"We started posting on Instagram last month and we've already seen sales increase," said no winery owner, ever.

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There is a lot of wine on social media: bottle shots, video tours of cellars, table after table of sumptuous dishes next to glasses of wine. Wineries are active. But they also report being disappointed at the sales return on their investment in social media, running out of ideas on what to post and feeling like they're not getting as much out of their digital presence as they could. 

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I'm not surprised. There are half-a-dozen widely-used platforms, each with dozens of features; what's more, the platforms and how people use them are evolving every day. What was a valid strategy for converting followers-to-fans three months ago, may no longer work today. 

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Which is why digital presence is just like any other communication channel in that its impact on sales is highly correlated to the insights and strategy on which it is built. 

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In an ideal world, a winery develops a powerful, unique selling point; it analyses the behavior of its target market; it plans a communication strategy to raise awareness, foster engagement and drive conversions using a variety of digital (and non-digital) media to cover all customer touchpoints; finally, it defines a calendar of tactics and appoints a team to execute the plan. 

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The reality is often more ad-hoc: wineries create profiles and pages and start posting and engaging. At some point, they realize that if they want results, they need to coordinate their efforts and start to look into how to do that. They still have to run their winery though! They need a simplified process to start transforming their current digital activity into a true sales funnel.

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That process starts with understanding where they are today in terms of their digital presence. Register and download my Social Media Audit for Wineries to find identify what you are doing right and what can be improved.