Development social digital marketing strategies in wine tourism for Portuguese wine market

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MASTER THESIS

Development social digital marketing strategies in wine tourism for

Portuguese wine market

GEORGII CHEZHIA

Internship developed at Paladares travel company Porto, Portugal

Professional supervisor Pedro Nelson Dias

Academic Supervisor Jaume Jene Albesa University of Rovira i Vergilii

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Digital marketing in social media is one of the primary tools that help stay competitive and attract more people to the wineries and the country. Further, that way, companies reach more people who are interested in the brand and gives opportunities to be always connected to them. Managers/owners in most of the wineries, need to find a way to implement or improving digital marketing strategies in social media to attract more customers that their brand can be more recognizable internationally and to make wine tourism effective and sustainable.

The main objective of this paper is to develop social media strategies for Portuguese wineries with the support of Paladares Travel company. Paladares Travel company is highly interested in this topic due to their goal to start in the company wine tourism consulting for Portuguese wineries.

KEYWORDS:

social media marketing, digital marketing, wine tourism, winery

ABBREVIATIONS:

SMM: social media marketing

PWT: portuguese wine tourism

ER:

engagement rate

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1. INTRODUCTION

Digital wine marketing becoming multiple issues and very contemporary. So, it is time to investigate and help the wine sector respond to this current challenge. It's clear to say that no company in the modern market can afford to ignore digital marketing to attract new customers, mainly through wine tourism development or online sales. And nowadays SMM (social media strategies) it's one of the most powerful instruments in digital marketing.

According to Viana (2016) "The wine industry has been one of the slowest industries to adopt social media, but it is relevant to recognize that it is a big opportunity for wine brands to engage directly with customers or potential clients". Thus, the leading social media marketing purpose in the wine sector is expressing the wine brand unique value to the customers, and its digital presence should do it when producers are not talking personally to them.

My professional internship was during three months since the 1 of March until the 31 of May. The project which was developing by me included different stages intending to develop digital media strategies in social media for Portuguese wineries and Portuguese wines sector at all. Day by day digital wine marketing becoming multiple issues as far the people still don’t want to accept new challenges. So, it is time to investigate and help the wine sector respond to this new challenge. And one of the key points is to manage social media properly with developing a concept with clear objectives.

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1.1 DESCRIPTION OF THE COMPANY

Paladares travel is an independent company, offering bespoke wine and gastronomic holidays in Portugal and Spain. The company offer wine and food-focused vacations in beautiful locations for solo travellers, couples, and groups, including groups of friends on holiday or corporate teams on retreat.

Paladares Travel is one of the leading wine tour companies in Portugal that was founded in 2007. The company is mainly focused on providing wine tours, but now the new challenge for the company is to grow. As the experimental for the beginning and the requires of the Portuguese wine market, the company decided to do consultancy for developing wine tourism with the primary goal to promote wineries through social media.

1.2 DUTIES DURING INTERNSHIP

Due to the high demand in the Portuguese wine sector, the company Paladares Travel decided to increase in capacities besides providing wine and food tours and start to offer wine tourism consultancy as an experiment. And the main task for me during the internship was developing social media marketing strategies that can be used by different wineries.

In this aspect, a big part of my work as doing a project in social media to increase the visibility of wineries and to the country at all and showing the great potential as a destination and uniqueness of places, wines and culture. To attract more people to our company by providing wine tours to these places. Another big part is communicating with wineries and proposing offers for consulting and developing their social media by showing the owners that social media can attract a lot of people to their places and build an international brand.

