“It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.” – Henry Ford

Social media at its foundation is about human interactions.  Too many of us strive to chase the homerun marketing campaign like Old Spice, wish that social media would work like the “spray and pray” methodologies of email marketing, or wish that we could buy a adwords on Google and wait for the cash register to start ringing.  The wine industry is experiencing the most competitive environment in human history.  I say that again, the wine industry is experiencing the most competitive environment in human history.  And its only getting harder.

What amazes me is how many wineries allow these key communication channels to go unanswered.  It is like having a giant answering machine and never listening to the messages, much less responding. Alan Baker of Cartograph wines inspires me to surface the positive examples as well as the ones that are less than shining examples.

Jerry Gregoire, 47, chief information officer at Dell, puts it this way: “The customer experience is the next competitive battleground.”

Fortunately I have one of the best anecdotes (and I would LOVE for other wineries, consumers to share yours) that happened with me.  I was having a casual lunch at Barndiva in Healdsburg.  A warm day, a wonderful lunch and I decided on a glass of Ramey Chardonnay.  I don’t often tweet about wine but when I do, I often vacillate between mentioning the winery by its Twitter handle and just by their name. In this particular case I was truly enjoying the wine and not testing to see if the winery was listening–it was simply worth mentioning the wine name because it was a great day, great food, and great wine.  To my surprise, David Ramey (a true wine industry legend) tweeted something very simple to me just the next day. He said, “thank you.”

@pmabray Hey, Paul, thanks a bunch!

— David Ramey (@ramey_david) May 17, 2013

Soon after I also got a great response from the winery:

@pmabray We’re glad you enjoyed our wine Paul. Thank you for sharing.

— Ramey Wine Cellars (@RameyWineCellar) May 17, 2013

Yes, I know that David doesn’t tweet that often.  That’s ok.  It made me feel even more special that he chose me to thank.  The excellent follow-up from the winery made me feel that they cared about my enjoyment of the wine.

“In a world of infinite wine choices, service is the only differentiator.” – Me

So where was the ROI?  Let me continue the story.  A few weeks later I was at Whole Foods (aka Whole Paycheck) and was buying wine.  I started with one bottle that led to two, and then there was another interesting wine that made it three.  Before I knew it I had five bottles in my cart.  Well, as everyone knows six bottles gives you a 10% discount.  Whole Foods (in Napa) has a pretty solid selection of wines.  You can choose from all kinds of bubbles, great whites like Le Cigare Blanc from Bonny Doon, Côtes de Tablas Blanc from Tablas Creek, and on and on and on.  But when my eyes rested on the 2009 Ramey, my choice was obvious.  I remembered the kind thank you from David and the winery.  But my story doesn’t end there.  This weekend the same dilemma occurred at Napa Safeway (another market with a fine selection of wine).  We were shopping for wines for a comparative chardonnay tasting.  Five bottles in and the same choice to acquire the discount and my choice for the sixth bottle was . . . yep, you guessed it, 2010 Ramey Chardonnay.

So collectively I spent over $75 on Ramey’s brand (the first glass of wine then two repeat purchases) because they acknowledged me as a customer.  Well done Ramey, well done.

In stark contrast to my experience, our CTO James Jory has been a wine club member of Navarro since 1991 (his brother in-law has been a member even longer and his father & mother in-law have been members since 1981). Without backwards adjustment for price increases or any of the additional orders he has made over the years on top of his automatic shipments, James’ lifetime value for just being a club member is $2400. To add to this James is an avid fan and often champions Navarro wines at our dinner parties, barbeques, visits to friends homes and more. On June 4th, he expressed his joy at recieving his shipment on Twitter.

It’s always a great day when you receive your @navarrowine club shipment! #wine

— James Jory (@james_jory) June 5, 2013

On June 13th he spoke at the Shipcompliant conference to a fairly large winery audience and mentioned how his tweet had gone unheard or worse yet, with no response. Three more days passed, or 11 days after his tweet, and they responded:

@james_jory What was your favorite?

— Navarro Vineyards (@navarrowine) June 15, 2013

He replied and a day later they gave a timely and appreciative response.

@james_jory So glad you are enjoying our wine..

— Navarro Vineyards (@navarrowine) June 17, 2013

Now, Navarro is a great winery and it is fantastic that they responded (there are MANY more egregious examples of wineries that never respond). The reality is that James is a great customer of that winery and he was almost ignored. That little “thank you” retained his loyalty especially in a world where he has infinite choices of wine on which he can spend his hard earned money. Kudos to Navarro for responding (albeit late and apparently without context to his value to their winery).

Make no mistake, selling wine and customer relationship management is hard work. Despite the allure, it is not all rainbows and unicorns, especially in this competitive environment.  It is hard work, trench warfare where the reality of success is the culmination of lots and lots of small victories.  Where each customer that you acquire (and more importantly retain) is like drops of water in the desert.  Where every relationship you create needs to be carefully nurtured so that it grows to fruition.  Where the certificate of your success is measured by the receipts from satisfied customers.  Where the first sale is only the beginning of the relationship.

CRM is not software, it is a culture – VinTank

In the end, the statement still stands. No matter what the communication channel (the phone, fax, email, a blog post, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc, etc, etc) there is ALWAYS ROI in talking to your customers.

