WHNetwork Blog

Last week I asked you for your thoughts on social media - and also if you had examples of how it was working for you. Your response was overwhelming - for this group social media is here to stay!

Here's some of your feedback:

First of all (as of this writing) a full 57.8% use social media for personal use at least on a daily basis. Your use on a professional basis is even higher - with 63.1% of you poking, posting or tweeting at least daily. Perhaps "social media" is really turning into "business media."

Here are the places you are getting your fix:

Here are just a few of the comments you made on how social media is working for you: (for the full report, take the survey - it only takes a moment - and you will instantly get the report upon completion).

"Through our Facebook pages we have established a steady fanbase and great conversation regarding our wines..."

"I have successfully moved my website up in organic searches, made sales, gotten press, and made professional connections."

"The Wine Whisperer, one of our regular guests on our GrapevineRadio.net radio show, began Twittering over a year ago. In the last month the number of his followers has exploded. There are now 10-14 people per day choosing to follow the purple caped wine crusader. Of course this allows him to "Whisper" updates to our blog, live appearances, etc."

"Successfully engage reporters/journalists covering issues important to our clients. Secure subsequent publicity for them."

"Make client connections from outside North America."

"Social media is perfect for marketing products, PR and build interest and a consumer base. It is effective and cheap. It is the newest form of "word of mouth" marketing."

"I use LinkedIn as a tool in my job search; I started using LinkedIn while living in Japan as a job tool for Executive Recruitment. I once met a client in a crowded hotel lobby in Tokyo; we recognized each other by our LinkedIn pictures. I ended up winning the contract."

"Facebook seems to be the most productive. Just this week I received a couple of bottle of wines from Parducci Wine Cellars who found me via Facebook and ask me to review their wine."

"Twitter seems to work well as a way to market what you are doing, constantly. Not sure it makes you more productive, but more people are paying attention. The more you use it, the more people will follow."

"We are constantly amazing by the effects of media like this as it opens a door to people that we may never meet, and also people that we may have lost contact with and also the people we already know."

"I joined the St. Supery group on Facebook. I thought I'd share the fact that I had just thrown out their 2006 Virtu (it was completely my fault, I had stored it badly for over a year and I said as much on my post). Twenty minutes later I received a message from their VP of Direct Marketing offering to send me a replacement bottle! That is truly fantastic customer service. St. Supery is at the top of my list for knowing how to use Social Networking."

"Has certainly helped me create a buzz and interest in my new product, as well as generated individual sales."

"I joined Twitter last Spring and within a WEEK, I had been invited to 3 wine events (I am Staff Blogger and West Coast Ambassador for WineLog.net) and my networking for wine-activities and info EXPLODED from there. Twitter is the most powerful, cross-platform networking tool that I've ever seen or used."

"We have found that some of our customers feel more connected to us via Facebook and comfortable asking questions, etc. We sell additional wine and merchandised due to FB correspondence."

"Great reviews on Yelp have driven an amazing number of guests to our winery. While we can't post on Yelp about our winery, I'm very impressed with the huge numbers of people who refer to the site for their winery visits. Every weekend I get multiple groups in our small winery who found us on Yelp."

One of the more innovative (and buzz generating) uses is Murphy Goode Winery's "A Really Goode Job" contest going on right now. Here's the deal (in their words):

"We at the Murphy-Goode Winery got to thinking about the new age of communications and we figured it was a pretty good thing. So to get going, we’re looking for someone (maybe you) who really knows how to use Web 2.0 and Facebook and blogs and social media and YouTube and all sorts of good stuff like that — to tell the world about our wines and the place where we live: the Sonoma County Wine Country.

In exchange, we’re offering you a “Really Goode Job” — a six-month job paying $10,000 a month plus accommodations!

We want to hire a social media whiz (your title will be “Murphy-Goode Wine Country Lifestyle Correspondent”) who will report on the cool lifestyle of Sonoma County Wine Country and, of course, tell people what you’re learning about winemaking.

Did we mention that the compensation was $10,000 per month Plus accommodations in a beautiful home in picturesque Healdsburg, a popular vacation destination in our neck of the woods. Working hours are flexible. And all you have to do is experience wine and good living, and then tell people about it. (Do you play Poker, or Liar’s Dice? Don’t worry; we’ll teach you.)

You (we hope) will become part of the Murphy-Goode crew — for six great months."

Applications close on June 19th...

Two WineAndHospitalityNetwork.com members have applied - please take a moment to watch their videos - and to vote for them!

Sue Bonzell and Chef John Hughes

Where is all this leading? Who knows? (There is an interesting forecast here). But regardless of the twists and turns, the start-ups and failures, social media is here to stay...

-Margie

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Social Networking -- online and off

Wikipedia: A social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, ideas, financial exchange, friendship, sexual relationships, kinship, dislike, conflict or trade.

Everywhere you go people are talking about it - and doing it: social networking. And although most of the talk is about online social networking, the phrase can applied to both to online and offline networking. Don't think social networking matters? Think again. Check out this graph by compete.com on the growth in the last 6 months:

Yearly Change


Facebook: +249.70%
YouTube: +24.50%

Twitter: +1,192.13%

Clearly, the social networking model has boomed. Think social networking is just for youth? The fastest-growing segment on Facebook, originally launched at Harvard for college students, now is people over age 35.

