Social media marketing – the ever evolving medium

Thinking about jumping into the social media world? It can be daunting to say the least because things change so fast. New applications launch daily and the existing ones evolve and add new features.  In the past 12 months we’ve witnessed the debut of Google+ and the introduction of Facebook Timeline. Even the Merriam-Webster Dictionary moved into the 21st century of technology last year when they added the words “tweet” and “social media.” The dictionary company is a little late to the game as the The Oxford English Dictionary had already added “tweet” and “retweet” along with “sext” while the Collins English Dictionary had already added “Twitter” as a verb and noun way back in 2009.

It’s clear that Blogs, Twitter and Facebook are the most popular forms of social media.  But is it enough for a winemaker just to have a profile on these platforms to make a presence for their label?  The answer is No.  The goal here is to produce quality content, find and engage your fans, build relationships, inspire word of mouth… and actually have a little fun while doing it!

I don’t have a tasting room – how will Social Media sell more wine?

There are a number of ways Social Media can help your marketing and distribution efforts.  Content and activities such as an active blog, videos, and “Twitter Taste Live” events (such as the successful St. Supery East Coast Wine Tweetup Tourin 2009)  bring wine lovers together to taste and celebrate your brand. Drive people to your website by linking blog posts to Facebook and Twitter or with a QR code on your label.

Your label becomes your virtual storefront

Can I hire someone to do this for me?

Yes…and no. It’s always a good idea to get some coaching before jumping in. However, keep in mind that social media is transparent and full disclosure is critical. You wouldn’t send someone to a networking event and tell them to pretend to be you, would you? If you decide to hire someone or an agency to be in charge of social media, make sure they sign their posts and disclose to the audience who they are and why they are engaging with your audience. They also must understand the strategy behind your marketing campaigns, vision and goals.  Creating a Facebook or Twitter page and occasionally putting out generic, one-way messages is a waste of time and nobody will pay attention to it.

To properly engage with your consumers online and create quality content you need someone dedicated; someone who understands how all the social media platforms work together.  I’ve seen a small wineries give this task to a staffer who already has enough on their plate. Unfortunately, as with any project, you only get back what your able to put in. Instead, consider tasking your  social media marketing to someone who has a firm grasp of all the platforms and applications, who is able to keep up with the ever evolving technology and trends, who has a passion for the wine industry,  who cares about your wine, and can approach the brand from a consumer’s point of view.

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Today I met with a favorite client (OK, you’re all my favorite! No, really!!) and he is a little slow to jump on the twitter bandwagon, even though I am doing my darndest to convince him that it should be part of our overall marketing strategy (He’s analytical so I have to back my twitter-love with facts – ugh). He posed the question : “How does twitter make money?”.  My first thought was “who cares?” but I didn’t say that – I said…”Ummmmmm”.  Well – I found out they don’t make money. Not any. zero. zilch. Suddenly I feel better about my measley paychecks….it all goes into the biz, right?

On Twitter’s About Us page (as to the question: How does Twitter make money?)

Twitter has many appealing opportunities for generating revenue but we are holding off on implementation for now because we don’t want to distract ourselves from the more important work at hand which is to create a compelling service and great user experience for millions of people around the world. While our business model is in a research phase, we spend more money than we make.

They’ve gone through five rounds of VC funding – the last one netting $100 million. Although the number is unofficial, valuations of Twitter went wild and quickly rose to $1 billion. Here are some eye popping stats from PEDC (Private Equity Data Center):

1. According to PEDC’s numbers, the price of a single share of Twitter has increased by 239,619%, from a measly $0.00667 per share to a much stronger $15.9824.

2. Twitter’s $100 million round is over 1025 times the amount of money they raised in its very first round of funding. In July of 2007, Twitter raised $97,500.

3. In five rounds of funding, Twitter has raised an estimated $153 million (some peg it a few million dollars higher). Since the day of its initial round of funding, Twitter has been given an average of $187,356 per day by its investors.

4. Using that same time frame and its current $1 billion valuation, Twitter’s worth has grown by $1,223,990 per day. If you start with the day of Twitter’s inception (the first tweet <http://twitter.com/jack/status/20> from Twitter’s Inventor and Chairman, Jack Dorsey), then Twitter’s worth has grown by around $772,797 per day.

5. Twitter has yet to make a single cent in profit. We’ll let you be the judge of what that means. Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

(copied from a post by Ben Parr, dated October 4th, 2009: http://mashable.com/2009/10/04/twitter-stats/)

WOW!!

This all got me searching around for various Twidbits….Found some great useful links for us Tweet-a-Holics (I have begun thinking in 140 characters or less. I tweet inside my head. I’m losing my #mind!!!)