We Interrupt This Important Message to Bring You VinTank Version 3.0

Today marks a major evolution for VinTank. First and foremost we are releasing our biggest and best version of VinTank as we speak: version 3.0. However, this is a soft launch so we are only rolling it out to select customers. This release represents the culmination of our philosophy on how we view social media for businesses. Built from the ground up, we have analyzed millions of social media conversations, profiled millions of social wine customers, and our conclusions are these. Read More…

Facebook Rolling Out Hashtag support Starting Today

Facebook is taking a move out of Twitter’s playbook and officially adding support for the hashtag. Starting today, Facebook users will be able to search for and click on hashtags — as represented by the traditional # symbol — to see a stream of images, posts, and links all tagged with a given phrase. But unlike on Twitter, that stream will be drastically limited by privacy settings, and users will only be able to see public posts and content made visible to them by friends. Read more…

VinTank’s Twist

The #hashtag has become a very important tool for visibility, conversation, measurement and categorizing. Facebook now joins Twitter and Instagram by allowing users to use them. If you are posting about a holiday, special event, current event, or any other common topics, use hashtags to gain more views and grow the conversation around your posts. Anything that increases engagement is for the better and you can use our new Facebook insights tool to see the breakdown of the engagement for each post.

The Dos & Dont’s of Business Tweeting

Did you know that Twitter gets about 300,000 new visitors on a daily basis? These days, having a Twitter handle is in the norm for any business, small or large. Social media platforms like Twitter are an easy way to reach potential customers. The power of just 140 characters has neverbeen stronger.

Sure, setting up a Twitter account is a piece of cake, but in a sea of over 340 million tweets a day, how do you make sure your business’s tweets are noticed? Read more…

 VinTank’s Twist 

Twitter is a great way to stay in touch with your followers, customers and prospects. If someone mentions you in their tweet or compliments you, reply to their tweet with a thank you! If someone asks you a question through a tweet, answer him or her! It’s always nice for your followers to know that your business cares about its customers. Most importantly, communicating with your followers shows the world that you not only tweet, you also pay attention to what people are saying about you. Don’t be afraid to have fun, either.

25 Ways to Create Contagious Content [Infographic]

Content is the foundation for blogs and websites. It is what makes your readers and viewers come back for more. The range and type of content that is available on a social web is extensive and includes multimedia such as videos, images and infographics and of course plain old simple text. The challenge is to come up with the ideas and the content that people find valuable and want to share. This is something that all writers and bloggers struggle with. I have tried all sorts of content on this blog and sometimes I am surprised with what works and what doesn’t. Read more…

VinTank’s Twist

The article above has numerous great tips for creating content and breaking down creative barriers. This article and infographic are examples of the #22 Tip of re-using old content. By educating, informing, entertaining, or inspiring, you will be giving your social customers value. Give them value and they will share with others and return for more.

The Dollar Payoff from Social Media

Customers who engage with a company’s social media efforts spend more on its products, according to this paper, which confirms that online platforms not only strengthen the bond between consumers and firms, but can also help boost the bottom line.

And the payoff is significant: In this study, customers who interacted with a wine retailer’s social media network visited stores 5.2 percent more often and contributed 5.6 percent more revenue than customers who had a similar shopping history at that retailer but no online involvement. Read more…

VinTank’s Twist

With 5 percent more visits from social customers and almost 6 percent more revenue for a wine retailer, the ROI of using social media for selling wine is clear. “The study’s results show the importance of segmenting and targeting customers on the basis of their shopping background, demographics, and history with the firm”. 

“It is vital that managers integrate their knowledge about customers from both offline transactions and online social media sources in order to better serve them,” the authors write. Use VinTank to post updates about your company, segment your customers, send personal messages to specific customers, correlate purchasing data to social data and encourage users to provide positive feedback.

Thanks for reading our weekly insight post. Watch this space every week for more Social Media Resources with a VinTank Twist. If you would like to learn more about how we can help you put these resources to use please contact us.

Today marks a major evolution for VinTank.  First and foremost we are releasing our biggest and best version of VinTank as we speak: version 3.0.  However, this is a soft launch so we are only rolling it out to select customers. This release represents the culmination of our philosophy on how we view social media for businesses. Built from the ground up, we have analyzed millions of social media conversations, profiled millions of social wine customers, and our conclusions are these:

The customer is the center of the universe, not the conversation.  Everything you see today and going forward will be about helping you better understand your social customers and their value to your business.

The world is about context, context, context.  Just ask Robert Scoble and Shel Israel and read their upcoming book, The Age of Context.  We agree and we think they agree with us too.

The magical three.  The three most important ways you interact with your customers are when they talk about you, when they talk to you, and when they talk with you. So we’ve added management features to cover all three of these scenarios.

Social media can be overwhelming and is only growing more complex. Our job as a software company is to make it easier. So we have consolidated every one of the three categories (about you, to you, with you) and made them one conversation stream. As a result account managers can spend significantly less time scrolling through columns or social logins and more time engaging and creating content.

The foundation behind what we do is context. Managing social media accounts today means customers on multiple social networks and mentions coming from every direction. By using the new VinTank you will discover the layers of context behind each and every customer. These layers have always been there and they have been trying to tell you a story. The story begins with how many times have they talked to you, with you, about you. From there it goes deeper; are they an e-commerce customer or a wine-club member (through our exclusive integration with Vin65.com), or are they in one of your important customer segments (press, trade, business development, etc).

Customer touch point measurement.  How many times they have liked, commented, shared or checked-in and what does value does that represent? What their interests are and every conversation you have had with them in one place. No more guessing on the importance of each interaction. New customers should be welcomed, repeat customers and advocates should be celebrated. All of this and more can be done right from our new software.

Social CRM should not be a contact management system.  Too many social CRM systems look through the lens of a salesperson vs. how do you scale relationship management for your entire company’s customers and make it accessible across the organization.  Our Board of Advisor, Michael Brito leads the world in his concepts on a social business and we have worked hard to align our software to enable your entire company to manage social media and engage with your customers.

Location, location location. No we’re not talking about real estate, we are talking about your social customers, people who talk about your product, and customers who are at your location right now. Our Nearby feature brings this information to you so you can take advantage of some of your most important customers, those who are at or near your locations. See what posts are being made at your location, who is nearby your location that talk about your product and see where customers most often go after leaving your location. For our Elite clients you will also be able to see people who are within our Napa geo fence (soon Sonoma and more) and invite them to your location.

