September 2009 - Inner Architect

3 Steps to Advance Social Media Marketing from its Infancy to Childhood

September 29, 2009 by Susan Hanshaw Leave a Comment

I think we all pretty much agree that social media as a marketing channel is in its infancy. Most businesses are like babies taking their first steps—excited, unsure and perhaps with a bit of fear. Having grown up in the direct marketing industry, I honor the brilliance of those who are developing the tools that are shaping social media today. Yet having participated in a marketing channel that has evolved into a science, I see some steps we need to take to advance social media to its next stage of development.

Approach social media as you would a small child with much potential. Invest in its care and feeding and don’t expect it to support itself until it has a chance to grow up.

Shift the focus from the concept of influence to the idea of propensity. Look towards building connections with people who have proven to take the action you want rather than rely on their friends to influence them.

Invest in developing methods to identify and reach out to your target customers. Don’t allow your social networks to evolve on their own. Manage your networks from the perspective of building the most valuable list you can. Don’t skimp on the time to do some digging as that is where you will discover your gold.

Filed Under: social media and resources Tagged With: Dean Guadagni, innerarchitect, napa social media, San Rafael social media, social media influence, social media marketing, social media propensity, social media strategies, social media targeting, Susan Hanshaw, wine marketing, wine sales, winery marketing, winery social media

5 Reasons Twitter Connects People to Brands, Companies, Products, Services

September 24, 2009 by Dean Guadagni 1 Comment

Courtesy Penn St. Facebook Page

If people and companies are looking for case studies, ROI proof, and written in stone results for Twitter’s impact on sales and marketing they can begin by researching Dell, Target, or Starbucks. If they want a large sample sized study on messaging, they should investigate the following information.

In a recent Penn State study “Tweeting is more than just self expression” Associate professor of information science and technology Jim Jansen and Abdur Chowdhury Twitter chief scientist examined 500,000 tweets to determine the messaging content. The results are very encouraging for businesses willing to view Twitter as a new marketing and sales channel in its infancy. The most important point in the study? Twitter strategies, Twitter planning, and Twitter etiquette must be formulated before a company launches their Twitter efforts.

5 Reasons Twitter Connects People to Brands, Companies, Products, Services

Requests: 20% of the 500,000 tweets “contain requests for product information or responses to the requests” about companies and their products and service
Self Expression: “People are using tweets to express their reaction, both positive and negative, as they engage with these products and services”
Point of Purchase: “Tweets are about as close as one can get to the customer point of purchase for products and services.”
Connections: “. . . people were using tweets to connect with the products”
Positivity: Many of the brand comments were positive and not negative as many companies initially anticipated

Filed Under: twitter Tagged With: 5 Reasons Twitter Connects to Brands, Companies, consumer engagement on twitter, Dean Guadagni, how to use twitter, innerarchitect, microblogging, napa social media, Penn State Twitter study, point of purchase using twitter, Products, San Rafael social media, Services, social marketing, social media marketing, social media ROI, Susan Hanshaw, tweets, twitter marketing, Web 2.0 marketing

Wine Marketing Direct to Consumer Challenges Overcome By Social Media

September 24, 2009 by Dean Guadagni 2 Comments

Courtesy Vineyard Wiki

Wine marketing is the number one challenge for wineries in today’s economy. The importance of social media for wine marketing can be directly related to the acronym “DTC.” Direct to consumer sales provide opportunities for higher profit margins, increased special event sales, and to sell important wine club memberships. Yet with all that is riding on direct to consumer sales and marketing, the awareness of the power of social media marketing as a sales channel remains underappreciated and underutilized.

Case in point, the Winebusiness.com “Direct to Consumer: 2009 Tasting Room Report.” Most interesting in this report are the “barriers” to maximizing DTC potential for all wineries. The reported challenges as well as the opportunities to overcome the challenges may surprise you.

Direct to Consumer Challenges

Compliance and Shipping: (39 percent) believe issues of compliance and shipping “still outweigh all other barriers“
Lack of Resources: (17 percent) people, time and money
Effective Technology and Systems: (13 percent)
Acquiring Customers: (13 percent) aka lead generation
Marketing Tools: (13 percent) believe a lack of DTC marketing tools like customer relationship marketing (CRM) and Web analytics

