and keep track of existing used and non-used coupons. See what other people think…
Take a look at some screen shots of what the new deals page looks like on fb:
DEAL OVERVIEW PAGE
INDIVIDUAL DEAL PAGE
My first impression is 6/10 stars. Facebook needs to provide additional value than Groupon. Honestly, all of the sites have the same deals, but which one is going to make it EASIEST for me to use? I sure hope Facebook improves this. And…hopefully when I buy a Facebook Deal, the whold world doesn’t find out!
facebook, groupon, livingsocial, socialdeals
I started Empire Avenue a few days ago and I have to say its pretty addicting. I even bought an iphone app for it (I rarely buy stuff through the app store). EA seems intriguing b/c it combines all mediums of the social experience into one platform. Want a dashboard? You got it!
EA calculates your social worth based on several different factors, but takes most into account your twitter, facebook and linkedin feeds. Its fast and easy to create an account…but getting people to invest in you is the hard part.
Fortunately, I’ve been able to engage in this and I see a lot of room for improvement. Here are my quick notes on what I see happening:
- Enhanced/Rich Relationship Building – mentioned by several “investors” in EA, this tool provides us with a chance to build closer relationships with an even broader audience that perhaps we could not get with twitter or facebook. This key to making it work…collaborating, building relationships and improving your own personal brand are key
- Known brands (Intel) joining the space – more and more brands will be joining as this hits to a broader audience, but will this dilute the value of the tool?
- Social superstars making a splash – the trend is the bigger social marketers are setting a path for the rest to follow. Where they invest, others follow. This helps the big guys I suppose, but the “little” people need to find a way to set themselves aside
Several opportunities for EA to continue to make a splash. Perhaps further integration with Yelp, Google and even Foursquare?
As you venture off into EA, invest in my brand worth…I’m an upside investment as I’ll only be increasing in value the more and more people are on this: http://www.empireavenue.com/csalazar