During my internship in Paladares Travel, I have been involved in different activities. One of the first activities was collecting information about wineries that are interested in wine tourism with the promotion of wine tourism in social media. Another task was checking their social media of wineries, which are concentrated in wine tourism and checking how they are developed. With checking statistics with different services whereby social media were developing during the last one year. The next was to contact wineries and visit them for the evaluation criteria and communicating with the person who is managing social media. Thus, after I researched the best strategies in digital marketing for social media and start to implement them with the creation a social media with the goal to promote Portuguese wine sector through social media with the leading platform Instagram https://www.instagram.com/portuguese_wine_revolution. This page is developing very successful and

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Moreover, it gives me and the company indispensable value to promote the SMM strategies that have been developed during my internship. This internship was an indispensable role in learning the methods of the mechanism of digital promotion in the wine sector. That now allows me to show to the wine companies that social media works very well in the wine sector and particularly in wine tourism. All this research and practical experience allow me to create a concept of digital marketing strategies for wineries with the subsequent goal to implement them in different wineries in the nearest future that was the main objective of my internship.

1.3 MASTER THESIS BASIS

The development of the wine tourism industry is gaining power every year ( Kotur, A. 2018) . Today's wine tourists can choose hundreds of wine destinations, as the wine sector is very competitive in the World. Wineries need to understand that competition in the wine tourism market sometimes reaches incredible proportions. Properly planned social media marketing policy adds a competitive advantage. Using social media for products in the tourist market has proven to be an excellent strategy (Zeng, B., & Gerritsen, R. 2014). Therefore, wine companies that are actively working with SMM, not only do not lose their customers but also multiply them. With the help of SMM, a wine tourist industry enterprise can always keep abreast of and quickly respond to changes that have occurred to the target audience.

Thus, the modern world is moving to live on the Internet, and therefore SMM in wine tourism are an innovative set of practical tools related to the promotion and sale of tourist products, goods and services through the Internet to tourists in social networks, which allows to form effective communications with target audience where it is convenient.

One of the main goals of the internship was developing social media strategies for wineries in Portugal. And the paper will include the social media marketing strategies concept that is divided into four main stages:

-Market research of wine tourism in Portugal and whereby developed the SMM in the wine industry in Portugal

-Analysis of different social media statistic and analysis of various social media strategies that would be the best for implementing in the wine industry

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-Developing social media marketing strategies with the subsequent applying to different wineries in Portugal

-The concept of evaluation after implementing the strategies

1.4 ANALYSIS OF DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGIES IN SOCIAL MEDIA

With the development of social media, the wine industry has changed, and nowadays, social networks have an indispensable role and significant influence in the wine industry. For tourism, the wine, the wine industry, culture and heritage of wine are essential components of both the visibility and attractiveness of the destination, while the wine tourism is an important driver of viticulture, winemaking and tourism development (Kerma & Gačnik 2015). The wine industry is characterised traditionally by the culture of socialising and sharing of knowledge, especially among winemakers entering the wine industry because of the lifestyle (Lewis 2015). As far as social media is connected people, promote the lifestyle, allowing sharing knowledge, provide more visibility, attract more people to the wineries. And the wine sector is not easiest and people want to have some impact that helps them to choose a wine destination or how to buy the bottle of wine. Social media can provide all of these tools.

In different studies showing us that social media is beneficial for wine consumers and wineries such as (Dean & Forbes 2016) that many winery websites and social media portals in the wine industry use those sites to promote sales, generate a buzz for the brand, and provide a home for their brand community.

Importance of social media marketing as (Viana 2016) put it: "Social media marketing is building a social network of fans, followers and connections using proper and interesting content that allows the business to reach and engage more people and drive more sales. It is getting people to talk about your brand, creating brand ambassadors will positively represent a brand, promote the identity, philosophy, values and products, helping to create brand awareness and increase sales. Relationships sell wine, and digital wine marketing is the art of making wine sales and increase brand loyalty through communication vehicle."

In 2016 78% of sales in the luxury market were influenced by the online (McKinsey & Company, 2018) and only 22% of the offline activities. Having stated that, it makes online presence

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essential for a successful business model. And for wine tourism is essential, as we can consider this tourism as a luxury.

