Social Network for Wineries
Posted by admin on July 2nd, 2007A few days ago Michael Brown wrote about Social Networking Wine. In one of the comments eljefe inquired about how a winery could start their own Social Network. I think it is a great idea to start a niche social network. This gives a chance to socialize and know more about the winery to people who are in different parts of the world and can not attend winery’s live events. Pictures, videos from live events can be shared with the community and discussions could be continued on the web.
Ning makes it easier for anyone to start their own social networks. It provides an easy way to create your communities. You don’t have to worry too much about the technology behind the social network, but to manage and grow your community. It took me less than 10 minutes to create my own Social Network. Simply log onto ning.com, create your account and then roll out your network. You might be able to point a subdomain, like community.yourwinery.com to your social network and incorporate it as a part of your website. There is a lot more stuff you can do if you use their API.
Technology for starting your own social network exists, but that does not mean you should start your own social network. With the growing number of social networks, it is very difficult for users to manage multiple friends, usernames, passwords spread across different social networks. I think it is good to start your own mini social network if you want a passive social network, where your wine fans get updated with new products, event pictures and videos. Big social networks like Myspace and Facebook would be helpful if you want to create new fans for your wine and an active community of people who discuss new recipes and food pairings with your wine.
Big social networks will give you instant access to a lot of people who are interested in wine and are looking for new taste. Creating communities/groups related to wine will get you some wine likers and your high quality products can turn those wine likers to wine lovers.
July 3rd, 2007 at 10:51 am
I notice that you do not have a link to Hugh McLeod’s www.gapingvoid.com
He has been wineblogging and building the Stormhoek brand for some time now. And it works.
July 3rd, 2007 at 8:02 pm
Very interesting. I’d advocate every join WineLog, a social network for all wine drinkers. But it is interesting to think about limiting that network to just fans (or club members) of one particular winery.
We are just releasing some interesting Group features at WineLog, which could play nicely with this. It’s basically a way to carve out an even smaller niche within our wine niche network.
The way the group would work is like this. You setup a link somewhere (at your winery website) linking to signup at WineLog. We can tell where the link is coming from and will add that user to the Winery X group once they sign up (or log in with an existing account). Now all members of that group can easily see each other’s activity (auto-friending) and have a common ground for discussing wine.
We provide all of the tools for managing a “wine log” and rating/reviewing wine, basically everything that makes our site great already. We’re planning on adding a shared calendar and bulletin board to the group spaces as well. It’ll be great!
A couple slippery points I see with this is that wineries would have to be open to users within their group reviewing, rating, and discussing wine from other wineries. But the co-branded logo at the top should always remind them where their loyalty lies.
I see this as a big win-win for us and wineries. Interested wineries should contact me (http://www.winelog.net/contact). We are looking for new groups to launch in August.
Thanks for letting me soapbox here. I was just so excited when I read this post to see that people are interested in these kind of applications.
July 4th, 2007 at 9:37 am
I’d checked out gapingvoid.com a while ago before McLeod was working at Stormhoek and loved the site. Cool that he’s now working in wine marketing — gives me an excuse to go back to enjoying the work on his own site.
August 2nd, 2007 at 2:09 pm
I found this great list of DIY white label social networking platforms that all allow you to brand and create your own social network sites. Ning is included on this list with dozens of other platforms having various degrees of robustness.
Cheers!
Chris
August 2nd, 2007 at 2:09 pm
OH sorry, here is the link to that list:
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/02/12/list-of-white-label-social-networking-platforms/
Cheers!
Chris
August 2nd, 2007 at 2:38 pm
And here is an even better description and explanation of what each platform has to offer from TechCrunch with all the pros and cons:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/07/24/9-ways-to-build-your-own-social-network/
Cheers!
Chris
August 14th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
I hate to keep bringing up the social networking subject but here is a new blog post from TechCrunch titled:
34 More Ways to Build Your Own Social Network
Here is the link:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/14/34-more-ways-to-build-your-own-social-network/
Cheers!
Chris