Social Media – Get Your Club Shoes

Like the now famous John Isner and Nicolas Mahut tennis match (11 hours 5 minuets), the debate over social media goes back and forth. On one court, the naysayers, who dismiss it as Charlatan propaganda and a glorious waste of time and money. On the other, the devotees, who in their black sweatpants and purple Nike High Dunks, await the coming of their national discovery and impending celebrity on the spaceship of Internet fame.

An article written by Steve Heimoff a few weeks ago on his blog addressed two of the topics often debated regarding social media:

• Social media is not a quick fix or “magic bullet” to cure a struggling economy and weak sales.
• No one seems to know just how valuable social media is.

With some exceptions, both of these statements are true. You generally can’t Tweet your way to financial recovery (although I can point to a few wineries where social media is their entire media presence) and it will be difficult if not impossible for most wineries to track sales specifically generated by social media.

But the failures in social media are not in the philosophy behind it, but in the application of it as a tool. Many companies “using” social media either use it sporadically or don’t understand the concept in the first place. They fail the medium; not the other way around.

If I had a Social Media Hammer, I would Hammer All the Time – The Wrong Way

I often see exchanges like the following on Twitter:

@genericNapaBrand Buy our products! 1:45pm

@genericNapaBrand Buy our products! 2:10pm

@genericNapaBrand Buy our products! 2:30pm

@InterestedCustomer Hey @genericNapaBrand can you tell me how your 02′ Cab is tasting these days? 2:31pm

@genericNapaBrand Buy our products! 2:50pm

@genericNapaBrand Buy our products! 3:10pm

This is not social media, it is Twitter-hocking, beating people over the head 140 characters at a time. SOCIAL media implies a level of two-way engagement. For example:

@FamilyRunWinery Just barrel sampled our 09’ Pinot Noir, tasting great! 1:24pm

@FamilyRunWinery Interesting article on the benefit of screw caps. http://bit.ly/asEZOz 2:30pm

@InterestedCustomer Hey @FamilyRunWinery how is your 08′ Syrah tasting these days? 3:04pm

@FamilyRunWinery @InterestedCustomer it is softening and tasting nice, but in honesty could use another 6 months to a year in bottle 3:10pm

@FamilyRunWinery Check out our profile on A Long Pour http://bit.ly/cpVTX3. That @Wkelterer guy is super smart! 3:55pm

@WKelterer @FamilyRunWinery I am smart aren’t I? 4:01pm

@UnNamedInfluentialWineCritic @WKelterer You sure are! 4:03pm

The later example allows for new connections to be made, the former does not. The brilliance of social media lies in the ability to reach unexpected people in unexpected ways. For those who fail to understand this point, the failure is not the medium, but the misapplication of it.

There are also failures in our expectations of what social media can do on a personal level. We, as wine bloggers, like to believe that we can start a blog, open a Twitter account, and then sit back and enjoy the ride as we are transformed by the Social Media Pixies into the next Vanerchuk, Yarrow, or bless his bitter heart, HoseMaster. The reality is that success comes on the heals of hard work (pointed out by Mr. Heimoff), a better product, and often, dumb luck.

So there is much false hope in social media, a lullaby that we sing to ourselves. “La-la-la, I am worth listening to. La-la-la, I am important. La-la-la, I will be discovered.” When we wine bloggers express frustration that we pour hours into our sites only to receive 50 hits a day, it is a failure in our expectations not the medium.

In a separate blog post on Mr. Heimoff’s site (I am not that obsessed with him, it is just relevant content), Why Don’t Cult Wineries Embrace Social Media, one of his commenters made an excellent point, a point wineries should take note of. I don’t want to re-quote it here (see the comment on Steve’s site), but in gist he said that all of his friends under thirty use social media and if a winery does not utilize it, they are in effect “out of sight out of mind.” Here is the point; it is about more than financial return, it is about being where your customers already are, it’s about being a part of the conversation. Not participating is like putting on your best club clothes, going to the club, and then sitting in a separate room in the dark with ginger ale, and hoping people come and ask you to dance.

It is a lesson critics need to take note of as well.

I am going to go out on a limb and make a statement: wine critics, in the classical sense of the meaning, are going to die out. To clarify, traditional critiques in their current state (100 point ratings and descriptor notes) won’t die out anytime soon, if at all, and we are by no means a few months away from a world with no Parker scores, far from it. But over the coming years, the role of the wine critic will need to take on a more engaged role if it is to remain relevant to new wine consumers, particularly millennials. There is increasing amounts of well thought-out content on wine and wineries have numerous options in addition to critic’s scores to share their story (including doing it themselves). Critics need to be able to adapt to the tools available to them, do it better than the majority of the bloggers, and continue to demonstrate they are knowledgeable professionals with relevant opinions.

Of the wine critics, I think Steve Heimoff demonstrates the most complete understanding of social media as a tool. I don’t pay much attention to Mr. Heimoff’s scores (for no other reason than I seldom pay much attention to any scores), but I love him as a critic. Through online tools like his blog and Facebook, he has helped shape a few of my opinions on wine. When he shares experiences he has had in the field, or responds to comments on his blog, he becomes more than a critic of wine, he becomes a liaison for it. So it is his shared experiences that are more important to me than his scores. This has been possible because of social media.

I don’t imagine the death of the wine critic as much as I imagine a rebirth, a remaking of critics with their scores, their tasting notes, their opinions, and yes, their iPads. What will the wine critics of tomorrow look like? It’s hard to say. But I have to imagine that the prophesying from ivory towers will one day come to an end. As we continue to build a wine drinking culture and start to trust our own judgment, will we expect more form critics than scores and tasting notes? I hope so.

In the end, social media isn’t just about participating in what is presently a worldwide obsession, it is also about preparing for what is to come. Those who stay active in social media will be far more likely to benefit when something new is born out of it, something this is a true game changer. It is these wineries and critics who will become trendsetters, setting the bar by which others are measured. For those who wait, they may find the pack is too far ahead, the bar too high, and the Tweets too numerous. In any industry, it is a constant race to stay ahead of the competition and why wineries and critics wouldn’t utilize this rather cheap way to engage with growing legions of online consumers is beyond me…magic bullet or not.