A white paper released this month by VinTank, looks at Social media and its use by wineries:
(David Finch has a great post on Social media for restaurants)

"Consumer embrace of social media literally turns the tables on marketers," said Tom Wark, publisher of the Fermentation daily wine blog and Partner in Wark Communications. "With millions of consumers, particularly those of the Millennial generation, now frequently using social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace, brands are being built and defined as much by consumers and communities as they are by marketers and suppliers. The degree of change this represents can't be underestimated."

Some key findings of the white paper:

- According to Compete.com, the top 20 wine bloggers in aggregate represent a larger audience than the Wine Spectator online, and are growing at a faster rate. However, the wine blogosphere is highly fragmented and difficult for wineries to navigate.

- Wine social network memberships number in the hundreds of thousands, although it is near impossible to determine how much overlap exists across networks.

- The two top-rated wine social networks, CellarTracker and VinCellar, started as wine cellar management tools that over time have added social networking functionality. This deeper level of value has paid huge dividends in terms of customer loyalty.

- A key challenge for all wine social networks that have achieved any kind of scale is data quality. Duplicate and incorrect data affects all of these sites to varying degrees.

- Online advertising models for the wine industry have more challenges than other verticals due to outdated alcohol regulations.

The free white paper is available for download at http://www.vintank.com/VinTank_SocialMediaReport.pdf

We are also conducting our own survey on our industries' use of social media, with well over a 100 responses already, it can provide you with great -- and up to the minute -- information. Take the survey and immediately get the results.

Think of networking as being a personal branding exercise, whether it is your own services, the services of your company or business that you are promoting, or even yourself as you look for a new employment opportunity. And of course - all networking isn't online. The right approach would be to overlay both your online and offline worlds.So go out there, start promoting yourself and/or your business; show people why you're different and why they should do business with you.

And if you are in the wine country, of course the perfect opportunity for networking with others in the industry is this Thursday - at the "Industry Insiders" event at the Hess Collection. See details below.

-Margie

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The flip side of going green - "green wash"
... and, care to take the no more bottled water pledge?

• American tap water is among the safest in the world.
• As much as 40% of the bottled water sold in the U.S. is just filtered tap water anyway. Be sure to check the label and look for “from a municipal source” or “community water system”, which just means it is tap water.
• By drinking tap water, you can avoid the fertilizer, pharmaceuticals, disinfectants, and other chemicals that studies have found in bottled water.
• Tap water costs about $0.002 per gallon compared to the $0.89 to $8.26 per gallon charge for bottled water. If the water we use at home cost what even cheap bottled water costs, our monthly water bills would run $9,000.
• 88% of empty plastic water bottles in the United States are not recycled. The Container Recycling Institute says that plastic water bottles are disposed of (not recycled) at the rate of 30 million a day.
• Plastic bottles can leach chemicals into the water if left in the sun, heated up, or reused several times.
• Production of the plastic (PET or polyethylene) bottles to meet our demand for bottled water takes the equivalent of about 17.6 million barrels of oil (not including transportation costs). That equals the amount of oil required to fuel more than one million vehicles in the U.S. each year. Around the world, bottling water uses about 2.7 million tons of plastic…each year.
• Bottled water companies mislead communities into giving away their public water in exchange for dangerous jobs.
• It can take nearly 7 times the amount of water in the bottle to actually make the bottle itself.
• On a weekly basis, 37,800 18-wheelers are driving around the country delivering water.
• The EPA sets much more stringent quality standards for tap water than the FDA does for the bottled stuff.
• One out of 6 people in the world does not have safe drinking water, and about 3,000 children a day die from diseases caught from bad water…that we know of. This while Americans spend about $16 billion a year on bottled water.

We always serve water from the tap in our restaurant as an automatic part of customer service. Bottled water (in extremely small bottles) is available but probably sell 6 bottles of this a year.

Maria

artisanwines.co.nz

Thank you for your wonderful news letters, love the one on green eating part I & II.

Here is my though on the matter. In Europe, we think collectively instead of individually in the USA, it is a basic difference in philosophy! Everyone has a right to a decent quality of life.

I live in Healdsburg and the community‘s consciousness is expending. At Big John’s you pay extra for a plastic bag, small changes are effective; as a result, people bring their own bags. If the government were to take a stand and regulate the food packaging industry requiring that all containers must be recyclable, it would provide a giant step forward.

I am up in Reno for a few days and still to this day, their recycling comes every other week and the small stackable containers cannot accommodate all of it. I use the large blue bin on wheels every week and the smallest one for the garbage. Make it mandatory and user friendly so the movement can follow.

In regards to the pedestrians, I do enjoy car free zone in France; check out Lille a wonderful city, very social and cultural, designed for the people who seem to spend their life in the streets and cafes.

Now in our neighborhood, the smart train is coming; it only took 10 years to implement a public rail transportation along the 101 corridor! However, it took forever to widen the freeway because the infrastructure lacked vision and interest. If you built housing, the people will come adding more cars on the road. Therefore, the project should have been in place 20 years ago.

We love living here and will keep moving forward in the right direction!

Warm regards,

Isabelle Adams

www.eventscapesonoma.com

www.zinscape.com

Sabrina van Ekere