Wine
Cellar Door Social
Selling Wine Online
By Rebecca Dolan
Originally published on The Lead
with permission from the author,
Rebecca Dolan.
A
wine lover might like their
white wine dry - but when it
comes to marketing that
wine, social media
engagement should be
anything but.
A study by marketing researcher
Rebecca Dolan from the University
of Adelaide’s business school shows
the best way to succeed at social
is to treat customers like old friends.
“With wine brands it’s easy to be
a bit more light-hearted. It’s quite
a social product so it’s easy to
put that across on social media,”
Dolan says.
he key to engaging effectively
across Facebook, Instagram and the
litany of other social services is to
mirror real-life situations.
“You want to talk as if you’re
with someone one-on-one in a
casual environment. Picture someone
coming in to your cellar door
and asking you which wine they
should try.
“You’d have that casual,
conversational, friendly tone. You
want to be able to replicate that
in your social media as well, so you
come across as a bit more human and
not just another marketing robot.
Day by day, social mediums like
Facebook are becoming more visual.
More room is given to images by
the algorithms that determine
what shows up on user’s feeds, and
people share and like images and
videos more often than any other
form of content.
“It’s very visual and very dynamic
which is good for customers because
they don’t have to use too much
funny, but they also post information
about their products really well.
Without trying to seem like they’re
pushing a sale, they still get the
message across about their product
and tasting notes.”
Humorous and entertaining posts
are the most likely to be shared by
users viewing a winery’s social page,
expanding brand reach even more.
“I see a lot of brands who think, just
because Facebook is popular, they
have to use it all the time. It’s not
about posting too much content but not posting too much of the
same content.
When getting images to share,
it’s best to make them natural and
carry on that human side of the
conversation - something which
social media excels at.
cognitive effort to think that
winery looks cool, let’s check it
out.’ Less text is good in that way,
because consumers can process
information quickly in their news
feed and get the message instantly
without having to read too much or
think too much,” Dolan explains.
“It might be cute to post a picture
of a dog in your cellar door, a puppy
in the vineyard. But if you keep
posting pictures of that same puppy
every day of the week, people will
initially think it’s cute and then
think it’s annoying.”
“Consumers want to see what’s
natural, what’s really there,
winemakers getting dirty in the
vineyard, picking grapes. They
don’t want to see something that
looks really edited and photoshopped
like you’d see in a magazine or
TV advertisement.”
“Entertaining pictures, photos,
memes and videos are what
encourage acebook users to share
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