Organic conversations. Though the organization of the three most important social media interactions are covered by VinTank, we know that interacting with customers when they talk about things other than your brand is also important. As such we’ve decided to enable any platform to leverage organic conversations starting with Twitter. The new VinTank integrates with Twitter lists so that you can leverage tools like TweetDeck, Hootsuite, and others to synchronize customers between both platforms. Once you connect a Twitter list to VinTank, any user that you add/remove from the list in Twitter will be automatically added to the linked VinTank segment and vice versa.

ROI, by connecting commerce to social. We believe there is ALWAYS ROI IN TALKING TO YOUR CUSTOMER. Though the definition of customer has changed with social media we also understand that DTC business is the purest form of customers. As such we have an exclusive integration with Vin65 to connect your DTC customers with your social customers. It WILL get better and better but always the possibilities of understanding how social ties to DTC ROI are becoming limitless.

VinTank Now Supports Napa Restaurants

We have now expanded to the restaurant industry.  Why you ask?  Because we think there are key synergies between the two hospitality industries that can bring even more power and features to both types of businesses.  This is also very important as we work harder to map the locations that represent people coming to wine country so we can better help you connect with NEW customers (as mentioned in the recent Forbes article about VinTank).  Currently we are only accepting Napa restaurants now but will be expanding to Healdsburg, Sonoma, New York and San Francisco in November.  If you are a restaurant in any of these cities that wants to be on our early release list, just send us a message.

We like to get Software in the Hands of Users

VinTank Version 3 is going through a closed beta with a limited set of our customers being upgraded.  The software is so good we wanted them to have it in their hands ASAP.  Over the next month we will be adding features, tightening up bugs and improving the user experience.  We also have quite a few press announcements that we can’t wait to share.  At that point we will upgrade all of our PAYING customers.  Soon after we will upgrade all our free customers to the new VinTank.

It Takes a Team of Superheroes To Make Software this Good

We have done so much work but lots of what we’ve built wouldn’t be possible without key partners.  Here are three companies that made this launch so amazing.

We need to thank our new partnership with Vin65.com/WineDirect.com.  They were early to understand that by putting together customer transaction data with social data we could create a new path of customer understanding and service. We have just begun this journey together but the leadership and innovative thinking of Joe Waechter, Andrew Kamphuis and Sheri Hebbeln are opening all kinds of possibilities how to increase ROI with social media and scale customer relationship management.

There are some people who can map complex ideas into beautiful design and experiences.  Marci and Aaron‘s company Little Arrows specializes in all kinds of digital strategy but is amazing at user experience (aka UEX).  Through hours of conversations they helped us coalesce all of our four years into the new way VinTank will power your business (and we’ve only scratched the surface).

Finally, putting together an amazing product is worthless unless you can tell your story. Stephen Mutch and SimplyPlatformed rebuilt our company website www.VinTank.com (and with responsive design no less).  He is one of the valley’s best web service providers and made the relaunch of our site say what we do and do what we say.  If you are looking for digital design work at a fair price, he’s your guy.

So without further ado, we want to begin to welcome you to the new world of social media powered by VinTank.

Stay tuned for an all-new VinTank!

Six Free or Low-Cost Online Activities to Increase Tasting Room Traffic

The online marketing world can seem overwhelming, especially to winery owners with limited time and financial resources. The result is that those wineries that could benefit most from free and low-cost marketing methods frequently fail to take advantage of them. The following list provides six simple, free or low-cost online activities that wineries of any size can use to increase tasting room traffic.

1. Optimize Your Winery’s Website

2. Claim, Enhance, and Update Online Profiles on Visitor Review Sites

3. Encourage People to Share Their Winery Experiences

4. Create & Maintain Profiles on Social Networking Sites Such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus

5. Ensure Your Winery is Listed on Regional Online Maps

6. Targeted Paid Advertising ($5-$300 per month)

Read more…

VinTank’s Twist

This article by American Winery Guide is a great list of suggestions for increasing tasting room traffic including using our platform for monitoring social media and engaging customers. The overall theme of the points above is that one of the best and easiest ways to get more business is to remove or limit the barriers of customers finding you or reaching you. This applies to both the physical (helping them find you) and digital worlds (helping you engage with each-other). VinTank Lite the best possible tool to do both.

Twitter Now Supports More and Longer Lists

Twitter lists got a refresh on Thursday, giving users the ability to create more lists on the social network and include more people on those created.

Previously capped at 20, now you can create up 1,000 lists on Twitter. Those lists can now include up to 5,000 accounts, substantially larger than the previous cap of 500 accounts. Twitter announced the update via Twitter, of course, in a tweet from its @TwitterForNews account. Read more…

VinTank’s Twist

As opposed to its rival Facebook’s more constant flow of new features, Twitter has been slower to add or make changes to existing features. This week’s update to Twitter lists is a strong sign that the social network sees the importance of users segmenting and sharing groups. We also share this view and have made sure that the new VinTank will employ twitter lists to be synced to your CRM. It’s another huge step forward in having instant access to social data never before available. #SCRM

5 Principles of Convergence: How to Work Better at the Intersection of Tech, Creativity, and Media

Convergence is both buzzword and marketing reality. Razorfish CEO Bob Lord outlines 5 ways creative companies can adapt to a converging world and create better brand experiences. The word convergence has been picking up steam in the marketing world. It may even be the “big data” term of 2013. Yet, the word means different things to different people. At Razorfish, we use convergence to describe the coming together of three irresistible forces–media, technology, and creativity to create experiences that enrich the consumer’s relationship with the brand.