According to the survey (Facebook Business, 2019) "Instagram is where people share and discover content they love, and this includes content from businesses. In a recent survey, 66% of people said they use Instagram because it enables them to interact with brands. This presents a unique opportunity for businesses to engage with customers and drive real business results. In a two-part study that surveyed over 21,000 regular Instagram users across 13 countries, our research found that Instagram does more than generate awareness—it drives sales. In fact, 54% of survey respondents recall making a purchase either in the moment or after seeing a product or service on Instagram."

Another point as one of the critical point of strategies is content, and content with good storytelling is highly essential. Also according to Viana (2016) "Social media marketing is storytelling. Consumers expect more than just a product or service, they want a story to engage with. Notice that is a way of approaching the new generations and popularising wine culture, so it is necessary to wineries have a dedicated marketing manager who creates and publishes content on social networks."

Wine is social and social media doing the wine sector even more social. "The wine tourism is an important tool to visitors shares their own experiences on social media, instigating other people to come to visit the wineries and a path to straight brand/customers relationship" according to Viana (2016).

1.5 SOCIAL MEDIA STATISTIC

It is impossible not to take into account how fast the Internet user is growing. Around 60% population using the internet. According to the statistics ( Influencer Marketing, 2019)

there were 4.3 billion internet users in March 2019, more than half of whom are in Asia." In the case of Facebook is the biggest social network worldwide has 2.32 billion monthly active users worldwide, and it was a growth of more than 1 billion in 5 years. Even the oldest population has doubled in using Facebook. For instance, 74% of US users visit the site at least once daily.

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Twitter has 326 million monthly active users. Daily active users grew by 9% in Quarter 3 2018, after growth rates of 12%, 10%, and 11% in the previous three quarters.

Instagram is a primarily social platform that I was developing social media strategies during my internship. During last years this social media is showing the fastest growing in percentage. In 2013 it was 150 million active users, and in June 2018 the platform already had 1 billion monthly active users. Another trend of the last couple of years in Instagram is stories. And they are getting more and more popular each day. In April by statistic, 500 million people have been watching stories daily. Instagram is used by 70.7% of Businesses. The statistic that indicates how quickly Instagram usage is growing. In 2013, 11.5% of US companies used Instagram for marketing. This rose to 18.4% in 2014, 32.3% in 2015 and 48.8% in 2016. In 2017 this statistic jumped to 70.7%. But the wine sector is one of the slowest of social media.

According to a survey (Facebook IQ 2019): “Brand content on Instagram helps potential shoppers Instagram plays a key role at every step of the purchase process. People use the platform to discover what's trending, research products before buying and decide whether or not to make a purchase—and each of these moments offer touch points on Instagram where marketers can drive action.”

Figure 1. How Instagram Boosts Brands and Drives Sales

Source: https://www.facebook.com/business/news/insights/how-instagram-boosts-brands-and-drives-sales

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According to the statistics ( Influencer Marketing, 2019), Youtube is getting the most popular social platform and mostly for young generations. Over 1.9 Billion logged-in users visit YouTube each month, and every day, people watch over a billion hours of video and generate billions of views. That is seriously a lot of people watching YouTube videos. It shows the video content getting more and more trendy, in any social media posts with the video has more engagement rate.

1.6 ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL MEDIA OF PORTUGUESE WINERIES

The vital point to consider is how social media works on different wineries. The most interesting aspect is to see the top players in Portugal as an example of how social media can look. But even when we see their social media, there are a lot of points that can be improved.

While data in wine tourism is limited, wineries do not keep track of their statistics. For collecting information, there were using the following tools:

-Personal surveys during visits with owners/managers of wineries -Reviews of Portuguese digital marketing consulting companies

-Conversations with the people who are working in the wine sector in Portugal

-LiveDune service for analyzing social media: account growth statistics; change ER (engagement rate) and comparison with similar accounts; average number of likes and comments per post by months and total number; geography of subscribers (city / country) for their profiles; age of subscribers; analytics of published content and the best time for posting; tracking comments and notifications and etc. LiveDune for me was one of the essential aspects of analysis. Due to this service, I can see the full results of social media of different wineries. Based on it, I could analyze data of all social media correctly.