Direct to Consumer Opportunities

Tasting Room Software: according to the report there are many online systems available to greatly reduce the challenges of shipping and compliance
Lack of Resources: the three resources are people, time, and money. The answers should include social media marketing training that enables key employees to become more efficient in their social media tasks. Another solution is to hire a social media marketing agency to run your marketing program
Effective Technology and Systems: technologies that could improve DTC sales would be a blog and a strategic social media marketing plan to engage with consumers on Facebook and Twitter. Placing laptops in the tasting rooms so consumers can directly fan your Facebook winery page or follow your Twitter account(s) creates a bridge from real world to online world.
“Acquiring Customers”: this challenge (lead generation) could be addressed with a DTC Twitter strategy in concert with a Facebook company page for customer relationship management
Marketing Tools: customer relationship management would be the role of a strategically implemented Facebook company page that engaged consumers and created “Call to Action” messaging. Web analytic measurement tools could be implemented to measure each message delivered in specific channels including the blogosphere, Facebook, and Twitter for the messages relevance or effectiveness

Filed Under: social media and resources Tagged With: acquiring customers, compliance and shipping, CRM Facebook, customer realtionship management, Dean Guadagni, direct to consumer, direct to consumer challenges, direct to consumer opportunities, DTC, innerarchitect, lack of resources, lead generation social media, marketing for wineries, marketing tools, napa social media, San Rafael social media, selling wine, Susan Hanshaw, tasting rooms, Twitter lead generation, wine clubs, wine marketing, wine sales

What Every Business Needs to Know About Twitter Or Fail

September 22, 2009 by Dean Guadagni Leave a Comment

Courtesy Twitter Wiki

What every business needs to know about Twitter is a list of the most important strategies and facts. Although many businesses have yet to adopt Twitter, unmoved by the paradigm shift in communications or frozen in fear of making mistakes that would be seen by their audience, Twitter is not going away. In fact those naysayers who are still unsure if social media, and Twitter in particular, is a passing fad are losing market share to their competitors in the new media space–the one replacing the old world of print advertising.

Strategies and Facts Every Business Needs to Know About Twitter

Microblogging: Twitter is the most powerful micro-blogging platform in the world. As such each tweet is a mini version of a blog post
New Channel: Twitter is the new sales channel much like what businesses are used to in old school channels like email, mailers, and print advertising
Lead Generation: Twitter is a powerful lead generation tool
Delivery System: Twitter allows companies to deliver their messages of value via shortened url’s to their strategically targeted audience(s)
Listening Tool: Twitter allows companies to ease drop and listen to conversations about their brand, company, products, or services
Mobile: Mobile phone communications will dominate the way we communicate and Twitter is the perfect application for this real time sharing of information
Customer Service: Twitter is being used successfully by companies to solve customer service issues and maintain customer loyalty. Frank at Comcastcares is a fantastic example of how to use Twitter in this capacity
Search: Twitter is on the cutting edge of “real time” search. This is the added value of people searching and finding live conversations in progress about a brand. This methodology is seen as the next progression of Google search
Networking: Twitter allows professionals to network within their niche from the comfort of their home, office, laptop, or mobile device
Broadcasting: In a brilliant use of Twitter, the Scottsdale Police Dept. uses Twitter to broadcast APB, amber alerts, traffic news, tips on safety, homeowner association tips, local events, and community building events
Cog: Twitter is the lead generation “cog” in a well rounded social media marketing platform that includes a blog (centerpiece of all messages), Facebook (Customer Relationship Management) and Twitter
Reputation Management: Twitter, when monitored properly, will reveal instances where companies can step in with correct information or suggests that challenge erroneous information or reviews.
Caring: A company’s Twitter participation and engagement with consumers shows their audience that the company cares about them enough to engage with them on “their” system of choice for communications–not the company’s old channel
Growth: According to Techcrunch.com in June 2009 Twitter received 44.5 million unique visits to the site with 20 million of the visits coming from the United States. Estimates range from 18 million to 20 million registered users by the end of 2009
Research: Twitter is a vast and vibrant research go-to source for information. The information links to articles is amazing and not to be dismissed
Internal Communications: Companies can use Twitter as an internal communications tool by locking their account through the “Protected Tweets” option. This environment could be utilized as a more vibrant version of email that is much quicker and able to host real time conversations. The goal is to save time and employee productivity by eliminating unwanted meetings
Crowdsourcing: Twitter allows companies to ask their consumers what they want in service, product, or policy changes. It also allows companies to mine their audience for new ideas
Competition: Twitter allows companies to monitor their competition by utilizing Twitter search of keywords relevant to their niche. Once the correct conversations are found, companies can RSS subscribe to these conversations and be notified of new developments
Tone & Etiquette: The tone of social media was built upon the idea that the hard sell sales tactics are dead. The best strategy for companies to sell their products is to stop selling their products, listen to conversations, and become the reliable trustworthy go-to source of important information to their audience of consumers
Case Study: Case studies are indicating that Twitter is a robust and viable channel for marketing and sales of products and services. The most impressive case study to date is Dell Computer’s DellOutlet which claims $3 million in sales from it’s Twitter efforts and a following (9-21-09) of 1,228,233 consumers