Convergence is a constant process, not an end point. Technology, creativity, and
media are constantly evolving, and so is the converged company. It is a never-ending
challenge to adapt a customer experience that, in our digital age, will always be
in flux. Too often, businesses are far behind consumers in embracing technological
change, a problem that has everything to do with how the organization is set up. Read more…

VinTank’s Twist

The digital age brings increasingly rapid change and need for adaptation. What will not change is that consumers will be looking for experience and quality in their purchasing decisions. So while the vessel that they use to get to you or the one you use to go to them will undoubtedly be different in 5 – 10 years, the start and end points will not. “The winners of this era will be the companies whose main focus is constantly improving on the customer journey. If you follow your customer, you can’t go wrong.” Our purpose is to give you the platform that keeps the flow no  matter what vessel the customer is using today.

Billions of Geotagged Tweets Visualized in Twitter’s Amazing Maps

Ever wonder what it would look like to plot every single geotagged tweet since 2009 on a map?

Twitter has done just that. Twitter posted these maps of Europe, New York City, Tokyo and Istanbul on its blog Friday. They use billions of geotagged tweets: Every dot represents a tweet, with the brighter colors showing a higher concentration of tweets. It’s pretty amazing how the mapped-out tweets clearly match with population centers, highways and the like – though perhaps that’s obvious. Read More…

VinTank’s Twist

Sometimes it takes seeing data visualized to help understand its significance. Take a moment and think how many of those little dots were about your brand. Or  how many of them were posted at your location or nearby. Those dots are your customers, they are real people who care about what you do. With the new VinTank you won’t  have to wonder if they have talked about you or if they are nearby or more importantly… both.

Thanks for reading our weekly insight post. Watch this space every week for more Social Media Resources with a VinTank Twist. If you would like to learn more about how we can help you put these resources to use please contact us.

Stay tuned for an all new VinTank!

Is Your Tasting Room Successful?

Is your tasting room successful? How do you know? What are you measuring success against? Is the tasting room making enough money? What is enough money for the tasting room? Are your staff salaries in line with the market or are you overpaying? Is your club retention long or short of average? What’s your conversion rate of visitors into club members?

You probably measure club membership length and your results are better than what is portrayed on the slide above (click on it for a larger view). On average, club memberships last just a little over 2 years. That means someone probably came into your tasting room, they signed up, and got their first shipment. When they got their second shipment the next year, they decided to leave the club. That is horrible performance in my view. It cost so much money to get the first sale in the door when you fully burden that sale with the overhead and salaries of the tasting room staff. You probably didn’t really make money on that first sale. Then you shipped a second case the following year and they quit the club. Read more…

VinTank’s Twist

Rob McMillan brings up many important questions for every tasting room with the most important point being are you measuring data? You can’t manage what you don’t measure and our platform is built for both.

Using our segments tool, you can easily add your social customers to a segment for wine club members, tasting room visitors, etc. Thank them for their support and encourage them to share their experiences. Continue the conversation and on top of it all, ask the right questions and measure your results. Click below to learn more about the in depth customer profiles available for our SCRM tier.

Fed Winery Social Media Rules Vague

Our CEO Paul Mabray weighs in on the the new TTB guidelines

Addressing the lack of any regulation on alcohol brands in the exploding social media space, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) has issued new guidelines defining everything from blogs and social networks to video sharing sites and micro blogging services as “advertising.” And as such, any use of social media by industry members (specifically permit holders) is subject to the same limitations, requirements and restrictions as any other form of advertising previously has been.

What this means, among other things, is that brands are required to include so-called “mandatory statements” (such as their location and product designation as prescribed by TTB) on social media properties in an obvious place (such as the “about” or profile information section) that is clearly visible with, and associated with, the message. (This gives no consideration to consumers using third-party Twitter apps or reading a post in their own newsfeed on Facebook instead of the brand page.) And any messages are subject to the same prohibitions as print, radio or TV advertisements, as defined by the Code of Federal Regulations.

Some of the nearly anachronistic elements of the guidelines – such as the inclusion of defunct social network Friendster and awkward sounding explanations, make some wonder if the guidelines’ authors really understand the segment of the media they are attempting to regulate.

“I find it ludicrous. I find the regulatory behavior around social media a complete misunderstanding,” said Paul Mabray, chief strategy officer at Vintank, a consulting firm and digital service provider to the wine industry. Mabray, who compares the approach to that of trying regulate phone calls or email in the same way, said, “These are a conversational social platforms,” adding, “And they obviously don’t understand them.” Read more…

Yahoo Unveils the New Flickr With One Terabyte of Free Space

Yahoo has just announced a complete redesign of Flickr at its New York City event – the new site is live now and it comes with one terabyte of free photo space. Yahoo SVP Adam Cahan just made the announcement and said that “Flickr had become about words, little images, blue links. It was not about the photo anymore.” But the new photostream changes that, will full-resolution images and a clean homepage with all the emphasis on images – it looks a lot like the Instagram web profile header.

In short, Flickr’s done away with nearly all of the white space on Flickr, across every page you visit. Other new features include iPhoto-style slideshows (complete with music), full-bleed photos with significantly-reduced UI elements, and extensive sharing options – you can push photos out to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, or Pinterest. It’s a massive redesign, and it came together pretty fast – Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said that the company talked about this project in March and “rallied as a full company” to get the project done in this quarter. Read more…

VinTank’s Twist

Yahoo released a major redesign and announced virtually unlimited storage space for its user’s photos this week. An important takeaway is that you should not be forgetting about websites like Flickr when your focus is drawn to Instagram and other increasingly popular photo sharing services. 