By analysing around 350 wineries in different regions in Portugal, without a doubt, the Douro region and Alentejo are the leaders in case of wine tourism and also in case of development of social media. Nowadays, they are key players in the wine tourism sector. But even in the regions like Bairrada or Vinho Verde that has a vast potential of wine tourism, they are still don't consider wine tourism as an active element for the company (this judgment formed from surveys during visits).

Another point that some wineries have revenue from wine tourism approximately 10-30%, but they even don't understand the power of social media as a useful tool for promotion.

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Below we can see the analysis of 11 wineries which has the most developed social media in Portugal; the wineries located in different regions in Portugal. In the study, just three social media considered - Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

In the statistic of Facebook, we can see that winery “Esporao” has more followers than any other winery in Portugal, and with the vast difference with second winery “Quinta do Crasto”. Other wineries who are interested in wine tourism has considerably fewer followers.

Figure 2. Analysing statistics of Facebook accounts

Source: livedune.ru

In the case of Instagram pages, we can see the leaders of followers in the same position, but they changed places. Nowadays Instagram has a crucial role in the tourism sector, and most the wineries from the lists already consider that Instagram page is the most effective social media to achieve their goals, but mostly to promote the place, wines and to attract new customers to their sites.

The ratio of likes to comments shows: how many likes on average in the country have one comment. The smaller the number, the more users comment on posts. On the other hand, the more subscribers in the profile, the fewer users comment on his posts.

Another interesting data that 90% of posts in Instagram contains a hashtag and most of the accounts generate posts with the average number of characters in texts - 50-80. Posts with the videos contain more ER and commented 3 times more. All the data were analysed of 9 accounts of wineries who are doing wine tourism and wineries, which have the highest amount of followers.

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Figure 3. Analysing statistics of Instagram accounts (Livedune service)

The leaders are still the same in the analytics of Twitter, but it’s clear that nobody uses it as an efficient platform for promotion. Most of the wineries don’t have at all page in Twitter and most of the wineries that have, they could have uploaded the last post a long time ago.

Figure 4. Analysing statistics of Twitter accounts (Livedune service)

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Content analyzing

As an example is presented in Annex A1, A2, A3 it’s shown the top 3 accounts in Instagram, to see which content is working better for social media and what content wineries using. If we consider the constant quality of pictures with good design, in this case, it’s just one winery managing this: https://www.instagram.com/esporaoworld/, posts of others wineries mostly randomly without any concept. Nobody cares about quality, text or design. From this case, it is assumed that Esporao cares more about social media and this company just one winery who has some strategy when others using social media with some ideas but not with a clear concept. The same in the case of Facebook, the page Esporao has more quality content than others.

According to Oliveira (2017) “Instagram is really made for people who like nice, beautiful things; it seems stupid to say that, but it’s all about the quality of your pictures and about how you are able to express them,” And we can clearly see that most beautiful photos in Instagram can have approximately 10 times more likes than not attractive and the same with comments.

Moreover, the promotion of wine tourism and wine sector at all getting more and more necessary. Wineries started to invite wine and tourism bloggers, pay official advertisement and overall put more and more effort for Instagram and Facebook accounts. ER is another critical point for social media that shows Instagram is getting important more day by day. In Instagram of these accounts, we can see ER 10-50 times more than on Facebook, so to attract more customers, this platform is essential.

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2. PROPOSAL

Social media marketing is building a social network of fans, followers and connections using proper and interesting content that allows wineries to attract and engage more people and drive more sales. It is getting people to talk about brand, creating brand ambassadors will positively represent a brand, promote the identity, philosophy, values and products, helping to build brand awareness and increase sales. Relationships between wine and digital wine marketing are the art of making wine sales, attract more people to the wineries and increase brand loyalty through a communication channel.

