How Social Media and Social Networking Has Helped Wine Exports in Valencia, Spain

Late August 2008, La Casa de las Vides introduced its blog under the name Casavides.com. The idea of the blog was to create a marketing tool for the export department.  And by default, as a blog is a marketing tool, we also agreed to add all the necessary Web 2.0 tools as well, such as Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, Dopplr, OWC, Linked in, Youtube, Delicious etc.

So, how did we use the various Web 2.0 tools to export our wines? And have we, as a winery, seen any results in the past 3 months? I am writing this post to evaluate my own choice in involving an entire winery in a Web 2.0 strategy that is starting to become a part of our daily life. I am almost 40 now, and I am stuck in between the enthusiasm for Web 2.0 and the lack of knowledge about it to be 100% sure how Web 2.0 works best for me. Convinced as I am to follow the guidelines as lined out in Catavino’s pdf Social media for wineries, I have committed myself to welcome just about everything that comes along my Web 2.0 path. In three months, the strategy has had its ups and downs, like who is writing what post and when and above all why? Well, we do know why, in theory I mean, but our lack of discipline and not having our priorities straight is probably keeping us from doing the things we have to do. This post is about what happened over the last three months at La Casa de las Vides and how Web 2.0 has helped us to export our wines?

In short, we are not exporting yet! Zero, niente, nada, nichts, rien du tout. BUT we do have some very interesting leads, and many of them came through the web 2.0 tools I use!

Do you want to know how? read on…

Introduction at EWBC 2008

The unique event that helped get started was without any doubt the European Wine Bloggers Conference. In one weekend, I received enough contacts to get started on Facebook, OWC and Twitter at the same time. Without all of these invaluable contacts I made there, I probably wouldn’t have had the feedback and comments I needed to get me focused on all these tools.

TWITTER

Twitter was probably the tool I was most obsessed with. In the first weeks, I was watching every single message from everyone I was following. After a while, I understood that life goes on, even if I don’t follow Twitter on a minute by minute basis. However, my astonishment regarding the amount of information coming at me at once, and the dynamics behind it to have a conversation in 5 continents at the same time, was something inconceivable for this export director till now. Now after more than 400 tweets, I use twitter in a more moderate way. I do follow some of the interesting links some leave in their tweets. One of the better posts I read lately came from Wine Brands. Twitter now has become a source of information, a place to hang out, and a great way to get response, like when I introduced a new label for our new casavides 2008 wines. Or the twitter wine box of Slijterijmeisje in Holland who interviewed me at a wine fair Megavino in Brussels, and who will now put some samples of our wines in her Twitterwinebox. Twitterwineblox is an idea that Petra de Boevere put into practice when she discovered that she could get more clients through twitter offering them a six wines in a box that can only be ordered through twitter on her account (slijterijmeisje).

Meisje van de Slijterij meets Emilio Saez van Eerd from Slijterijmeisje on Vimeo.

SOCIAL NETWORKS

During the  month of September, I spent many free hours on checking out all the profiles on OWC, Linked in, Facebook, of interesting people, directly or indirectly engaged in the wine industry. I am still amazed how easy it is to contact people through these social networks. Off course, as an export director, my job is to sell wine.

I used to go wine fairs to try to meet up with importers. Mailings, cold calls, whatever was necessary to get attention, I did it. In general if you are doing a good job, the average response on those mailings would be  around 5% - 10%.  My experience after many wine fairs is that a good wine fair gives you more or less 25 leads, of which 10 are really interested, and if you are lucky, one or two want to start working with you. For that you have to wait until the fair, be lucky and have patience.

Now, with social networks the amount of interesting contacts I got through the above mentioned Web 2.0 tools are much more interesting than the few contacts you can get from a wine fair.  First of all, if you connect with somebody through a network, you already share two of the same interests; the social network itself AND wine. Whereas on a wine fair you only have wine in common. The fact that you both belong to a new and exciting network, makes the cnnection even stronger, because from both sides you want the networks to give you results (why else do you spend time on the social networks?)

The second advantage is that through a social network the communication is relaxed, without the pressure of the wine fair, where most of the visitors already have to work down a list of producers they want to meet, before they want to spend time on you.

