Creating Content for your Wine Site

Good presentations and white papers on the genetic makeup of social media sites and Web 2.0 participants are available. Forrester Research published a book in 2008 called Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed (by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff – available at Amazon.com) and Gary Hayes produced a good presentation on SlideShare titled Creating Online Buzz, Growing Communities. In a nutshell, to be successful you need to have a stable of Creators who come up with original content for your social site.

If you look around the winery talent pool and you can’t find content Creators you may need to hire a “ghost writer” for you or your winemaker or whoever that persona is you want to be positioned front and center on your social site; remember that more people view videos and photos on-line than articles and blogs.

Additionally, you will need Editors who will edit content created by others or submit content created by others. Critics are a plus, not a negative. If you make good wine you should not have to worry about criticism of your wine. Nobody likes mean-spirited hackers and, if lacking spam-filters, most SNS’s have applications for the community to self-police, register complaints and remove disruptive miscreants (ex.: Craig’s List). In the social atmosphere critics comment on the content submitted by others, such as, photos, videos and jokes that may have surfaced at your last wine tasting event.

You want lots of Sharers who will forward content to others. If your Creators and Editors are engaging your membership then you will attract more Sharers. Finally, you need Consumers. This is the silent majority who are attracted to your site, contribute to traffic but only passively consume content and either post by personalizing it, OR NOT. The graphic up above shows the levels of influence and impact of participants in a social networking community. Think about it, the guy snapping photos on his smart phone at your tasting bar is a creator. 1st try to get your wine label in the picture and then ask him to post his photos on your site.

Remember that you are creating your social site for your friends. Provide some incentives for your friends to contribute content, edit, share, and invite other friends to your site. Free invites to events at the winery always get attention and here’s an idea featured on Oprah. Invite your content contributors from anywhere in the world to a Skype wine tasting. Now that is what I want to do next time I’m flying cross country on a crowded 757!