• 140it – Makes Your Tweet Less Than 140 Characters
• Tweetcontd – More than 140 characters
  
• Twonvert – Convert your tweets to 140 characters or less
• Twitlonger – When 140 characters just isn’t enough
• Tweetshrink – Helping shave those few extra letters off a tweet that has exceeded the 140 character maximum
• TwitBlogs – Allows you to add more words and also upload pictures and videos

• Twittertise - Advertise on Twitter
• Twitterad - Monetize your twitter profile
• TwitterCard - Place a 125×125 TwitterCard on your Blog or as an Advertisement
• Adcause - Saving the world one tweet at a time
• Twitterribbons - Twitter Ribbon Ad generator
• TwitterKnowHow - Twitter ribbon ad generator
• BeaMagpie - Be a Magpie is an ad network for Twitter
• TweetTornado - Fully automated advertising software
• FeaturedUsers - FeaturedUsers is a Twitter application ad network

Backgrounds and Buttons

• Twitbacks - Create free Twitter backgrounds
• Twitrounds - Twitter Backgrounds
• TwitterBackgrounds - Twitter Backgrounds
• TwitterGallery - Free Twitter themes
• DoctorTwitter - Twitter Backgrounds and Twitter layouts
• TwitterButtons - Free Twitter buttons
• MyTweetSpace - Brand your Twitter profile
• Peekr - Click to view Twitter backgrounds
• Twitter My Site – Get custom buttons for Twitter
• Twitter Patterns – Background patterns for Twitter
• TwitButtons - Twitter buttons
• TwitterImage - Custom Twitter backgrounds
• SweetTweet - Twitter backgrounds, buttons and layouts

Browser Plugins

• TwitterFox - TwitterFox is a Firefox extension that notifies you of your friends’ status on Twitter
• TwitterBar - Post to Twitter from your address bar
• Power Twitter – Makes Twitter better
• TwitterLine - Twitter headline extension for Firefox
• Twitter Search – Twitter search
• StockTwits - Links stocktwits tagged ticker on Twitter back to StockTwits
• Twitzer - Lets you post text longer than 140 characters on Twitter
• TwitterJobSearch - The world’s first job search engine to harness the power of Twitter
• Feedly - Feedly weaves your favorite content into a fun, magazine-like start page
• Instant Tweets – Instantly send pages, pictures and tweets to Twitter from any where on the web
• Tweecious - Listening to your twitter feed and submitting all the links to your delicious account
• TwitKit - TwitKit is a Twitter sidebar
• TwittIE - Make your Internet Explorer tweet
• Twitbin - Allows you to keep up with all of your Twitter conversations right from your browser sidebar
• DashBlog - Lets you collect videos, images, text, songs and screenshots from any web page and publish them to your blog or twitter
• Social Whale Extension – Create short URLs for use on Twitter
• shortText - Twitzer is a Firefox extension which lets you post text longer than 140 characters
• TwitThat - Post current page to Twitter via twitthat.com
• Song.ly – Lets you share music links on Twitter
• TwittyTunes - Allows to post your currently playing songs to Twitter
• Tweetstalk - The simple way to stalk Twitter users without having to follow them
• Yoono - Yoono simplifies your social life by centralising all your social networks and instant messaging in one easy to use browser sidebar
• Twippera - Twitter widget for Opera

Business

• CoTweet - Designed for businesses using Twitter to engage existing customers and attract new ones
• ComTweets - Twitter + business
• twtQpon - Create Twitter coupons for your business
• Twtvite - A simple event manager twitter app
• Twitzu - Promote your events on Twitter
• TweetManager - Twitter app for complete Twitter automation

Clouds

• Tweetcloud - What’s being said
• Tweet Cloud – View Twitter timeline as a tag cloud
• Cloud.li – Twitter clouds
• Search Cloudlet for Twitter – Inserts smart tag clouds into Twitter interface to help you search faster
• Tweetclouds - Make a word cloud
• Twittersheep - See a tag cloud from the ‘bios’ of your twitter flock

Dating and Love

• Flirt140 - Flirt140 is a site that helps Twitter-ers find each other for dates and more
• MyTweetHeart - Twitter singles looking for friendship, romance, and love
• Radaroo - The simple and free Twitter dating system
• Twitcrush - Which three tweeple do you <3 the most
• Textgasm - Twitter secrets
• PornstarTweet - Stay up to date with your favourite pornstars

