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5forests 2021 Social Media Calendar for Wine – A0

5forests 2021 Social Media Calendar for Wine – Letter

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Greetings wonderful wine folk!

Let me begin by apologizing to Cathy. I promised her last year that I would send out a 2020 calendar, but the world went mad and I traded in my social media planning for a Real Business of Wine microphone.

I’m hopeful that my 2021 efforts will meet a world that has found new routines amidst rapid change. This year’s social media calendar focuses on the positive, the humourous, and the quirky!

Our industry has embraced digital communications like never before, and I’m super proud of wine sellers for jumping into new online spaces. But, I see an awful lot of my clients working waaay too hard to stay on top of their social media, blogs, emails, podcasts, youtube, zooms, zooms, and more zooms. So, along with the calendar, I want to offer some advice that I hope will keep you from hitting “communication burnout.” Here goes:

1. Undertake a digital diet. You do not need to be active on every single platform to succeed in growing your community or sales. Select 1-2 channels that give you the best bang for your buck, or that make you happiest. Use Zapier or IFTTT to automate the rest.

2. Plan what you can…but plan something. Whether it’s a week or a month at a time, give yourself some direction by sitting down and planning your communications for the days ahead. Presently, the 5forests team is planning organic campaigns three months in advance, and content anywhere from 30 to 90 days in advance.

We recommend these resources to clients who are looking for easy-to-use, easy-to-afford solutions:

• Spreadsheets for content planning
• Later for user-friendly social media scheduling (the media library is a godsend)
• Canva for asset creation (do yourself a favor, pay for Pro, and upload a Brand Kit)
• Mailchimp for emails (I *still* have a love-hate relationship with mailchimp, but it’s incredibly user-friendly)
• WordPress for blogs

3. Another trick for creating structure is to define categories of content, and your website is a good cheat sheet to get you started. What do you have in your primary navigation (menu)? For most wineries, this will include some version of:

• Products
• People
• The Land
• History
• I imagine you’ll also have Reviews or testimonials throughout the site.
• Perhaps you’ll have Mission, Vision, Values?

Right there are six categories of content that can help you plan your comms. Now, write one post for each of those and you’ve got a week of planned content ready to go! It really is that easy.

4. Embrace Evergreen social media posts. These are posts that are not time bound and can be recycled again and again. Topics that work well for wine include team profiles, quotes or reviews, and explainers (such as, “what do we mean when we say low-intervention?”)

5. And last but not least: You’re allowed to turn it off sometimes. Yes, consistent and responsive social media is a gold standard, but how many times do you login to post and find yourself doomscrolling? Your digital success is not going to wither because you set your phone on Do Not Disturb from time to time.

Remember, digital communications are a marathon, not a sprint. I’m so glad to see all of you embracing digital, and I want to see you happily here for many years to come.

Go forward and do great things,
Polly