You will never have all your customers in one place, on one network. So we gather the mentions across almost all of the possible places you can be talked about online whether it’s Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter but also Google+, Tumblr, Foursquare, Instagram, Youtube, Cellartracker, Wine log, Drync and many more. Over 90K blogs, 150K forums and almost every wine article published online. We search for you and provide you with all of the mentions in one place.

20 Digital Facts That You Need to Know

#1 Mobile internet usage is projected to overtake desktop internet usage by 2014. The facts and numbers around mobile usage is pretty staggering. Over 1 billion mobile devices are currently in use, and the number keeps on growing. We use and rely on our phones on a daily basis and if you don’t have a mobile friendly website you will get lost in the shuffle. By 2014 mobile internet usage should outpace desktops. This stat varies by source but 2014/15 is right around the corner. 2013 is the year to think about how your website caters to the mobile market. Read More…

VinTank’s Twist

We highly encourage that you optimize your website to be mobile friendly as well as update your information on any landing sites that customers will find themselves on when searching for you. Many businesses wish for more customers while neglecting the places that help customers find you! Also everyday we see wineries with great social media presence but no link to their social accounts on their web page. Take the time to ensure that your social customers and anyone interested in learning more about you, can do so.

Study: 78% Of Salespeople Using Social Media Outsell Their Peers

When Jim Keenan, the social sales specialist, describes his work today, he’ll tell you that he’s “ushering salespeople from the old world into the social world” – the cold calling world to the Twitter world, the salespeople who call prospects incessantly to the salespeople who educate their prospects with relevant content. Keenan’s argument in the The Rise of Social Salespeople is that using social media to sell – increases profits.But up until now, we’ve had no real data.

So sensing an opportunity, Keenan’s firm recently released a report on the impact of social media on quota attainment and the results were impressive. Read more…  

VinTank’s Twist

The statistics are revealing what many in sales have known for some time. For more and more salespeople, social media has become a powerful tool for increasing numbers and access to customers or clients. The ability to know more about people as well as reach them is unprecedented. If you aren’t engaging your prospects or customers through social media, someone else will be. Social CRM is the key to understanding more about the social customer. Learn more about how we can help you with that goal below.

Thanks for reading our weekly insight post. Watch this space every week for more Social Media Resources with a VinTank Twist. If you would like to learn more about how we can help you put these resources to use please contact us.

How Wine Criticism Is Changing

Consumers don’t need-or want-centralized gatekeepers telling them what they should or shouldn’t drink. Consumers still need advisors, of course, but when today’s consumers want information, they’re willing to look past professional critics and instead turn to friends and trusted networks.

With travel, restaurants, movies, and so much else, this trend would hardly be worthy of commentary. TripAdvisor long ago supplanted paper-based guides like Frommer’s. Yelp is now the holy grail of restaurant reviews, and local blogs are increasingly influential. With movies, opening the local newspaper for commentary no longer makes sense when you can check out dozens of reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.

With wine, however, this shift runs counter to so much of what’s sacred. Everything about wine-the bizarre tasting rituals, knowledge of obscure regions and varietals, and identifying good values-is supposed to be handed down from on high. Read more…

VinTank’s Twist

It’s well understood that consumers are turning to the internet and social networks for hotel or restaurant recommendations. This is now the reality for the wine industry as well. Take CellarTracker for instance, “about 800,000 people visit the site each month, and more than 2,200 wines are reviewed on the site each day. This means CellarTracker users review more wines in just six days than Robert Parker reviews in an entire year”.

Our platform tracks your mentions across many sources at once, including CellarTracker and other widely used tasting note websites. Log in to your VinTank account to see on your dashboard any new tasting notes from a variety of sources. If you click on the tasting notes section, you will see them all in one place.

The ‘Unfashionable’ Semillon Grape Gets Dirty and Rowdy in Napa

“Semillon is not a fashionable variety,” announces Wine Grapes. “Nowhere outside Sauternes,” the book continues, “does there seem to be a groundswell of enthusiasm for this noble variety.” Time for a re-write, Wine Grapes.

A “Semageddon” party went down in Napa last week, devoted entirely to this oh-so “unfashionable” Semillon grape. The party was attended by wine lovers and winemakers-many of them among the most influential in California today. There were four picnic tables, three ice buckets, and two coolers filled with bottles of Semillon gathered from around the world. The clincher: custom-made Semillon T-shirts!! Groundswell of enthusiasm?? In your face. Originally from Bordeaux and used in both dry and sweet wines there, it’s true that Semillon isn’t exactly mainstream in California (yet?). Wine Grapes says that less than 900 acres of it existed in the state in 2010.  Read more…

VinTank’s Twist

In statistics, a long tail is the portion of a distribution having a large number of occurrences far from the “head” or central part of the distribution. It is a term used in online business, mass media, micro-finance, user-driven innovation, and social network mechanisms (e.g. crowdsourcing, crowdcasting, peer-to-peer), economic models, and marketing (viral marketing). It is important to note that what we are going to see from the interconnectedness of networks, is that there will be new markets for non-traditional brands or varieties.

If you find yourself in the “long-tail” of the wine market, fret not, hike up your trousers and get to work. There are customers looking for something different and your goal should be to help them find you and connect with them. The purpose of our platform and VinTank as a company is to give you the tools to do so.

I/O 2013: Google Plus getting 41 updates

Google Plus is getting a major overhaul 41 new features across Hangouts, Photos and a newly designed “Stream.” With a focus on promoting and organizing content across multiple columns, the Google Plus team described that the new stream is about “design and depth.”

