Over the past few years, the internet has slowly started to change from static to active. This progression has enabled people to interact with websites, and each other on a national level. This summer, MySpace broke the 100 Million user mark; Flickr just had its 22 Millionth picture uploaded; YouTube is serving up over 100 Million videos per day. Web 2.0 is here, and is only going to get bigger.

From a marketing prospective, the active web is providing another avenue to reach your target market. This is made possible because of the number of people using web 2.0 applications, and the amount of information this activity is collecting. The information can then be used to isolate your target market, and reach out to them. Take wine for example.

People interested in wine are coming together at various places on the internet; in wine groups at large social networks; in online wine communities; in the blogosphere; and in wine forums. It seems that there is an interest from the general public to interact with each other about wine. Now that we have established where these people are, we can examine how to reach them.

MySpace: This may not be news to you, but there is a bustling wine community on MySpace. There is a total of 267 wine groups, with over 15,000 members. In the top five groups, there are over 11,000 members who read and participate in group discussions. Here is a list of the top five groups:

Wine Lovers: 5120 members
Wine Lovers Meet: 4,705 members
Wine Slobs: 1114 members
Wine Lovers: 514 members
Wine Connection: 314 members

Members of these groups are discussing a wide variety of wine topics; from wine clubs, to favorite wines, to etiquette. Because so many wine lovers read and participate in these discussions, they are a powerful marketing tool.

Example: “WineQ“
There is currently a discussion in the wine lovers group (5120 members) about WineQ. They have been at the top of the discussion board for the past five days and thousands of group members were exposed to the WineQ brand and service. They made very good use of a large wine community group.

Conclusion: Although they have numbers, the type of person that frequents MySpace may not be your ideal customer. However, it does allow for the large scale interaction necessary for accurate market research; keeping in mind the demographics of MySpace users.

Other Social Communities: Facebook, Orkut, Consumating, Friendster, Linkedin, Tagged, Tagworld, 360.yahoo.

Flickr: Owned by Yahoo!, Flickr is the most popular photo sharing site on the internet. They have millions of users, and like MySpace, they have a wine community of more than 900 groups, totaling 6,000+ people. Flickr wine group members share their favorite wine pictures and interact with each other in the discussion sections. The most popular wine groups on Flickr are:

In & Outdoor Food and Drinks: 2,217 members
Vines and Vineyards: 955 members
Alcohol as still as Life: 905 members
Wine-geek Musings: 751 members
Food and Drinks Directory: 645 members

Joining and submitting wine pictures to these groups is a great way to get exposure from Flickr. Also, communicating through the discussion sections is an avenue to reach Flickr wine lovers.

Example: “Fantesca Winery”
Fantesca Winery is doing an excellent job establishing a presence on Flickr; they are effectively leveraging the community to expose their brand to new customers, and are “fostering customer loyalty“ through personal interaction with the community.

Conclusion: Flickr users are generally older and more affluent than MySpace users. But its more difficult to make “friends” and reach out to people on Flickr than on MySpace. If you take good pictures, you can utilize them to create a community around your brand; but it takes time. Overall, Flickr takes a large investment of time in order to reach a relatively small audience.

Other Photo Sharing Communities: Slide, Zoto, Shutterbook, Fotolia, iStockphoto, Photobucket, fotki, bubbleshare, 23hq, Parazz, Pixpulse, Riya, Zenphoto.

MSN, Yahoo and Google Groups: There are thousands of people in these wine groups, and several wineries are doing a great job leveraging these communities. Once again, these groups allow for open discussion, which are perfect for increasing brand awareness and doing market research.