What is social marketing, and what is its primary mission? SMM activities are aimed to increase the loyalty of the target audience to a particular brand or media person ( Kim, A. J., & Ko, E. 2012). Through social networks, you always keep in touch with your potential client, or the past, moreover with the help of social networks and the right course of digital marketing, you can have your brand ambassadors everywhere.

After all, with the help of many travel companies and wineries have been able to significantly increase their income and reach a new level of business, companies have developed a loyal attitude of visitors to social networks. The form of doing business opens up new, still unknown, opportunities. And the wine industry and wine tourism, in particular, is one of the most backward sectors that social marketing is adopting (Tomažič, T. 2017).

Social marketing provides a range of integrated products: promotion; customer support; reputation management; monitoring of social networks (in particular, tracking of topics in social networks). Such activities can represent SMM services as carrying out the necessary research and strategy development; the creation of a brand platform and its high-quality content; attracting and working with the audience; PR in social networks; monitoring the effectiveness of the promotion. Thus, SMM is a targeted, thoughtful advertising campaign with an unobtrusive character. But it is who gives the expected (or superficial) effect, contributing to the prosperity of business. It's clear that SMM events have nothing to do with spam, and therefore do not cause negative emotions and irritation among users.

According to Andrew Macarthy (2018), on the contrary, correctly thought out public relationship in social networks is impressive, attracting and engaging. SMM advertising exposure is carried out gently and non-aggressive, but it gives good results. Each stage, whether it is monitoring themes in social networks or attracting users, has a professional embodiment and brings a steady strengthening of positions in the social environment, which means it indeed leads to brand promotion: it becomes recognizable and positive images are formed around it. In general, one of the main

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advantages of SMM is comprehensive coverage and the ability to select the target audience with a very high degree of accuracy (Online Earning Lab, 2019). And the main advantage is the high efficiency of this advertising campaign.

It is precisely for these purposes that marketing is aimed, which is responsible for exploring the interests of society, promoting the company's goods or services, and meeting human and public affairs. Wine tourism has certain features related to the nature of the services provided, the forms of sales, the quality of work, etc. Because of this, marketing in wine tourism has several characteristics that made it a separate marketing direction. To ensure the success of the company and improve sales efficiency, there are various marketing tools - ways to secure the relationship between the consumer and the company, or a set of activities whose purpose is to influence market participants and the macro environment.

However, traditional marketing tools have long been known to everyone and are not always been effective. Therefore, companies need to pay attention to innovative marketing tools such as SMM.

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3. METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH

The methodological approach used during the internship was versatile. Mostly of a qualitative character and have included several different approaches:

-Personal analysis of social media marketing of wineries in Portugal. All the wineries that offer wine tourism in Portugal and the wineries who are willing to develop wine tourism in the future. -Personal interviews, especially with owners and managers of wineries that have been willing to improve their SMM situation.

-Personal review of analytics of social media that were created to promote Portuguese wine sector

-Collecting reviews and articles of Portuguese digital marketing consulting companies to understand the current situation in different business in SMM

-Participation in different wine tourism activities and visiting a lot of wineries for understanding the current situation in Portugal

-Searching for the best mechanisms in SMM that were applied for different businesses during the last 3 years

-Collecting whole data about SMM in the wine industry in different languages

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4. DEVELOPMENT OF SMM STRATEGIES

According to Karimi & Naghibi (2015), SMM Strategy is defined as “a process that can allow an organization to concentrate its limited resources on the greatest opportunities to increase sales and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage”. The definition can be interpreted in different ways, but the main goal can be emphasized from the above definition. And the fundamental aspect is to develop effective strategies for SMM.

It is essential for a digital strategy to make wineries more visible through social media. Social networks may be changing our brains, but it's also changed how people choose their next wine trip. People can see a photo or video of a destination and decide to book their trips minutes later. In fact, a Facebook study (Facebook Business, 2019) found that 67% of travellers on Instagram use the platform to have inspiration for corners and to find the best places for the next trip.

