A Guest Blog by Mark Aselstine of Uncorked Ventures Wine Clubs
“Over the past few months I’ve been experimenting using Twitter as a way to help my business during these very early days, I believe I’ve found a couple of very basic insights which may help others use Twitter more effectively for their business.
To start, some very basic background. I run an online 3rd party wine club with my brother in law whom is also my business partner. We were permitted by the alcohol control board (finally!!!!) in December, but have been working on starting this business since July of last year. Getting started in the wine business is a fairly complex and frustrating process, when combined with the high expense of paying for permits, a warehouse space and initial inventory.we have been left with little available capital to use toward marketing. For that reason, we decided that both social media and SEO would need to be vital long term aspects of our business plan.
SEO is certainly it’s own series of articles, but we have found some general conclusions about Twitter which may be useful in other niche’s as well.
When we first started using Twitter, we thought that we’d be finding customers using the service. We’d talk some about wine and some about our personal lives and go from there. It hasn’t turned out like that at all.
What I have found is that there are plenty of businesses on Twitter and much like email it does not appear that many managers or owners are comfortable outsourcing their Tweets to a lesser employee. We’ve found that often, especially in the wine industry, the winemaker or owner is directly responsible for their Twitter feed. This has given us direct access to the decision maker for some of our initial target wineries that otherwise would have take significant time to work into their offices.
Like everything in business, the approach to these decision makers is crucial. We have tried the most simple and direct Tweets “Would love to feature one of your wines in our wine clubs.” As you’d expect we did not receive a good response to any of those.
A different approach has worked wonders though, basically you’re trying to get them to notice you as a friend. Tell your followers that they make some great wine, that they have a beautiful tasting room, share a few of their events. People by our nature like to feel important so the easiest approach is often flattery.
More recently we have been trying to study how others within our niche have been able to use Twitter to gain customers and market share. It seems to me at least that the most effective of these techniques, well the only technique that is working actually, is to offer coupons directly through Twitter. I know wineries that have been able to move what amounts to excess inventory directly to consumers for a 30% discount when they’d otherwise have to move it into wholesale channels at 50% off, or more. It’s these types of stories that make me think Twitter will over the long term, bring in more and more people as consumers. In many ways I can see it replacing Craigslist as a way for people to sell small items as well because it adds a much quicker interaction between interested parties.”
Mark Aselstine is a Proprietor of Uncorked Ventures which he runs with his business partner/brother in law.
Thanks for your guest post Mark