The third benefit is that you can be “direct”. You get direct questions and answers if you are both online. In this sense social networks are not less personal, especially if you imagine that you can send al the relevant information about the winery and wines as you speak to each other, share a video of the winery, send technical details, show tasting results on tasting note sites. No way that you can do this on a wine fair. But also for my own information as an export director, I want to know who I am really talking to, and that I don’t waste my time talking to somebody who pretends to be bigger. Internet gives you normally enough information to get a good first impression. No information, or a crappy website, is a serious warning for me. I do spent quite some time on checking out an importer’s website or blog, if he has one (although, until now I haven’t seen many importers with a blog. Does anybody know why importers don’t have blogs?)

In my free time I often follow links and comments through OWC, facebook and linked in, and I found some valuable information read between the lines in the comments of for example linkedin answers and questions section. If an importer is looking for a wine, or an exporter offers his wines, have a look at the comments!

I trust that there are  much more advantages I did not descirbe here! Feel free to add them in the comments.

DOPPLR

The tool that convinced me less, until now is Dopplr, not because of the philosophy of the site, but more because of I don’t find other dopplr users as easily as I find people on twitter, facebook or OWC. For me, Web 2.0 starts when I travel. On Dopplr, though, I can’t find how to use the site on a more frequent basis. I have tried out a few things (read the post about dopplr here), but am still researching Dopplr’s best use. Where Dopplr has helped me to change my perspective is the way in which I view travel.  I now travel around the world with an easy to reach new goal: I force myself to open at least one bottle of my own wine during a trip to anywhere, and share that bottle with bloggers, any blogger, that I can meet through any Web 2.0 tool.

Reflection on Dopplr: probably I need to give it more time, and be more active myself. Check out my next trip to China and Singapore

Web 2.0 EXAMPLES

This led to the best example of how Web 2.0 tools has aided me as a wine exporter: the Casa Vides tasting in Boston. I try to imagine how it must have been in the pre Web 2.0 era to organize this type of event. It probally would have taken years. We (I did not do this all by myself) organized a tasting in Boston only 2 weeks before I went to the US. How did we do this? Simple!

I was looking for Boston bloggers on Twitter, and within seconds, I got a response. Check out “how” through this Boston tasting post I wrote in October.  In the end, two great posts were written about the Casa Vides Boston Bloggers Tasting. One by the hand of Passionatefoodie and the second by Bloviatrix

Casavides got a lot of attention on twitter through many posts, we did a Twitter Tasting Live thanks to Binends. It went all so fast, and being a Web 2.0 dummy, I couldn’t understand the impact at the moment itself.

Bloggers tasting: THE RESULTS

For me, the blogger’s tasting was a success by itself, because it received some great feedback from people stemming from different backgrounds. Food, media, marketing, wine, sales, retail, etc. Put this mix together and you receive more information than you can process.

My surprise was even bigger when I got an e-mail from a major Boston wine importer, who contacted me two weeks afterward. He was seriously interested in our wines after hearing about the tasting notes from one of the participants.

Other examples include a trip we did to Ireland with Bubbelbrothers, a.ka. the blogging wine importer. I met Julian through an interesting conversation last year about undisclosing the process of exporting wines through internet, when I did some blogging for Tintoralba, another Spanish wine producer with a blog.  Actually this conversation even got the attention of some wine marketers in Spain. Julian was so kind to invite some Cork based bloggers and clients for a tasting and the effect of this gathering was absolutely felt at the winery.

It’s been one month after the tasting in Boston, and three months after the introduction of the blog. I assume that you would like to see some concrete results. So does my boss! We can’t live from the great feedback we get, do we? More important questions have to be answered soon like, how many bottles were sold this month? When is the importer going to order at all? etc etc.

It’s kind of contradictory that the most non Web 2.0 activity, the wine fair itself, in a way is the driving force behind my trips, which allow me to do some Web 2.0 activities along the way, like blogger’s tastings. Costs for these extra Web 2.0 activities are almost zero, taking into account that the two major costs items, the trip to the country and sending samples are counted as costs for the wine fair. And although Web 2.0 something I almost do in my own time, let’s after or before working hours. So yes you must like to give up hanging out with friends and family, or do as we did and unplug the tv. But hey, if that means that your (net)working time is becoming more effective and fun, then it makes a lot of sense.

So, my conclusion as a export director for now is that Web 2.0 has not yet taken over my non Web 2.0 activities, but it sure helps me do my job better, quicker, directer, and above all, with more fun.  And as I feel we have so much more to tell and to share, the whole Casa Vides team is getting more and more involved in what they are doing on a daily basis. Videos and photos, stories and comments has makes us realise how lucky we are that we can work with wine, every day!

Comments are more than welcome.

Keep you posted about our interesting discoveries about using Web 2.0 for wine exports!

Hasta luego

Emilio