For instance one of the most significant pages in Instagram of Portuguese wines tourism "I love the Douro" they start own company of tourism just after significant demand when people saw their posts about the Douro region. And now the owner of pages telling that 65% of clients come to their wine tourism because firstly they saw them on Instagram. It means a lot and means more for millenniums.

The 10 basic steps for developing social media based on research and reading many articles of

SMM strategies with examples based on my own Instagram page

https://www.instagram.com/portuguese_wine_revolution/ : 1. To set the social media ideas

Takes into account the ideology of the project, a business plan and the basic concept of the brand. It is also a key idea around which a promotion strategy is written. Identify competitors and highlight the distinctive characteristics of your project in comparison with others.

Example:

Page https://www.instagram.com/portuguese_wine_revolution/ was created with the idea of promotion of the Portuguese wine industry. This social media can unite the whole Portuguese wine sector and it has huge potential in the future for promotion everything that is connected to the wine industry. With this concept, competitors do not exist.

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-The page shows the huge potential of Portuguese wines -Portuguese wine education

-To make Portuguese wine more recognizable in this World -Promoting wine tourism

-Consulting of social media of wineries and used this page as an example that it works

2. To identify goals and objectives

Goals and objectives underlie a long-term project. Without measurable goals, it is impossible to track the progress in achieving the global and intermediate goals of the concept. What is the reason? What is the goal?

Example:

Long-term goals of my project:

-To achieve 20000 followers in 6 months (already 11000 in 2,5 month) -To have the most famous blog about the Portuguese wine industry

-To educate people who don’t know about Portuguese wines and huge potential -To develop the wine tourism sector of Portugal

-To do consultancy for SMM in wineries

-To make Portuguese wines recognizable everywhere

3. Identify the target audience

-Wine lovers? Professionals? Rich tourists? -Local or International?

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-Language for text?

The correct portrait of the audience will help increase not only the number of users in the community but also reduce advertising costs.

Example:

-The target for my page is English speakers, wine lovers and mostly professional who influence the wine industry. With the goal, to make people ambassadors of Portugal in the future and attract them to the country. In the result: 80% of followers who likes wines mostly from the US and Europe, which are the best market for the Portuguese wine industry.

4. KPI

Key performance indicators - include an increase in the number of users in the community, an increase in the coverage and attendance of the group, an increase in traffic to the site and the activity of the core community. To metrics - the number of views, the number of users in the community, repeated messages, the conversion of visitors into buyers, product reviews, the cost of the attracted subscriber. In general, the main difference between KPI and metrics is the presence of the word “growth”.

Example:

-Using https://livedune.ru/ service to measure KPI plus official statistic on Instagram. 5. Form a content plan

Describe the topics we want to conduct: concept, themes, characters - the more details, the better. Take into account the significant dates and events for the company, as well as key holidays.

Example:

As far as I already mentioned above, maintaining high image quality for all of image and video posts are the most crucial part of social media.

Other important aspects that I include into the page: -Content is valuable and relevant to the audience.

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-In the stories is additional information about people, wines, wine tourism advertising, wine education, wine heritage information.

6. Create a Social Media Schedule of posting

A social media agenda is a set calendar of content ideas to assist consistently post quality content on social media, which is key to achieving goals and growing following

Example:

-From the statistic of Instagram and Facebook, we can see the best time posting of the account (Active account by time and by day).

7. Promotion channels

To identify what is the budget and who is the target to choose better channels for promotion. Example:

-Without a budget in my case, but with using the help of friends pages for promotion (influencers)

8. Analyzing intermediate results

With analytics services for Instagram, Facebook or Youtube. This will help to react in time, if the involvement has fallen, or to understand why it has grown and to take this tool into service.

Example:

-Using https://livedune.ru/ service to measure analytics plus official statistic on Instagram. 9. Automate processes

Smm-manager should work in multitasking mode, but at the same time productively and

without errors. To help create a lot of services that perform work automatically. That is, for example, format publications or publish them themselves in the middle of the night.

