Yesterday, the wine industry’s most curious and innovative gathered at Cuvee in Napa to hear VinTank, discuss the strategy, approach, and methodology of their study of social media and the blogosphere. This report was created to help wine companies sort the relevant from the noise online and focus on developing an e-strategy. VinTank is the latest start-up that says, “At VinTank we understand the key questions and help industry leaders formulate winning strategies.” With co-founders Paul Mabray, Joel Vincent, Eric Hsu and Patrick Angeles, VinTank is positioning itself to evaluate and chart the currently flooded waters of social media in the wine industry in an attempt to make sense of this strange new online world. Sorting relevance, influence and impact appear to be their primary focus.
The conversation/presentation at Cuvee shared a basic outline without giving too much away. The study (expected later this month) aims to cover the broadest reach of social networks (for wine) and wine bloggers with detailed attention to the math behind their traffic, their influence, their relevance and how these cyber-space tools can help sell more wine, increase value or add to wine commerce/communication in some way. I have to admit, as the expanse of wine in social media spills beyond my reach, I’d be happy to read multiple evaluations and reports offering me a snap shot of relevant, demographic specific direction. I do this for a living for Hahn Estates, and I still don’t have time to get to them all.
Finally, the best part was the Napa Tweet Up that was augmented to the post VinTank presentation. The conversation continued and everyone from bloggers to winery GMs, from Bank executives to Wine Tech start-up founders was able to connect and consider the possibilities for our industry. There was indeed a buzz as people from more than a couple different generations and multiple disciplines crossed paths to learn about each other’s work, whether it was tweeting on a daily basis or running a winery from top to bottom. It was technology and the common passion for wine that brought everyone together.
Cheers!
Photos courtesy of my BlackBerry Storm.
Lisa as always you have great points to make and are always at the epicenter of the social storm occurring online and offline right now.
Vintank sounds exciting and I anxiously await the report. The interesting piece may be that this same process can occur for other industries that are still trying to understand the changing socialscape that has moved online.
There are many advances but there are also still many who have no idea what to do with the data even once they have it. Continuing the conversation such as the one at Cuvee is the primetime for that activity. Isn’t it great that even with all of the social media we still love to meet and …….drink wine offline.
Yes, Mark. And I think considering the e-strategy for specific companies, customizing the approach is something that VinTank expects (or hopes) to do for those companies…so indeed, it could save a lot of us a lot of time and energy and money…allowing us to connect in person more often for that great glass of wine.
[...] 2. In-person Relationships Matter. In South Africa, social media experts don’t rely on online interaction to build their audience. They meet in person through 27Dinner, a program that encourages professionals to get together and talk technology in person over dinner on the 27th of every month. In the wine industry, VinTank, a social media consulting company, released its social media report for the wine industry with an lively discussion in person. [...]