From traditional wine marketing to social presence: how to turn your online reputation into social currency

It's no secret that I am addicted to social networks.
I started exploring the “social” world at the end of 2008, by first registering a personal profile on Facebook (which was actually very private) just for fun, then opening my account on Twitter and other social networks with the purpose of combining their functions with those offered by traditional communication tools.

I eventually got in contact with my first 100% social client about one year ago (this post tells the whole story) and this experience showed me that a brand new world was about to begin for us.

My first steps were of course timid and slow, but I very soon took my decision to widely explore all many and different possibilities offered by online marketing and sales, trying to understand if would it be possible to turn online chats into a real business for my company. In my “real” life I often need to jump on a plane and fly five thousand miles to show my wines to clients who live on the other side of the world, and this is of course very expensive and takes a lot of time. Thus, I thought I could do exactly the same in my “virtual” life, except that I wouldn’t need to leave my desk at the winery.

I didn’t believe this process would be huge or fast, and I was mistaken: when I summed up the figures, only one year later, it was all about very positive results. So I started looking back, tracing my steps from today up to the beginning, to figure out what has worked and what has not. And to understand what should I do in order to make my “virtual” experience a successful asset for my company, which is not virtual at all - but a real thing made of wines, vineyards, people and a lot of off-line work.

I finally presented my report at Terroirvino, a wine event that took place in Genova last week, discussing this presentation, which I uploaded on slideshare and am now re-posting here, hoping it will be also useful to whom is taking their first steps, just like me.

Any comments or critics are all very welcome, because I understand this is only the beginning of a long and fascinating effort to developing our social media marketing strategy to the fullest.

Enjoy!