Now that our wineries and tasting rooms are closed due to the coronavirus situation, you might have some extra time on your hands to get important tasks done. (Note that many wineries are ramping up their curbside pickup or online wine shops so they’re still busy packaging and shipping). Let’s look at this as an opportunity to get things done, enhance our businesses, focus on growth, clean up our outdated websites, and connect with our customers more deeply.
- Engage more thoroughly with your fans and other wineries, wine bloggers, wine writers, etc. on social media. Make sure your Facebook Page and your winery’s Instagram follow the accounts of local wineries, bloggers, industry people and important food bloggers. Look to see who has been writing about you or talking about your wine – comment, like, and thank them. Check out some of their other posts too – you shouldn’t only be Liking or Commenting on posts about yourself. (That’s selfish!) Answer messages promptly, comment thoughtfully and positively, watch videos and like and comment on them too. We’re all in this together and everybody could use support right now.
2. Bring props to work (if you’re allowed in your empty tasting room or winery) and create wine bottle porn pics! Now is a good time to get some creative bottle shots into your image archive for future use. It’s also a good opportunity to take well-lit photos of your empty tasting room (so that you aren’t photographing people who don’t want to be in your pic and don’t want to sign model releases). You never know when you might want or need those tasting room photos (and outdoor winery building shots) for your website or a magazine article or a request from a blogger.
It’s also a great time to spend more effort on wine and food pairing pics, posts and videos. (Here at Woodinville Wine Blog, our most highly trafficked posts of all time are our dinner party and food pics – and we don’t even post recipes)! Borrow recipes (attributing them properly, of course) that pair well with your winery’s wines. Cook up the food, plate it nicely, set the plate next to a bottle and glass of your wine, and photograph it with good lighting. Write a blog post and an Instagram caption about the food, include the recipe, and watch your fans eat it up!
3. Write handwritten notes and thank-yous to your wine club members, employees, influencers and bloggers who have written about you, winemakers who have helped you on your journey, sommeliers and restaurant wine buyers, and neighboring winery employees you have bonded with.
Perhaps you’ll wait to mail your letters until the coronavirus situation is figured out better – people might be afraid to open your letter since we’re not sure how long the virus lasts on paper. Most people do not receive personal, handwritten notes in the mail any more and they’ll surely be delighted – once the time is right.
4. Get pesky tasks out of the way – clear out your email, download photos off your phone, answer un-answered Facebook messages and IG DMs, edit old info in your customer database, update your website and social media accounts. Go back through a few months of Instagram posts, editing misspellings in captions and hashtags. Update your Pinterest as much as possible. Update your Linkedin and write a blog post or two over there if you haven’t already. Get filing done. Backup computers and make sure you have a copy of your photos and contacts from your phone in case anything happens to it. Have you written a post to your blog in the past 30 days that doesn’t have something to do with curbside pickup and wine shipping? Have you created a video talking about your winery’s history?
5. Embark upon your continuing education in the wine world. Take online classes; listen to podcasts; read wine columns; read wine blogs; and watch informative videos. Work on your sommelier certification, or your WSET level. Watch all the wine movies you haven’t seen yet or need to revisit.
Some of our favorite resources:
Eric Asimov’s Wine School at the New York Times
SOMM: Sommelier Certification and Wine School Reviews
22 Wine Movies You Don’t Want to Miss
WSET Home: Wine & Spirit Education Trust
How will you spend your on-the-clock time if you’re lucky enough to still have a winery job? Let us know in the comments below.
-Carrie
