As requested we now have the following commentary which was posted live to http://www.catavino.net/londonwinefair/ by Gabriella Opaz during the LIWF Industry Briefing, ‘Wine and the Web: the Business of getting Social’ that took place in the South Gallery, Rooms 11 and 12 on Wednesday 13th May 2009. The commentary has been kept in its true form, so please excuse any grammatical or spelling errors. Only comments were removed from third parties. For the full transcript as a replay with comments and everything else, head to the bottom of this post!
13:14 Gabriella Opaz: Robert will talk about the Social Wine Brand, Ryan will chat about tools on Social Media, and Dan will talk about how these tools are applicable in the Retail chain
13:14 Gabriella Opaz: What is social media? Ryan Opaz is now up and chatting with the crew on the tools available
13:16 Gabriella Opaz: The basics: Internet activity didn’t really come to play until 2000. Around 2004 YouTube, Flickr, etc. came alive, allowing communication to change. No barrier to entry to sharing information
13:16 Gabriella Opaz: Thanks Fiona!
13:16 Gabriella Opaz: before 2004, publishing was blogging without the internet
13:17 Gabriella Opaz: Forums have changed dramatically as well, as social networks allowed people to add the personality of the board with layers. A community was formed, began interacting in a completely new way
13:18 Gabriella Opaz: Overall, social networks, blogging, etc are here, are powerful and need to be used by all businesses in some capacity, wine especially
13:19 Gabriella Opaz: Catavino was brought here by Viniportugal to promote social media, wine and the EWBC 2009
13:19 Gabriella Opaz: Why should the wine trade care about social media?
13:20 Gabriella Opaz: If you are involved in the wine business in anyway, you know it’s complicated to get your wine brand out to the consumer. Social media has opened up the opportunities for the conversation to happen. A powerful way to reach consumers, influencers,etc. We’re not saying that social media is replacing what’s happening now. We’re talking about something that adds to it.
13:21 Gabriella Opaz: Example: Imagine being a town planner, and now knowing that people have a motor car. The motor car will influence the way people get to the store, school, etc, but will not change the fact that those buildings exist
13:22 Gabriella Opaz: Social media allows you to build relationships with people.
13:22 Gabriella Opaz: You can now do the communication in your own voice. It allows you to be unique, retain your personality, while promoting your passions and interests
13:23 Gabriella Opaz: People share things in common, by building relationships that have nothing to do with big sites.
13:24 Gabriella Opaz: If you are build a wine brand traditionally, you would come up with a product, a marketing plan, a distribution plan, retail plan, etc. Now, as soon as that wine is out there, anyone and everyone can talk about it. They can have IMMEDIATE impact on your brand. Example: Social tasting note sites
13:26 Gabriella Opaz: Normal people chatting about your wine can influence all of their friends, community, and communities around the world. Your brand is being influenced. You no longer have the same power you had in traditional marketing channels, in the social wine channels online. Join the conversation online. Interact, communicate, be with them, and let your online fans build a relationship with you
13:26 Gabriella Opaz: Why would someone blog about your wine?
13:27 Gabriella Opaz: People love to write about they love? They love to share their passions, and this is the way they can share this passion. Reward them by inviting them to tastings. Comment on their blog and let them know that you’re listening, and that you care
13:29 Gabriella Opaz: You should be part of the online world to help shape your brand. Your job is to prime the pump, get people to talk about it. It may not happen overnight, but do something innovative online. Talk about what makes you unique, your personality, help them understand what makes you, you, beyond your points.
13:30 Gabriella Opaz: Let the press help spot what’s interesting, new, innovative. Retailers can talk about what your customers want. Wineries can chat about your wines and your winery in a personal way!