In reflection of just how vital hashtags have become to social networking, Google Plus is getting a new feature dubbed “Related hashtags,” analyzing the content of a post and Google will designate the appropriate hashtags. Users will then be able to flip Cards (similar to what is available on Google Now) and see content based on related topics as well as current locations. These new changes will begin rolling out to all users starting today. Read More…

VinTank’s Twist

The latest reports state that Google+ adoption and usage for brands remain slow but the changes released this week look to turn that around for the social network. Like Twitter, Instagram and soon Facebook, Google+ looks to capitalize on the effectiveness of #hashtags. Additional features also include a revamped messaging tool integrated with Google Hangouts and a complete new feed of posts. As Google leads more of its users to Google+ from search or other tools, you should keep in mind the importance of establishing your brand there. Also whether or not you have a brand page, VinTank indexes the social network to track your mentions on the site. View much more about these customers with VinTank Lite.

Now You Tweet Me, Now You Don’t

You’ve heard it a million times. A happy customer tells a few people, but an unhappy customer tells…everyone. In the age of social media, those numbers, especially for those expressing discontent, are only escalating. In 2012, American Express released  a study claiming that 46 percent of U.S. Internet users hit branded social media pages to express frustration about poor experiences. This of course plays into the fears of executives who do not understand the value of social media nor its place in our modern society. “We can’t respond to them,” I hear executives declare. “If we do, we’ll invite more complaints and questions,” they’ll contend in defense of their position.

This isn’t as uncommon as you might think. I recently presented at a corporate conference where I received a question from someone in the C-Suite that gave me pause. The question went something like this, “Customers will complain on social media because it’s a natural thing to do. We know more people will say negative things than they will share positive experiences. What’s a company to do? What’s the point? How do we change behavior?” Read more…

VinTank’s Twist

At a minimum, you shouldn’t be ignoring that group of customers with megaphones in the parking lot. Beyond that, you should have the customer context to interpret the most detail about each customer and their interactions with your brand.

That is why our software has built in disposition and sentiment tagging that you can see on the right. Whether you are balancing out a negative or enhancing a positive, sentiment tags combined with our other SCRM tools will give you everything you need to quickly and effectively help each customer.

Thanks for reading our weekly insight post. Watch this space every week for more Social Media Resources with a VinTank Twist. If you would like to learn more about how we can help you put these resources to use please contact us.

The age of context: Robert Scoble explains how technology [including VinTank @21:30] helps us make sense of the world

Click here to view the embedded video.

While Rackspace‘s Robert Scoble turned many heads at The Next Web Conference Europe last month due to the Google Glass unit he wore everywhere, but Glass is just part of a trend he joined us to discuss in his keynote talk.

From wearable computers like Glass and the Memoto camera to indoor positioning devices and the explosion in new sensors and database technologies to help us make sense of it all, Scoble took us on a rollercoaster ride through how technology is rapidly becoming more contextual. Read more…

VinTank’s Twist

CONTEXT is king and helping you find customers that like your product or helping you better understand your customers when they are at your winery is the future. There is nothing more exciting to us than delivering context whenever you engage with a customer. Imagine knowing how many times a person has talked about cabernet the minute they use Foursquare to check into your winery? Or how many times they’ve mentioned your brand when ever they take an Instagram picture at your location? Or if they enter the valley and have talked about your brand on social media in the past. This is the future and it’s here now. Give us a call to learn more.

The First Mile: The Broken Link of Social Media Customer Service

For all that social media is doing to change business for the better, it’s not yet enough. Interview any executive and ask them what their priority business goals are for 2013 and I’m sure you’ll see some element of customer-centricity on the list. Yet the challenge that exists for any organization trying to get closer to customers lies in the definition of customer-centricity. If getting closer to customers is a key objective, why do many businesses neglect the first mile of customer experience? Sure products and services count for almost everything. But if and when a customer has a question, wishes to share ideas or provide feedback, or needs help, why is it often the beginning of buyer’s remorse or resentment? Read more…

VinTank’s Twist

Enter social media and VinTank. As Brian mentions, “Customers no longer require a “hotline” to express sentiment nor do they need approval to do so. Everyday people express themselves through every channel possible. Thanks to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Yelp, blogs, Foursquare and a myriad of other social networks, customers now possess the ability to share their experiences and affect the impressions and ultimately decisions of an unprecedented number of peers each and every day”.

As our CEO Paul Mabray says constantly, you don’t have to respond but you need to listen to your customers. Whether it be on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, Instagram, Google+, Flickr, Cellartracker, Wine log, Drync or many other places we monitor for you. VinTank is built to help you bring all customer comments directly to you. We want to save you time and find what no one could possible search for manually and the new VinTank does this even more efficiently.

No Slowing the Winery Direct Shipping Movement

The numbers are in and, as expected, 2012 was another banner year for winery direct-to-consumer shipping. American wineries shipped nearly 3.2 million cases of wine directly to consumers’ front doors in 2012, at a value of $1.46 billion.

That’s a 7.7 percent increase in volume and a 10 percent increase in value over 2011. Not only are Americans buying more wine straight from the cellar, we’re buying more expensive wine-at an average price of $38.42 per bottle, up from $37.63 in 2011 and $36.56 in 2010. Read More…

VinTank’s Twist

These figures are great news for wine lovers and the wine industry. With more choice than ever before, Americans are using the opportunity to buy more wine then ever. The questions remains, how do companies influence buyers to choose their brand amongst a sea of choice? Wine buying habits are changing and the tools that customers are using to inform their purchasing decisions are changing. Wine customers are turning to the web to learn about and purchase their wine. Our platform brings these customers to you and you to customer.

Digital future for wine sales: Vinexpo

Wine buying in the future will be an interactive world of mobile apps, virtual sommeliers and tweeting winemakers, according to new research.

Digital technology is driving a sea change in the way retailers engage with wine drinkers, said the Chief Operating Officer of research group Wine Intelligence, Richard Halstead. Speaking at a briefing hosted by trade show Vinexpo, Halstead highlighted several techniques already being used by retailers around the world.

