Wine & Social Media

Want to learn about wine? Get comfortable with being wrong.

My wine journey is fueled by the knowledge that no matter how much time I devote and how much I study, I’ll never learn everything there is to know about every wine on this planet. Wine is a topic that can be a life-long endeavor. Some of those learnings are pretty straightforward. Smell the unmistakable scent of fresh cut grass? It’s a pretty good bet you’ve got a Sauvignon Blanc in your glass. Most observations …

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What wineries can do to promote social sharing

Bottling the Winery Experience for Social Sharing

I love to visit Napa Valley. One of my greatest fascinations about wine is the intersection of complex new technology with the simplicity of centuries-old agriculture. At the Hall Wines Rutherford facility (@hallwines), I awed at the hexagonal stainless fermentation tanks with temperature controlled by smart phone apps then stepped outside to behold the perfectly coiffed rows of vines just starting veraison. As a social media enthusiast, my instinct was to try to share these …

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How social media is like making wine

How Social Media is Like Wine: Part 1

The Foundation Wine is the original social media. For centuries, wine has been used as the liquid medium for seasoning social connections in order to commune, discuss, and discover. Perhaps the roots go even deeper. It turns out that the process vintners go through to produce a quality bottle of wine also serves as an appropriate model for how a business should approach social media. I’ve broken the process down into a three-part series: The …

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Improving The Wine Retail Experience

In far Northern Minnesota lies Nicollet Creek. It’s similar to thousands of other creeks in the United States: the water is cool and fresh and in most places you can step or walk across it. What makes Nicollet Creek different from the others is that it is the primary inlet into Lake Itasca and the origination of the Mississippi River. The creek alone, however, couldn’t form the largest river in the United States. It takes …

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Recipes from wineries

Wonderful Recipes from Wineries

Food is to wine as a beat is to a melody. They can be great by themselves, but together they can be astounding. That’s why it makes sense for wineries to share the recipes they believe are best suited to go with the different wines they produce. Of the hundreds of online locations where recipes can be located, I’ve found the hand-selected dishes from wine producers to be among the most interesting, most diverse and …

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Friday Favorites: Wine Blogs I Love

There’s a lot of wine out there. Thousands of different varietals of grapes are used to make wines across thousands of worldwide appellations. According to the Wine Institute, 120,000 new wine labels were approved by the US Tax and Trade Bureau in 2010 alone. It’s difficult to cut across all the marketing and hype and choices to find the hidden gems of the wine world. That’s why I love my fellow wine bloggers. The blogs …

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How Social Media is Like Wine: Part 3

The Juice In Part 1 of this three part series, we compared The Fundamentals of both winemaking and social media in setting the right foundation for success. In Part 2, we looked at the process from selecting the vines all the way to harvest and, at the same time, outlined three components that serve to form and grow the core of a social media program. In this, the third and final part in the series, …

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How Social Media is Like Wine: Part 2

The Grapes In yesterday’s post, Part 1 of this series, I suggested that if wine is the original social media, then the process vintners go through to produce a quality bottle of wine could also serve as an appropriate model for how a business should approach social media. We looked at The Foundation for producing a great wine (planning, soil and climate) and how the social media equivalents of each of these elements can set …

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No Latitude on Gratitude

“Thank You.” When put together, two of the most valuable words in the English language. A phrase so important most of us were continually reminded over-and-over by our parents, teachers and others to “Say thank you.” Yet, in social media, it is still one of the most underused phrases. Far too many brands believe that the process starts with the brand sharing an important post about the brand and ends with rabid fans blindly retweeting …

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Is Anybody Listening?

Before a recent trip to Napa Valley, I posted at least three separate tweets on three different days announcing that we would be traveling to #Napa and asking for recommendations on wineries to visit. Of the 500+ brands in the valley (plus another 400 if you count Sonoma), only ONE, @SilverOak,  took the bait and issued an invitation to visit. Because of their response, we suspended our rule of only visiting new brands in this …

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How Many Tweets Does it Really Take to be Effective?

Although I wasn’t in Portland for the recent Wine Blogger’s Conference, it was fun to follow the #WBC13 hashtag over the weekend.  During the conference, Ashley Teplin (@AshleyTeplin) reacted to a presenter’s comment by tweeting: “21 tweets per day to be effective!” wowza. I responded to the tweet with: Yep. That’s why a scheduling tool can be your best friend! My thought at the time of posting was that, using a scheduling tool to discover …

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The Social Media Gatekeeper

This morning an intriguing Twitter post by Pam Barksdale (@pam_barksdale) crossed my feed: “Perspectives on Wine Blogging: Wine Importer Bill Deutsch.” The post linked to a short interview conducted in preparation for the upcoming Wine Bloggers’ Conference. In the interview, Bill Deutsch, president and CEO of WJ Deutsch, a wine importer, discussed his perspective on wine blogs. (Read the interview is here). For most of the interview, Mr. Deutsch was right on point, talking about …

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Wine is Social. Period.

Wine is social. Yet, with wine drinkers and aficionados in both older and new generations spending more time and attention on social media channels, it is apparent that the wine industry has yet to fully embrace this natural channel for reaching its audience. Sure, there are sporadic instances of social media successes, like Gary V. and the promotion of some high profile wine events, but on whole, producers, brands, distributors and influencers are well behind …

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