13:30 Gabriella Opaz: Ryan Opaz speaking
13:31 Gabriella Opaz: Don’t pay for the technology, pay for the consulting learning how to use it
13:32 Gabriella Opaz: Showing what the live blog is through coveritlive.com
13:34 Gabriella Opaz: Are there any concrete example as to what is going on? Vintank published a comprehensive report on the power of the social media in its relationship to the wine industry from an American wine trade perspective. Interesting to read and worth your while to read
13:35 Gabriella Opaz: There have been some controverseys in its relationship to blogs. Blogs are merely the engine to a website.
13:36 Gabriella Opaz: The Wine Conversation
13:36 Gabriella Opaz: Important to differentiate between different wine blogs. Example.
13:36 Gabriella Opaz: Catavino
13:37 Gabriella Opaz: The wine conversation is directed to the wine trade, while Catavino is directed to the consumer. Each blog is unique, hence you cannot generalize about “wine bloggers” because they could be a winery blog, retail wine blog, consumor wine blog, etc.
13:38 Gabriella Opaz: Social wine Influencers, these are the people that at a party, everyone turns to for feedback on what wine is important. Therefore, small audiences make a difference.
13:38 Gabriella Opaz: Wine Blogger
13:38 Gabriella Opaz: Wine blogger was created to aggregate all the wine blogs around the world in several different languages
13:39 Gabriella Opaz: Great place to start and learn about various wine blogs from around the world
13:39 Gabriella Opaz: EWBC Home Page
13:41 Gabriella Opaz: The European Wine Bloggers Conference, first started last year in La Rioja with about 40 bloggers from 11 difference countries. There were 3 sessions on wine writing/blogging, monetization and points. And this resulted in the realization that from country to country each market has their own needs and wants.
13:42 Gabriella Opaz: Now we’ll have our next conference in Lisbon Portugal on Oct 30 to November 1st based on the social wine brand.
13:43 Gabriella Opaz: The Open Wine Consortium is a wonderful online network to connect with wine professional from around the world. This is only about wine and for professionals. Good for networking!
13:44 Gabriella Opaz: YouTube is an interesting tool to publish a video on a tasting, to introduce an event or a wine, etc, then play it for your consumers. Create video tasting notes.
13:45 Gabriella Opaz: Flickr.com = the number 1 searched site for photography.
13:46 Gabriella Opaz: Creative commons license photos on flickr is a great way to find photos. Wineries should have all of their labels, winery layout, people working at your winery etc. on this site!
13:46 Gabriella Opaz: Qik is a great telephone tool you can live stream an event from anywhere in the world.
13:48 Gabriella Opaz: Adegga is a social tasting note site that allows consumers to create wine content, interact with one another as to what they like and what they don’t like, update their status like Facebook
13:48 Gabriella Opaz: All wineries should check out if your wines are listed correctly, and see what people are saying about your wines`!
13:50 Gabriella Opaz: El Jefe at Twisted Oak Winery is using social media powerfully by engaging users from label designs to blending suggestions. he has gone so far to tell everyone when an ice storm hurt much of his vintage, because of his build loyalty, he can guarantee the vintage will sell out because of sympathy
13:51 Gabriella Opaz: He created a Facebook Fan Page and can send out emails such as “what do you think of our new X label” His fans can now respond, interact and expand the community. Key word – Participation
13:52 Gabriella Opaz: www.areallygoodjob.com Murphy Goode winery is trying to promote a social media job for 6000 a month for six months. Incredible idea and is working beautifully
13:54 Gabriella Opaz: www.twitter.com amazing social networking tool. 140 characters, helps people follow their brand, interact with consumors and create brand loyalty. Very powerful!
13:54 Gabriella Opaz: Twitter Taste Live, very powerful tool to discuss a theme and share tasting notes online.
13:55 Gabriella Opaz: Dan Coward is now talking
13:56 Gabriella Opaz: Most important points: why we developed a social media strategy? How did we do it? And did it work?
13:56 Gabriella Opaz: Bibendum sells wine through just about every channel you can think of
13:57 Gabriella Opaz: It means that they are in a unique position to get involved at many different points along the value chain. to talk to consumers, retailers, etc.