Filed Under: twitter Tagged With: bit.ly, broadcasting on twitter, CRM tool, crowdsourcing with Twitter, customer service twitter, Dean Guadagni, Delivering links on Twitter, Dell Twitter case study, innerarchitect, internal communications twitter, lead generation with Twitter, listening, messaging on twitter, microblogging with Twitter, mobile, napa social media, networking twitter strategies, new marketing channel, reputation management twitter, sales channel, search on twitter, social marketing, social media marketing, Susan Hanshaw, twitter growth, twitter research, Twitter ROI case studies, Twitter strategies, url shortener, Web 2.0 paradigm shift, wine marketing

What Every Business Needs to Know About Blogs

September 16, 2009 by Susan Hanshaw 2 Comments

Thinking about launching a blog for your company? The first question I would ask you is this: What do you want your blog to do for you?

There are many benefits of blogging that I covered in a previous article Serious About Getting Hired: Get Blogging. Along with these benefits, consider what we believe is the most powerful benefit of all—your blog’s ability to gain Google ranking on your desired keywords and drive traffic to your company’s website.

We have talked to several companies who have expressed satisfaction with their keyword placement as a result of paid search engine optimization (SEO) services. While it is not our intention to discount such services, the reality is that you can achieve similar results organically through blogging techniques that leverage Google’s keyword indexing methodologies. Not all blog platforms can deliver this valuable SEO benefit, however. In fact, there is only one solution that does—hosting your blog on your website domain. We recommend the free Open Source software from WordPress.

Why Host Your Own Blog?

Bloggers who publish from sub-domain blogging platforms such as Blogger, TypePad, WordPress.com and others are unable to capture the Google ranking benefits because their articles are published and indexed by Google with a URL attached to the sub-domain. This will drive traffic to the sub-domain blog and not your website. While it is nice that your article got read, getting the reader to your website then becomes an obstacle to overcome.

Integrating the blog with your existing website can be as easy as adding a new navigational link from your website to the page which will hold your blog. Many third party developers have created WordPress templates, also called themes, which can be customized with your website’s color scheme to create an almost seamless experience for your website visitors.

The True Web 2.0 Website

My business partner, Dean and I talk about Web 2.0 as being a revolution in the way that businesses communicate. Thankfully, it is a shift from the hard sell to giving value to those we connect with. In this spirit, many businesses, ours included, have made their website landing page their blog. For those who chose this route, WordPress provides a low-cost, user friendly foundation from which to build out an entire Web 2.0 powered website.

Questions? Feel free to pose them in this space. We’re here to help.

Filed Under: content marketing Tagged With: Dean Guadagni, innerarchitect, lawyer social media, napa social media, San Rafael social media, social media marketing, social media strategies, Susan Hanshaw, wine marketing, wine sales, winery marketing, winery social media

Social Media Marketing: Transfer Your Conversations Online

September 14, 2009 by Dean Guadagni Leave a Comment

Our recent series of articles have focused on the wine industry and how to create messages (content) that elicit a call to action, provide opportunity for engagement, and can be measured or analyzed for effectiveness. One of the easiest methods to understanding social media marketing online is to examine your everyday communications offline. The following examples are a reminder that we should attempt to engage with people online the same way we do in person.

Target Marketing: Don’t Judge a Book By It’s Cover

On a shopping trip to my local Safeway store, I decided to stroll the wine section to research pricing, brand positioning, and observe customers. I like to guess what people will purchase and if that wine fits their apparent level of affluence. Here were the two people I observed:

Example 1: Housewife in late 40′s wearing a diamond tennis bracelet, a huge diamond ring, ladies Rolex Diamond Presidential watch, Jimmy Choo handbag, and Channel sunglasses. I estimated that she was wearing $50k to $60k worth of jewelry. Her hair and makeup were impeccable exuding elegance and wealth
Example 2: Man in his late 50′s wearing no jewelry, dressed in casual walking shorts and a stained t-shirt. He was not dirty but he definitely was not looking affluent.

Purchase Results

Our housewife with the impeccable taste and bank vault jewelry couture collection was a huge surprise. I pegged her for a Chardonnay drinker and I was right. I also figured she would purchase a Mer Soleil, Rombauer, Ramey, or any other $40+ premium Chardonnay.

Wrong! Our housewife wasted little time in choosing two bottles of $8.95 California central coast Chardonnay. I was correct on the varietal but completely stymied by her choice

Our 50 something male with the gardening outfit lingered over his selections. He spent 10 minutes choosing his first 5 bottles!I figured his selections would be mid level or economic wines.

Wrong! In order he chose: Beringer Reserve Chardonnay, Ramey Claret, Cakebread Chardonnay, and two bottles of Etude Pinot Noir. Fantastic bottles of $40+ premium wines!