These include ‘Max le Sommelier’, who is navigating shoppers through mind-boggling wine aisles in French hypermarkets, and an initiative in Total Wine & More stores in the US, which allows drinkers to tweet live with a winemaker and view live link-ups to vineyards on screens. Mobile phone apps and social media are also set to become much bigger tools for helping wine drinkers to decipher which bottle to pick. Read more…

VinTank’s Twist

Again, there is no doubt that digital is changing the landscape of consumer choice. While the specific social network or app that users turn to can change, the one thing that will stay constant is the direction. We now live in a world where there is a smart phone that is the gateway to the internet in our pocket. Our access to information and commerce is greater than ever before in history. To ensure you are successful, it is time we as an industry spend time and resources to learn and power our business digitally. Social media and e-commerce are two of the key cornerstones of this brave new world.

Thanks for reading our weekly insight post. Watch this space every week for more Social Media Resources with a VinTank Twist. If you would like to learn more about how we can help you put these resources to use please contact us.

Instagram gets personal with User Tags  

New Instagram features were released this week allowing users to tag friends and display photos of themselves on their Instagram profiles.

While there are many well developed communities and active users on the platform already without user tagging, the ability to see a group of photos with common topics had previously been limited to locations (thanks to Foursquare’s API) or hashtags.

In this update, when someone tags a photo of a friend (or brand), users receive a notification and the photos are displayed in the new “Photos of You” section on their mobile profiles, allowing a user to easily curate and display photos tagged. “Photos of You” opens up new real estate to recognize and feature content on profiles from their brand advocates, fans, and other featured users. Read more…

VinTank’s Twist

With the ubiquity of smartphones and the rise of apps like Instagram, your customers are increasingly sharing their photos and experiences online. With VinTank Lite, you can monitor these photos by the user tags and also importantly by location even if the user forgets to tag your winery in the photo. With the addition of photo tags its more important than ever that brands are on Instagram so that users can select you when looking to tag a photo.

Creating a Twitter #Hashtag: 7 Steps

The hashtag began as a humble idea: the tweeter adds the # symbol (known as the hash key on your telephone) in front of one word or a word group, no spaces. Doing so allows Twitter to categorize the tweet and group it with others who have tweeted using the same hashtag. Think of the hashtag as a keyword tag and it is easier to understand. People searching based on a specific hashtag receive a list of tweets using that particular tag. The searcher is happy, and so are you, because, in one fell swoop, you have:

• Become visible to a new audience
• Joined the conversation
• Voiced your opinion
• Found a likeminded audience eager to read what you have to say

Easy, right?

But we’re not done. When the right hashtag is added to your tweets, your “retweet” rates rise (other people reposting your original tweets). This opens up your comment to new views and opinions, not to mention new followers, and so the cycle of growth and visibility continues. Read more…

VinTank’s Twist

The #hashtag has become a very important tool for visibility, conversation, measurement and categorizing. We encourage you to use our platform to monitor campaigns using hashtags. Have an event coming up? If there is a designated hashtag, you can use it to generate buzz about your brand while using our platform to monitor the results. Also you can create a special campaign for a hashtag to see when it is being used and by whom so you can capitalize on the timing and placement.

The Influence Hierarchy

Influence is like the Simpsons. Meaning, whether you love it or hate it, influencer marketing is the social media topic that will never die. Why? Because it is a mythical, wonderful, tool that many of us view as a magical shortcut to dollars and cents. Influence marketing is cool. It is fun. It is sexy.

The idea of tapping into this flowing river of fans that bloggers and youtubers and Twitter users have, just sitting there, ready to act, ready to buy, sounds amazing. And there are some real opportunities there. But at the end of the day influencer marketing runs smack into the wall we call reality or marketing fundamentals. Like a lot of social media marketing, influencer marketing comes down to relationships. Relationships are a value exchange. And value, like all marketing, comes down to a cost of time or money. Usually both. Read more…

VinTank’s Twist

The article above does a great job of presenting the “influence sweet spot”, a cross section of audience and relevance. We are most influenced often by those closest to us and at the same time reached more often by those we follow like celebrities and publishers. Every brand will have a different sweet spot and our tools were intended to help you find it. Both the current and future versions of our platform focus heavily on segmenting for this very purpose. You should have a segment for press, for bloggers, and for your top customers. The in-depth customer data starting at the Lite tier shows your top customers and new customers to give you the tools you need to find that sweet spot of influence.

The Imminent Shift from Social to Digital Engagement

How do you define engagement? No matter how you define it, engagement is something that we most likely underestimate. Engagement symbolizes the touches that occur in various moments of truth and this should completely change not only how you engage someone in each moment but also how the inside of your company works with one another to make it frictionless and experiential.

Whether a customer stands on the stage of awareness, consideration, purchase, or post purchase, touch points open and close. And, it is in those moments that engagement, regardless of source or shape, affects the next steps and impressions of customers.

These moments of truth however are not limited to any one channel. Whether customers are navigating social, mobile, web or IRL (in real life), they approach each stage of the journey with different needs Read more…

VinTank’s Twist

Think about the customer journey for your brand. At each stage there is an opportunity for you to influence and have a positive impact on the experience. Looking at the Customer Journey Influence Loop in the article above, keep in mind the opportunity to influence the experience, gain loyalty and create brand advocates. The loop is a great visual of how doing so feeds back into the start and in many cases is self-sustaining. Our SCRM tools and social profiles of your customers will give you insight into who your customers are and in what part of the journey they are.

Thanks for reading our weekly insight post. Watch this space every Friday for more Social Media Resources with a VinTank Twist. If you would like to learn more about how we can help you put these resources to use please contact us.

