Facebook For Small, Boutique & Micro Wineries

I'm sure you've been inundated with folks telling you to 'get on FaceBook', but do you know why? And do you know what's involved in setting up and maintaining a FaceBook account? This article explains why FaceBook is important to you, and the steps needed create, market and maintain a successful FaceBook presence.

Is My Target Market On FaceBook?
To put it bluntly -- YES!!! Here are some interesting FaceBook stats provided by Richard Beaudin (who gleaned them from Isstrategylabs):

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1) The 35-54 year old demographic is growing fastest, with a 276.4% growth rate in over the approximate 6 months since we last produced this report

2) The 55+ demo is not far behind with a 194.3% growth rate

3) The 25-34 year population on Facebook is doubling every 6 months

4) For those interested in advertising alcohol on Facebook, there are 27,912,480 users 21+, representing 66.3% of all users

7) The largest demographic concentration remains the college crowd of 18-24 year olds (40.8%) which is down from (53.8%) six months ago.

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As you can see, FaceBook is a pool of potential consumers just waiting for you to reach out to them!

Types of FaceBook Accounts
Currently, FaceBook has 3 types of accounts: Profile, Page and Group.

In a nutshell, FaceBook 'Profiles' are for the individual, 'Pages' are for a business or brand and a 'Group' is made up of a group of people united around a common issue or interest. 'Pages' are a relatively new FaceBook feature so if you think you already created one, make sure. Its possible you may have created a 'Profile' instead and still need to create an official 'Page' for your winery.

For the purposes of this article, I'm going to focus on the FaceBook 'Page'. (But you will need a 'Profile' to actively recruit a following for your business 'Page', so recommend setting up a 'Profile' at the same time you set up your 'Page'.)

Setting Up Your FaceBook Page
Believe it or not, this is INCREDIBLY easy! Just go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php and fill in the appropriate fields and check the appropriate boxes. If you don't already have a FaceBook 'Profile', you can create one at the same time you are creating your 'Page'. Once you've followed all the steps you are taken to your new, blank 'Page' and your first order of business is to upload a picture and edit your information.

Now, let me explain a little bit about your new 'Page'. The first page you are taken to is called your 'Wall', which is where you and your fans can post messages. Towards the top of your page (right under the name), you will see a tab for your 'Wall', next to it will be your 'Info' tab and right after that you will see a '+'. If you click on the '+' you will be given a selection of new pages you can add to your 'Page'. These pages are pretty self explanatory and once added, you can actually link directly to any of them! For example, you could post pictures from a recent Wine Club event to your FaceBook photo gallery and send the link to your club members. Encourage them to upload and share their pictures of the event to your gallery as well -- by getting them involved you are increasing your exposure and brand loyalty!

If you're still unsure what to do with your 'Page', you may want to get some ideas by checking out the 5 most popular Winery Pages on FaceBook (compiled by Richard Beaudin):

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The winery with the largest fan base is Duplin Winery in North Carolina with a whopping 3613 fans. The second (Chateau Morrisette) had 1965, the third (The Round Barn Winery) had 1505, the fourth (Murphy-Goode Winery) had 1273, the fifth (Palminia Winery) had 1208.

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Now that you have a basic understanding of what makes up your FaceBook Page, start adding pictures, post some updates and begin the 'marketing' phase of your FaceBook endeavor -- getting friends and fans.

Attracting Friends and Fans
'Friends' are people who have joined your FaceBook 'Profile' and 'Fans' have joined your 'Page'. I wish I could say that now you've built your winery's 'Page' it will immediately start attracting tons of 'Fans' — but like everything else with social media, this is not the case. Believe it or not, the way to actively market your winery 'Page' is by using your FaceBook 'Profile' to participate in wine focused groups and creating relationships with these group's main 'influencers' (the people who have the most 'Friends').

Finding wine groups is easy! Just start running FaceBook using keyword phrases like 'wine lovers', 'wine fans', 'loves wine' being sure to plug in your city or state such as 'sonoma wine lovers' and 'california wine fans'. If you see a lot of 'Pages' and 'Profiles' mixed in with the 'Groups', click on the 'Group' link to the left to remove any results that are NOT 'Groups'. Now, start sifting through the results.

The groups I'd pay attention to first are those in your actual geographic location with a decent number of members (if they're in your city or state and have a lot of members, there is a good chance some of these members will be close enough to actually visit your winery). For example, I ran the search 'texas wine lovers' and up popped the 'Texas Wine Lovers' group with 542 members! If I was a Texas winery, I would definitely join this group and start following their discussions and 'Wall' posts. If appropriate, answer questions and add your own discussion or post (being careful to follow the theme of the other posts — after all, if you immediately start in with a hard sell, it will turn people off).

Once you feel you've established yourself as a non-threatening, helpful group participant, start researching who the most 'influential' members are and introduce yourself to them. This is explained in detail by Nick o'Neill in his article 'How To Win Facebook Fans and Reach Influencers' and he also takes you beyond the initial introductions and guides you in how to turn group members into 'Fans'.

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Initial Outreach - Reach out to network influencers and introduce yourself. Spark up a conversation and explain to them what you are working on. Do not copy and paste messages. If you send the same message to tens or hundreds of individuals, Facebook will mark your account for spam. You need to actually build relationships with these individuals. It's fine to make small changes to the first messages that you send out but following those initial messages, you want to spend time fostering a positive relationship with the influencers.

Launch Day - After you have built up your list of network influencers set a date for getting those influencers to become fans. On that day, reach out to each of your influencers and tell them to fan your Facebook Page. Depending on how many influencers you have, you may want to consider a phased launch approach. Whichever model you pick, make sure that you do some research and some basic planning.

Keep in mind that some of these are guerilla marketing strategies, not traditional marketing strategies. Would Facebook encourage you to take each of the steps listed above? Probably not but the bottom line is that it works. If you abuse the system, Facebook will surely ban you. Theoretically collecting large amounts of data about network influencers can be a violation of Facebook's terms of service but it's also readily available information. Any research you do on Facebook is at your own discretion so make sure not to abuse their system!

Daily Task - Come up with a list of at least 20 influencers that you can reach out to. Begin an initial conversation with each and aim to have them all become fans of your Facebook Page on the same day.

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Maintenance
To establish an effective FaceBook strategy that attracts followers and furthers your brand, active maintenance and participation must become a part of your everyday business life! You have to keep your 'Profile' and 'Page' current, post updates on what you're doing, respond to messages and actively participate in the groups you have joined. And make sure everyone knows about your FaceBook Page! Add a link to it from your website's home page asking site visitors to become 'Fans'. To make this even easier, you can have your web designer install a FaceBook 'Fan Box' widget on your site that allows people to become your FaceBook Fan right from your home page!

In Conclusion . . .
Please know, this article barely scratches the surface of all FaceBook can do, but I feel I've given you enough information to help you understand how it works and get you started. Now, its just a matter of wading in there and doing it! Good Luck!