Around 50 social media practitioners, digital natives and sneezers gathered together in meatspace last night for the inaugural Auckland Social Media Club event at the 42Below Bar on Commerce St and, with online video set to be a key topic in media circles in the coming months, Jayson Bryant of Wine Vault TV took the floor to speak about how incorporating video blogging into his business has helped drive extra revenue.
Bryant says the early adoption of social media (he has made 179 episodes of Wine Vault TV) for the business has helped The Wine Vault increase online sales by 4,000 percent and it now accounts for 20 percent of overall sales. This figure originated from relatively humble beginnings, but it is still a huge game-changer for the way his company operates.
One key insight was that video – and not just YouTube—is significantly underappreciated and underutilised in New Zealand. The chances of a video ‘going viral’ are incredibly slim, but if you keep the content interesting and digestible, people will soon start to follow what you are doing and the fan-base will grow.
Another factor people must remember is that social media is time consuming. Bryant says that although many of the tools are free or relatively cheap, time is the biggest cost. With video, it is really important to use intelligent tagging and this is particularly true with YouTube, where there is an incredible amount of white noise (approximately 20 hours are uploaded every minute).
However, the most important point is that content is king. Social media is not an essential part of your business model and he says the tools, especially video, should only be used if you have something interesting to say. But if you have something interesting to say and the market is not crowded by other people trying to say the same thing, there’s a great chance you can build a trusting following, brand equity and extra revenue from home and abroad.