MSN Wine groups:

Bordeaux Wine Enthusiasts
Bordeaux Central
Wine at MSN Groups

Yahoo Wine Groups:

Solis Wine Club
Oz Wine
Sacramento Wine Lovers Club
Generation X Wine Lovers
Wine Almanac

Google Wine Groups:

Alt.food.wine
Rec.crafts.winemaking
Rec.food.drink
Therese’s Wine List
Wine 2.0

Example: Solis Winery
Solis Winery has developed a Yahoo Wine Group of 956 members. They are using it to communicate with their wine club members by posting their newsletter and wine releases. In addition, they are bolstering their wine club membership because you have to sign up for their wine club in order to join their group.

Conclusion: These groups can be used in the same fashion as MySpace and Flickr Groups. Although there are less people in them, posting relevant discussion topics about your brand, product or service can get free exposure and feedback.

Blogosphere: The wine blogosphere definitely has the largest market. Because most wine blogs have specific themes, they attract a certain visitor. Although crude, you can make generalizations about the blog’s audience and advertise accordingly. Also, niche market wine blogs have emerged and are having success. Matching your product or service with the right blog can be a very effective marketing strategy. Because of the sheer volume of blogs, im not going to try to categorize wine blogs.

Del.icio.us: Social Bookmarking sites aren’t the best places to advertise wine, but there are millions of people using these applications and can be a good resource for links and traffic. Searhing Del.icio.us with the keyword wine yields 32, 915 results. The top spot goes to Cork’d with two domains saved by 2,200 people. Winelog.net is right up there as well with its domain saved by 890 people.

Conclusions: The people using social bookmarking sites are generally more tech oriented, but its unclear how much they like wine. Getting into Social Bookmarking sites usually happens naturally, but some internet marketing firms hire top Del.icio.us users to promote their website.

Other Social Bookmarking Sites: Ma.gnolia, Blinklist, Furl, Clipmarks, Spurl, Rollyo, Stumbleupon, Rawsugar, Coastr, Shadows, Simply, Tailrank.

Digg: Digg is a community “people news production” site. Recently they have added video and podcast sections in addition to news. The defining feature of Digg and “people news production” sites is that the community votes on stories and only the most popular make it to the front page. Digg became immensely popular over the past 18 months or so, and now has over a million users. There is an ongoing debate in the SEO world over the value of Digg visitors vs. the time it takes to produce Digg worthy content. SEO/SMO Digg guru Neil Patel thinks that its worth it because of the exposure as well as the correlation between being on the home page and number of bookmarks in Del.icio.us. If you can make it to the Digg homepage, expect around 20,000 visits.

A Wine Application of “people news production site”:

Wine Life Today: Wine Life Today is a very unique community because the majority of users are wine bloggers. With this audience, it is a perfect place to get your content in front of bloggers. Submitting your news to WLT is a great way to get “viral” with your content.

Example: Cakebread Cellars
Although this may not have been picked up in the wine blogosphere, it was popular enough to reach the front page of WLT.

Conclusions: One of the only times I’ve seen a wine story make it to the frontpage of Digg was when Wine Spectator released their Top 100 Wines of 2006 list. One of the main reasons for this is that over 75% of front page stories are submitted by the top 100 Digg users. If you know one of these users, your chances of getting on to the front page increases exponentially.

Other “People News Production” Sites: Netscape, Diggdot, Reddit, Shoutwire, Rojo, Newsvine, Gabbr, 180n, Cityfeeds, Commontimes, Nowpublic, Spinspy.

In closing, this guide is limited by my knowledge of web applications and their wine communities. But through careful thought and planning, they can be leveraged to discover and reach your target market. As more niche market social networks are developed (Corkd, Winelog, Bottlenotes, WineQ, Vinorati, Bottletalk, Openbottles, Calwineries, etc..), utilizing them can be a powerful tool in your marketing endeavors.

Ryan Fujiu is a contributing newsletter editor for WineMarketer.com. He developed Calwineries.com, and is also a SEO for Advantage Consulting Services focusing on Social Media Optimization. You can reach Ryan at ryan@calwineries.com.

This entry was posted by Ryan Fujiu on Thursday, December 28th, 2006 at 4:41 pm and is filed under Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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