I’m Brandon, the new Community Manager (aka Superstar/Firewalker) here at VinTank. I am excited to be joining Paul Mabray and James Jory, and proud to be representing such an amazing software platform. I get to see first hand the ingenuity and brilliance behind the platform as well as the revolutionary game-changing developments ahead. The best part about it? I’m not alone in my excitement, the whole team is so passionate about what we are doing. It’s an incredible feeling.

I actually believe that what got me this job was that I promised during the interviews that I would bring some serious dance skills to the team. Like real-time marketing/dance meme abilities. If the time comes to dance battle another team, I will be prepared to represent. Maybe my finishing move will be “The VinTank”. I will work on that alone, in front of a mirror. Far far away from smartphones or Google Glass.

My Role

When not dancing, as VinTank’s Community Manager, my aim is to bring together people, ideas and solutions. As a community advocate, I will be listening to and engaging with you, and with anyone who may interact with our brand. To keep you up-to-date on developments inside and outside of our company, I am working hard to update documentation, create tutorials, and present webinars.

The importance of using Social Media and Social CRM for business increases with each day. As we develop new ways of measuring and quantifying its value, I will be presenting case studies and use cases.  When we come across interesting tactics or strategies, I will share those as well — because we really want your brand to succeed and thrive in this evolving economy.

My Background

As a recent Business Management graduate, my interests and areas of study include sociology, psychology and economics — all focusing on the perspective of human behavior, with an emphasis on statistics. I like to consider myself a trend-spotter, but with a human touch (perhaps some would just call it ADD). It can be dizzying to look at both big picture and little picture all the time, but I feel it’s important for truly understanding people.

I grew up on the East Coast, working in the beverage industry at my aunt and mother’s New England brewery. I originally considered moving to California to play competitive golf, but I couldn’t help falling in love with NorCal’s incredible wine, food, and technology. So my girlfriend, Samantha, and I decided to move to Napa to find opportunities in the wine industry.

Here, I wanted to find a role that would combine my areas of experience and passion: beverage + business + technology. Kristy Sammis, Samantha’s sister and founder of the social media agency, Clever Girls Collective, introduced me to the VinTank team.

And now I’m introducing myself to you.

Let’s Be In Touch

If we haven’t already, I look forward to meeting you, hearing your story, and learning about what your brand is all about. While I plan to connect with everyone personally, please feel free to contact me at any time with questions, or dance-move suggestions.

-Brandon

brandon@vintank.com  -  @brandonpf

Even if this was an accident, it's obvious why social media backlashed against Epicurious.

When the World Stops, Increase your Social Media Emotional Intelligence

The bombing of the Boston Marathon again brought tragedy to our nation.  The VinTank family is extremely saddened by the needless violence and send our thoughts and prayers to all the victims and their families.  Sadly our nation has faced a lot of sorrow over the last few years (Sandy Hook, Super Storm Sandy, and Aurora to name a few).  But while Americans simultaneously continue our lives we also echo our days through social media. While what you reflect on your persona account is one thing, what you publish on your brand’s channels is something entirely different.  It is especially important during these times to stop and reflect what messages your company is distributing during these terrible events.  This includes press, email marketing and social media.  The company will not end if you delay “hype” messaging for a single day.  Also is a key time to look at your scheduled social media posts and reschedule them (personally we are against scheduled posts for 98% of content).  As much as we wish there will be no more horrible incidents like yesterday, humanity has a way of mucking things up so when the next tragedy emerges, we recommend following David Armano’s Five Considerations for Branded Content during Sensitive Times.  PS – On these days no one wants to hear about what wines you are pouring . . .

George, my son Finn, and me at Luna Vineyards

The Legend George Vare is Gone

I was fortunate enough to work with George Vare for almost a decade.  He was an early investor in Inertia Beverage Group (now WineDirect.com) and eventually the Chairman of the Board.  He was also one of the co-founders of Luna vineyards, the father of Ribolla Gialla in the US, and truly a great man.  This weekend he passed away.  It has been almost four years since I have spoken with George after my departure as CEO and this news has hit me unusually hard.  Perhaps it is the punctuated timing that illustrates the circle of life as I sit here waiting for the birth of my daughter Brooklyn Adele Mabray.  Or maybe it is thoughtful recollection of the wisdom George, knowingly or not, imparted on me through my decade relationship with him.  Or maybe it is the fact that he is one of the few figures that deserves a place in the US wine industry history books but is not as public facing as Robert Mondavi or others.  He truly was a legend.

In my ten years with George I didn’t always agree with him.  In fact I struggled often as I tried to push ahead my vision of the future and he thoughtfully pushed back.  Sometimes firmly.  In every meeting he was always measured with his words and I regret not slowing down to listen more often.  He also was incredibly passionate and more than once I saw him stand tall (metaphorically and in real life) and assert his opinion with a strength that made everyone listen intently. In his infinite wisdom he understood my weaknesses and pushed me to resolve them to be a better CEO and a better man.  Sometimes it was so very frustrating to me (ask AJ or Jason Meek) but in retrospect he was so right.  George had a great laugh and enjoyed the youthful nature of the early days of IBG and the spirit of a team trying to change the world.  He had a special affinity for four other members of the founding team (Andrea Johnston, Stephen Mutch, Natalie Douvos and especially Eric Hsu) and I would fathom to say he saw us all as family.  In fact he treated us like family.  Many times he reminded me of a long lost grandfather and included me in many family events with his wonderful wife Elsa, his son Michael, and his daughter Tessa (who actually lived next door to me when Finn was born).  I remember swimming in his pool next to the famous vineyard or drinking Luna wines together.  I have so many stories that this post wont do them justice.  Instead I plan to get together some of the old IBG crew and celebrate his life in the upcoming months.

The world is a better place because of George Vare and I am eternally grateful for his friendship, his support of my digital dreams and for his place in changing American wine forever.  He is truly a legend and always will be in one my heart.  Thank you George.