Desktop & Web Clients

• Tweetdeck - TweetDeck connects you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook and more
• Seesmic Desktop– Desktop client connecting you to Twitter and Facebook
• Destroy Twitter– DestroyTwitter is a compact though robust Twitter application built to run on Mac, Windows, and Linux
• Twhirl - Twhirl is a social software desktop client
• Chirpr - Windows sidebar gadget for Twitter
• Accessible Twitter – Web accessibility for the Twitter web application
• Pwytter - Multi-platform Twitter client written in Python
• Mixero - The new generation Twitter client for people who value their time and are tired of information noise
• Snitter - A Twitter client for Mac and Windows
• TweetMyPC - TweetMyPC lets you shutdown/restart/LogOff your windows PC remotely
• Posty - Posty simplifies your microblogging
• Sideline - Watch, search and monitor the Twitter public timeline in real-time
• Twitexplorer - The most efficient Twitter client on the Web
  
• Nambu - Social messaging streamlined
• Tweetie for Mac – Twitter client for Mac
• Teletwitter - Twitter client for Windows
• Digsby - Digsby is a social networking tool that alerts you of events like new messages
• Twitteroo - Send Twitter tweets fromyour PC
• Twinja - A desktop client Twitter built on AIR
• Tweeter - A java desktop client for Twitter
• Gwibber - Gwibber is an open source microblogging client for GNOME
• TwInbox - Use Twitter directly from Outlook
• MadTwitter - Twitter for Windows
• Spaz - An open-source Twitter client for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux
• Twitteron - A robust, easy to use, free twitter client for all operating systems
• Tweetr - Twitter client for Mac / PC
• Twittm - Twitter for desktop
• Jata - Just another Twitter app
• Spreadtweet - IT’s Twitter disguised as a spreadsheet
• Blu - The Vista Twitter client
• bDule - Twitter client for Windows
• Statuzer - Twitter client running through Air

I’d like to thank Brian Kitching (www.oregonpublishing.com) for taking the time to recap the twitter webinar -

This a a brief recap of what was discussed at the GoToWebinar about Twitter:
(hosted by Jay Berkowitz, Gail Goodwin-motivational speaker(InspireMeToday), Iconic88, Warren Whitlock wrote “twitter revolution”

Starting with a brief explanation of what Twitter is:
Twitter is an incredible news feed and Micro-blogging in 140 characters or less.

Then the panel moved into the outline of Good Twitter Tips:

1#How to build a following:
Follow those that are in the sidebar of people you like, chances are they will have similar interest.

2#Good basic profile
Good Head Shot, description/bio, and link, you only get one link.
Twitter is searchable from google so make it authentic, about you and use your link.

3#Follow a few people and listen before you speak.
Get a feel for what is going on in your “new tribe/community”

4# write some great tweets…why?
So people will get a feel for what your twitter stream will be filled with.
What is a great tweet? Answering a question, being of service, being positive.
You can find question by searching twiiter using the “?” Both to answer questions and to find answers to your questions, much like people are using google and yahoo.

5# Follow the Leaders – where are the leaders located?
Check out:
WeFollow.com WeFollow is a directory of Twitter users organized by interests.
TwitterGrader.com Twitter Grader : Measure the power and authority of your twitter profile (can check top twitters by geo-location)
Twitteriti.com The World of Twitter and Microblogging “ideas to follow top 100 from here”
Technorati’s Real-time search for user-generated media (including weblogs) by tag or keyword. Also provides popularity indexes. Follow top 100.
Then get in the converstation using the @ sign.  (you should have some tweets going alreay in your stream, nobody wants to follow a tweeter with no tweets!)

6# RT (ReTweet) with an @ sign
Sharing others information is siting the source, which can lead to others RT your tweets. Try  using only 100 characters to leave room for a comment by the ReTweeter.

7# Search.Twitter.com
The instantaneous search, Real time search results. Did you know Google recently offered Twitter a Billion Dollars to acquire it. Most likely for the search.

Tip interlude: Hash-tag # a way to create taging information around a common term.
i.e #iranelections or at Blogworld Convention #BWE09

8# Upgrade your profile
use a custom background that matches your site, personality, a new promo, specials, books you author, etc.
It doesn’t have to stay static.

9# Play with some twitter apps, like
tweetdeck, split tweet, seemic-desktop, peoplebrowsr
bit.ly (shorten a url, and track the named link…cool custom twitter link with stats!)
tweetlater (is now socialOomph) for autoposting/sechuled posts. It’s useful before events your going to attend. Set to go off 5 mins before the event starts.

10# Three E’s of Social Media
1) Educate – Help someone, answers a question, point them/link them in the right direction
2) Entertain – Be funny, link to videos, music, etc.
3) Engage -  use the @ sign and be involved in a converstation. Don’t let your twitter account, or any social account, stay dormant!
Also know as the the Two L’s :: Listen and Love

All in all it was a good webinar. I was refreshed on some things, learned some new things, gathered some great links, apps,  and resources… all shared above.
Happy twittering

-Brian Kitching  http://www.OregonPublishing.com