It’s Taste Washington Wine Month, and yet the Taste Washington festival had to be cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Our local Woodinville and Bothell restaurants are closed except for curbside pickup and delivery; many of their workers have been laid off or had hours cut drastically.
Our beloved local Woodinville wineries are scrambling to reconfigure for online shipping and curbside pickup. Their tasting rooms are closed, and their wine events cancelled.
Small business owners are terrified that they’ll go bankrupt or have to close. They’re coming up with creative ways to stay open, safely, and keep paying their employees. (I for one am already sick of my own cooking and grateful to be able to order the occasional take-out meal!)
It’s been suggested that to support local small businesses, we order meals and wine for takeout and curbside pickup. We can also buy gift cards from them, to use at a future time. That way small business owners have access to the money now, during this difficult coronavirus situation.
We can add a bottle or two of local wine when we make quick trips to the grocery store to stock up (PCC Markets, Whole Foods, Haggen and Metropolitan Market do a fabulous job of stocking local wines).
But what if you don’t have a lot of extra spending money right now? Or if, like me (a wine blogger) you have so many bottles of wine in the house you don’t dare buy any more. (Although now that I’m stuck home and not driving, I’m drinking through more bottles of wine during a week than I did in the past!)
You can still support local restaurants and wineries without spending money right now, if you need to be careful of your finances. Support them online, by leaving positive reviews, writing and blogging about them, vlogging about them if you have a YouTube channel, and sharing photos of your wine bottles and food pairings on your social media channels. Link to the winery’s website on your blog or website; share their website and Facebook page on your timeline and mention what you like about their wines.
Right now if you’re social distancing and staying home, you likely have more time than normal to stop and really interact with your favorite wineries online. Many of them are hosting virtual tastings right now (check their Facebook pages for schedules), inviting local musicians to sing songs to us on video, interviewing their winemakers on video, offering virtual vineyard tours, and educating us about their wines and winemaking processes. Wine bloggers are hosting virtual happy hours daily at 4 pm and 5 pm, showcasing the local wines they’re drinking. (And cocktails made from local distilleries!) There’s a #VirtualTasteWA hashtag on Twitter and Instagram that you might enjoy watching, too.
We have time to learn more about wine, become better educated about wine, finally read that winemaker’s biography, finally finish watching that movie about sommeliers, and actually read the captions on people’s Instagram posts instead of just scrolling by to look at more pictures. You can take an online wine class from many different sources, or sign up for James Suckling’s Masterclass.
You’re not driving in traffic anymore, but you can still enjoy listening to wine podcasts (we recommend Decanted Podcast and Wine for Normal People).
Let’s talk about how to help wineries via social media. Take a moment to go look at your very favorite local winery’s Facebook Page and Instagram. You’re probably signed up as a fan – you’ve Liked and Followed their Facebook and Instagrams. If not, take a second to do so.
Now let’s look at your preferred winery’s last three or four Facebook posts and Instagram Stories, photographs and videos (if any). If you don’t work in the social media industry, you might not be aware that most Facebook Pages posts only get seen by 5.5% of their audience. That’s right – even if you signed up as a Fan, hoping to see posts and updates from a winery you love, you probably aren’t seeing many of their posts. That winery can choose to pay money to “boost” the post to show it to more people, but that takes $ away from other priorities they might have.
If you click Like and comment on their posts, you’ll teach Facebook’s algorithm that you want to hear from them. You’ll also teach Facebook that people like and want to see content from that winery, so Facebook will (likely) show their posts more often. It’s really helpful if you leave genuine (positive) comments and say different things to each winery. It probably won’t help if you just put emojis or “nice wine” on every comment you leave. Take the time to leave an actual thoughtful comment. Share something about yourself when you do – “I served this wine last night with the bolognese pasta I made for dinner” is more helpful than “looks delicious!”
Sign up for your favorite wineries’ and restaurants’ newsletters on their websites. You can always unsubscribe later if the newsletters they send you aren’t to your liking after all.
If your favorite winery posts videos (on Facebook, IGTV or YouTube), watch the video for as long as you’re still enjoying it, and be sure to Like and comment about something you enjoyed that you saw in the video.
Share the winery’s posts to your personal Facebook timeline whenever you think your friends might enjoy seeing the post too. (But not so often your friends get annoyed!)
“According to Instagram, the most important engagements for feed ranking are comments, likes, reshares, and for video posts, views, which is really helpful to know as you plan your content and captions.”
If you visited a local wine tasting room in the last year, take time to sit down and write a lengthy, honest review about your experience there, on Yelp and on TripAdvisor. This not only helps the business get more visitors, but helps your fellow wine drinkers and travelers decide which lovely places they might like to visit on their next trip, when all this coronavirus social distancing is finally over someday. Remember that many people only take the time to leave reviews when they are angry or disgruntled. Your favorite winery and restaurant will appreciate your positivity after you leave a detailed (not brief) review of them. (Check out this article from the NY Times on why you can’t really trust negative reviews).
If your favorite winery is hosting an online tasting or live Q&A, tune in, comment and interact with them. Check out their Stories they might be posting on their winery’s back story, winemaker’s history, family stories and what’s coming up for them in the future. Be sure to click the Like or Love buttons whenever you can – most people who enjoy the content don’t think to take that step. It really helps your winery’s social media post to be seen by more people.
Do you run the social media for your own or someone else’s winery? Don’t forget to Like your fellow local wineries (and wine bloggers, and wine podcasters) as your Page on Facebook. Then you can Like and Comment as your Page instead of as your personal self. (Only six of Woodinville’s 120+ tasting rooms we have written about and photographed have Liked Woodinville Wine Blog as their Page, sigh).
Got any creative ideas to help our local wineries and restaurants (and breweries) without spending money? Let us know in the comments section below!
-Carrie
Woodinville Wine Blog on Facebook
Woodinville Wine Blog on Instagram
Woodinville Wine Blog on Twitter
Woodinville Wine Blog on YouTube