Example of Engagement

When our 50 something male picked up his next bottle, Girard Chardonnay, I asked him if he had ever tried the Girard, provided him a description, and gave the wine my ringing endorsement. Jim introduced himself to me thanking me for the information. He then placed one bottle in his cart and asked “Should I buy two?”. I told him he would love the wine and that he would be glad he picked up the second bottle–he did so after our chat.

Engage Online Like You Would in Person: Takeaways

Economics: the appearance of affluence does not always translate into premium wine sales. Just like my experience at Safeway, it is always smart to not judge a person’s buying power online until you have more information
Evangelism: people who advocate or “evangelize” a product can and do effect buying habits. I love Girard’s Chardonnay and my evangelism of their product resulted in a sale. Wineries must create fans aka evangelists who spread the good word about their brand
Engagement: talk to people and allow them to ask questions, give their opinions, and most of all feel as if they are being heard and recognized. If a winery steps out from behind the logo and personalizes their messages, they will begin to engage as if they are having a personal offline conversation. That is the way to begin to create a following of devoted consumers

Filed Under: social media and resources Tagged With: call to action, Dean Guadagni, innerarchitect, napa social media, San Rafael social media, social media engagement, social media marketing, social media strategies, Susan Hanshaw, wine industry marketing, wine marketing, wine sales

Does Social Media Sell Wine? 5 Social Media Strategies To Survive

September 11, 2009 by Susan Hanshaw 2 Comments

Sigmund Freud Does social media sell wine? If you are a winery marketing officer have you jumped on the bandwagon yet? You launched a Facebook page. You are on Twitter. Yet there isn’t even a blip in sales. What is the real truth about social media’s ability to drive wine sales? The following is a brief, but solid, outline on how to use social media to drive wine sales.

5 Steps to Using Social Media to Drive Wine Sales

Call to Action: deliver messages that encourage people to perform an action you wish them to take that supports your sales efforts
Strategy: develop a strategy to market your wine and an accompanying schedule
Twitter: think of twitter as your sales lead generation prospecting tool. Develop a following that is targeted
Facebook: think of this tool as your CRM aka customer relationship management tool; use this environment to build and maintain customer loyalty
Tracking: develop a system to track and analyze what is working to engage customers. Continually tweak your strategy to leverage best results

Filed Under: social media and resources Tagged With: call to action, Dean Guadagni, facebook strategies, innerarchitect, napa social media, Napa social media consultants, Napa Valley wineries, San Rafael social media, san rafael social media consultants, social media mesaurement, social media Napa Valley, social media sell wine, social media strategies, Susan Hanshaw, Twitter strategies, wine marketing, wine sales

Winery Social Media Mistake #2: Vary Your Content Or Lose Your Audience

September 4, 2009 by Dean Guadagni 1 Comment

First we examined how to write a call to action in Susan’s Your Social Media Messages: Strategic or Waste? The next step was to understand what to say and where to find that content. Now it is time to examine how to vary your message.

The worst mistake companies make, across social networks, is to hard sell everything. These companies push their products, services, and ideas non stop like a used car salesman. The following should help you avoid this fatal marketing mistake. Let’s take a look at this from a winery’s perspective.

What is Signal?

Signal are messages you deliver, within your social networks, that provide value to your audience. Signal should never be a sales pitch. These messages have the following characteristics:

Subject: these messages are about your industry, peers, region, or your company
Value: these messages add value to your audience by bringing them information that teaches, informs, or is breaking news
Ratio: signal should make up 65%+ of the total messages you create

What is Noise?

Noise are messages you deliver, within your social networks, that provide your audience a sales message.

Subject: these messages are entirely about your wine, discounts, pricing, specials, or anything you are selling to your audience
Value: the value is centered on your winery more than the audience. This is your time to be “selfish” and pitch your products
Ratio: noise should make up no more than 35% of your total number of messages

Become a Go-To Source of Value

The most critical reason you must vary your message, with more Signal messages, is to create value for your audience. By creating value for your audience, you become a go-to source of valuable information. Wineries, or any companies-entrepreneurs, that position themselves as go-to sources of information create:

Trust for their products and services with their audience
Return readers who are motivated to learn more including information about your winery
Perception that you care about engaging, informing your consumers, and providing them a “voice”
Partnership where information sharing becomes viral

Filed Under: social media and resources Tagged With: blogging, Dean Guadagni, engage, facebook, go to source of value, innerarchitect, linkedin, messaging, Napa Chamber of Commerce, napa social media, Napa Valley social media, share information, Signal to Noise Ratio, social media marketing, Susan Hanshaw, twitter, web 2.0, winery social media, winery social media consultants

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