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-Using https://hootsuite.com/ service to do posting automatically. 10. Make changes if necessary

Needs, trends, algorithms change very often and without warning. Example:

-Always improving quality and type of different content that is connected to the Portuguese wine sector.

-Experimenting with the stories on Instagram, with the goal to see what is work better.

4.1 CONTENT PLAN

-Start social media with impressive short stories -Create content that people want to talk about

-Promote material to throw photos, good stories that are not boring.

-To attract customers, to get people involved through the stories where after they are going to buy this wine, to visit the place

-People like storytelling, the story which can be funny, educational or just a mystery and everything throw text and videos.

-To educate the consumers that Portuguese from the Old World is the best country with price/quality and has excellent potential for wine tourism

-To create a word of mouth throw stories in social media

Content marketing strategies statistics that prove how powerful social digital World nowadays:

-According to the (Mawhinney J. 2019), 32% of marketers say visual images are the most important form of content for their business, with blogging in second (27%)

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-The picture with relative text is essential: if it's done well remember 65% after some day of information if they hear they retain 10%

-According to 2018 HubSpot survey (Mohsin, 2019), “54% of consumers wanted to see more video content from a brand or business they support”.

-There are more than 500 million Instagram users active every day.

-53% of Instagram users (Stout, 2019) follow their favourite brands on the platform -44% of Instagram’s active users use the platform for researching and discovering brands.

Content strategies:

-Different formats like images, videos, gifs, memes, boomerang videos, etc. -Using high-quality stock images for creating visually-appealing posts. -Maintaining high image quality for all of image and video posts.

-Content is valuable and relevant to the audience. Share more of what your audience loves -Post at the right times, preferably during the day time on weekdays, to get maximum engagement and views.

-Collaboration with influencers, one of the most effective way to attract new customers -Engaging with people through comments and messages

-Asking the audience to tag the brand or use the winery's hashtags to get a chance to be featured on the Instagram feed.

-Rewarding your existing users by featuring their pictures of themselves using your product on your Instagram feed.

-Repost user-generated content relevant to your brand and give credit to the original creators of the posts.

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Storytelling as a effective tool in SMM:

A winery can inspire people to come to your place just because they see a beautiful picture on Instagram. During the last 3-4 years appears a lot of Instagram influencers who can shape the wine tourism and attract a lot of people. Wine tourism is still missing the social media advertising, but if you can look for other tourism companies, Instagram getting the biggest platform to attract customers. But it's already evident that Instagram has played a significant role in blowing that any place up.

Instagrammability. According to a survey (Hosie, 2017) in UK people from 18 to 33 choose in the survey that the most crucial fact of choosing where to go or which country to travel because of Instagram (40%). Yes, it's not just about wine tourism, but we can see from this number how the social network is, and day by day, it's getting more influential.

People are social, so digital content should build a sense of society and customization. Focus on consistency and quality of the material is very necessary.

For any company, it is vital to know its target audience. During digital strategy implementation, wineries should consider who the audience is and create content that will be attractive and engaging for it.

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4.2 INFLUENCER MARKETING

Each winery needs a quality Instagram page (as well as a Facebook presence), but everyone will struggle to build a following at the beginning. No matter how well companies run your account, it requires time for developing pages. Except when you are doing something unique without competition or manage some big hipe, but normally you will face unimaginable competition from others wanting to build their Instagram presence. But one of the fastest way to resolve this problem is to work with people who have already found their Instagram followers - influencers who succeed in the target. Wine influencers.

According to Shane Barker (2018) “Influencers can help to grow a company business and attract a lot of new clients”. Most of the people need recommendations and testimonials in the wine sector. And opinion leader - the influencer is a broader concept than a blogger, for the winery, influencers can be brand ambassadors and provide additional revenue to the company. Wine influencers can promote wine brands to multi-target audiences that are looking for recommendations which wine to buy or which winery to visit.