13:58 Gabriella Opaz: They started a blog in 2006 and dan started writing on it. Since then, they realize that it gives people a window in their world. Blog is nice but is it a conversation? Is it just a report? Are there too many voices or should we have one voice? what are we trying to say, and what do we want people to do with it?
14:00 Gabriella Opaz: The goal: Interactivity! It helps them communicate with people they really want to target. People who they want to talk to really gravitate together, so as long as you can get into the circle, you can create conversation and loyalty
14:00 Gabriella Opaz: Additionally, Bibendum can help spread the message of their wineries through social media
14:02 Gabriella Opaz: About 6 months ago, they did their first twitter taste live of a preset of wines which were also send to key people at 10 parts of the country. The conversation on a set date and time an enormous conversation occured that went into the many thousands. Key – immediate impact.
14:05 Gabriella Opaz: Champagne and Oyster matching tasting at Galvin at windows, bibendum brought the wines, Galvin put together a killer food matching, there was a live blog, and the end result was that the venue generated the most noise in this case, not the wine. However, they learned that the venue was so incredible that it took away from the wine. Which has led to a future twitter taste live events to focus the venue itself.
14:05 Gabriella Opaz: Bibendum feels as if they have only scratched the surface with the potential of social media.
14:07 Gabriella Opaz: results: traffic is up 97 percent in last six months. They’re web sales are up, but not necessarily because of social media. They use social media to support their customers and producers. Conversation and build loyalty!
14:08 Gabriella Opaz: Do you separate your business and personal account on twitter?
14:09 Gabriella Opaz: Answer: There isn’t one. It depends on your need
14:11 Gabriella Opaz: Can you make money through social media?
14:13 Gabriella Opaz: Gary Vaynerchuck, a huge online wine critic in the USA, loves Portuguese wines. A producer was recently reviewed on Gary’s site, and has now had a large re ups on their wines.
14:13 Gabriella Opaz: People are now going online to search their wines before buying them. Control your message by getting involved with bloggers, etc.
14:14 Gabriella Opaz: Question: Do you have any demographics on who you are interacting with online?
14:17 Gabriella Opaz: Find your niche market online (example: good wines under 20£), and either join the conversation or great your own conversation
14:18 Gabriella Opaz: Brands should go to www.google.com/blogsearch and find out who’s talking about your brand
14:20 Gabriella Opaz: How did Gary Vaynerchuck make his mark in the online wine world? Answer: he is himself. He pushes the audience to find their own
likes and dislikes and doesn’t force his opinion on anyone
14:21 Gabriella Opaz: Twitter is the most important tool on the internet. Why? Immediacy, immediacy, immediacy. You get information now! Unlike google, which is not time relevant
14:23 Gabriella Opaz: The number of followers is not important on Twitter. What is more important is the key people following you. How do you start? Register! Begin following people in your field, and slowly branch out. The goal is to say something interesting. The second goal is to find the social influencers.
14:26 Gabriella Opaz: If there is a large chunk of what you do that is not of interest seperate out your brand from the person who is writing about them online. But what is more important is that people make the brand. So let the people be themselves to sell themselves which consequently sells their wine.
14:27 Gabriella Opaz: By people being honest online, being themselves, chatting about his personal interests, people connect with them on all those levels, helps give them personality and therefore builds their brand
14:29 Gabriella Opaz: Answer: there are plenty of tools to help you monitor spam and robots. As for jerks online, no worries, becaue the community help filter out those people. additionally, good criticism can be very positive.
14:30 Gabriella Opaz: Additionally, it takes a lot of work to get comments.
14:31 Gabriella Opaz: Please contact any of us if you need info
<a href=”http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php?option=com_mobile&task=viewaltcast&altcast_code=b56e6a1ee6″ mce_href=”http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php?option=com_mobile&task=viewaltcast&altcast_code=b56e6a1ee6″ >London Wine Fair 2009</a>
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_c.png?x-id=d5fa6b79-8fdc-4d1f-b9f5-9028558dc104)