Wine Library TV and Gary Vaynerchuk

I sat in on a seminar Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV put on at the Boston Wine Expo last weekend. Some folks are put off by Gary's "in your face" style, but once you get past the personality quirks, his message is definitely on point:

--Wine is "broken" in America
--People want to try and buy new stuff...new varietals from different countries
--Ignore the pretentiousness of wine, and go with what you smell, taste and like...don't let someone dictate your tastes...or vocabulary...to you.

I particularly liked the way he drives that message home not with a lecture but by his actions. After pouring the wine he tells his audience to give it a "sniffy sniff". He's not trying to be cute; it's his way of saying, "Hey, let's not take this too seriously." Then "Give it a Whirl" means " Go ahead and taste it." but once again with the implicit caveat that it's just a glass of wine, not the coming of the Messiah.

And oh yes, he's got biases...just like the rest of us. He's against "Fruit Bombs" and the "Oak Monster" but definitely a proponent for emerging varietals and countries such as Portugal, Greece, Chile and Austria. I particularly liked the way he got Jancis Robinson to validate his pursuit of unpreteniousness in Episode#568 where he tasted an Assyrtiko from Santorini along with two other wines.

Botton line for those of you in the business...Gary's arguably a more important influencer than Robert Parker, and most certainly among the "millennials" who are just now discovering wine as part of their adult lives. He speaks to them in their language. Are you doing the same? Sphere: Related Content

Defining Social Media Marketing

More and more clients are coming to us for Social Media Marketing Services, and I've found there's a lot of misunderstanding on just what Social Media is, and how to categorize and define the components.

Simply stated, Social Media are online places where conversations take place among people with similar interests. And those conversations can in the form of words, images, video and audio. Social Media Marketing (Other names for it include Word of Mouth Marketing, 1 to 1 Marketing, Consumer or User Generated Content, etc.) is really just a subset of marketing...marketing that takes place in digital form over the Internet within social media.

We recognize five flavors of SMM and I've highlighted the key points that differentiate them:

1. Blogs: Blogs are essentially a diary with the point of view of one person and reflect their interest, bias and "voice"...Less of a conversation, more of a monolog. Examples include CocktailNerd and Fermentation.

2. Sites, Forums, Wikis: These are sort of like a sister to Blogs...they are conversations that are moderated and usually without a bias or point of view. On the spirits side, recipes drive the category, on the wine side it's ratings, reviews and food and wine pairings. Examples include Cocktails.About.com and Wine Library TV Forum.

3. Social Networks: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, Wine 2.0 are examples. The conversation on social networks is not moderated and it takes place between and among like minded individuals who link to each other as "friends" and through "groups".

4. Search: Finding information online based on other people's searches. In our world search is conducted on general sites such as Google or vertical sites such as Wine-searcher.com. Search comes in two flavors as well...organic and paid (aka PPC, Google AdWords/AdSense).

5. E-Commerce: ...buying and selling stuff online. OK, it's not really SMM, but it is a critical digital marketing strategy and commerce is conversation. It applies to consumer sites such as BevMax as well as trade sites like BevAccess

It's that simple. Sphere: Related Content