Pinterest for the wine industry – don’t be scared

by Mike · March 16, 2012

In a recent post by the social media evangelist for the wine industry, Rick Bakas stressed that wineries should be wary of the Pinterest craze. In his Blair Witch style video, he cautions viewers about getting too involved in the site. I’d argue just the opposite. Pinterest has grown faster than any other site, and boasts some impressive stats about the user’s engagement and ability to refer visits to websites. It can’t be compared to foursquare, or instagram, which have not seen nearly the same expansion, or ability to funnel traffic into websites. And it certainly should not be ignored.

Hard to measure?

Rick seems to think it’s too difficult to track the quality of Pinterest traffic, saying “We don’t know how to measure data from Pinterest. We don’t know how to track brand mentions, or see where our content goes.” Yet, it’s actually fairly easy to measure the quality, as outlined in this great Mashable post. Anybody can easily look at their referral traffic in Analytics and see how much Pinterest has sent. If they want to go further, they can this great dashboard, build custom reports, and advanced segments to match Pinterest traffic with any dimensions they want. See the resources below to get your copies of some great Analytics reports to measure the quality of traffic.

Pinterest for your winery

Consider that images of food are one of the largest subjects on the site, and you can figure that wine would pair pretty well in that arena. And in fact, you’ll find a ton of wine boards where people share their favorites. It also extends well beyond just wine – pictures of vineyards, winery architecture, events, and other iconic styles that define the wine industry can be found there.

Perhaps the best way for a winery to get involved is to simply make a general board that captures all the above things in one place. Show your brand as you would if you wanted to make a collage – use pictures of your tasting room, vineyards, labels, wine dinners, wine-paring recipes, items from your store, and your wine dog. The wine culture extends well beyond wineries, and crosses over into daily life in many ways, so you never know what will resonate with viewers.

I understand that most marketers have enough on their plate, and won’t be psyched to incorporate yet another social network into their strategy, but it seems this is one that you can’t ignore. Given the popularity of the food segment, I have to imagine that the wine-related pins should bring solid attention.