Wine influencers are indispensable to attract new customers and followers.A winery needs to find relevant influencers in the niche what is not easy. This is the most crucial step in managing a successful influencer campaign and often the one where most marketers stumble. It’s one of the biggest challenges finding a good influencer in the wine sector. Nowadays is coming trendy that wineries invite wine influencers from around the world to promote their place.

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4.3 BENEFITS FROM USING THE SMM

The main goal is to attract people to the place and to have more potential customers through social media. According to De Oliveira (2017) "That way we reach people who are truly engaged with the brand." And the most significant challenge it's the younger generation, and one of the most potent instruments it's social media for them.

Based on my own experience and research articles, in the results of using SMM, the company can accomplish:

1. Attract more tourist in the wineries 2. To sell wines through e-commerce 3. To build brand awareness

4. Revisits to winery

5. Recommendation through social media 6. Brand loyalty

7. Brand recognition 8. Increased brand equity 9. Destination loyalty

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4.4 EVALUATION OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Without evaluation, the result of the development will not be understandable if social media strategies work for the company or not. Typically, producers need to expect 4–8 months to have an influence and that their revenue should increase, but it depends on many factors. As the better manager is going to manage social media or agency with experiments and different tools that faster the winery will have a good result. But one of the critical steps is to track outcomes and to check the evolution of social media.

Evaluation of SMM strategies is compulsory. Evaluation reveals whether wineries should transform ideas or push harder present concept.

Without precise evaluation, the company will not be able to analyze if the SMM brings its profits to the company's or not.

Based on my own experience (different pages in social media managed by me during the last two years) and research analysis I created the concept for the report that shows the precise evaluation of SMM.

The report must include several aspects:

1. Introduction with the objectives of the promotion for the reporting period 2. A useful summary of news in leading social networks

3. Key followers statistics for the month 4. Statistics content

5. Statistic of paid promotion (with division into statistics by tools) 6. Examples of user feedback

7. Examples of the best and worst posts, advertising creatives with key data on them. 8. Brand page audience data

9. Conclusions 10. Action Plan

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Almost all data can be included in the content report, but as a rule, the following indicators are enough:

1. Total organic coverage

2. Paid coverage of promotional posts

3. The total number of reactions of all types with a breakdown by each 4. Average organic coverage of posts/stories

5. The number of posts per month

6. Promotional and cost per thousand impressions budget

The simplest way to start writing conclusions is to take an action plan and analyze how the new actions worked.

Companies need to start explaining what data has changed relative to the past month and why: -Something fell

-Something has grown

-Something has become cheaper -What content has been worked -What content has been commented -What content has been saved more -Quality of reposts

There is always an outflow of followers, a change in the % update ability of the audience may indicate a decrease in growth, not an increase in the outflow. The work plan consists of testing new tools, hypotheses, changing the approach to work and introducing new mechanics. And take the conclusions at the very end to several summary slides. That is, the report is to improve the project, increase the level, attract more customers and followers.

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4.5 RESULTS

Digitization is essential today for almost any business. It gives the company new markets, new clients, brand awareness and many other advantages. During my research and experience, it was shown that today, in a hectic world, any wine company need to use social media as one of the primary tools for promotion and for keeping a relationship with the customers. According to a recent Forrester study, a large percentage of executives think that almost half of their revenue will be influenced by digital by 2020 (Hirji & Geddes, 2016). And very competitive wine sector soon will be one of the first who needs digitalization.

As the main objective of the internship is to develop and implement social media strategies into different wineries in Portugal. And already since June, I'm starting to implement the strategies to various wineries in Portugal. As already arranged with wineries like "Quinta de Santiago" from Vinho Verde region and "Vadio" from Bairrada that I'm going to manage their social media as an SMM manager. With the goal to promote their places as a touristic destination and to increase brand awareness internationally.

Another essential point is the developing social media strategies for the wine sector in Portugal has a positive impact on the Paladares Travel company. One of the main achievements was to attract more tourist to the company through the creation of social media on Instagram and Facebook.

Moreover the page "Portuguese wine revolution" is the social media about Portuguese wine sector that was created by me is a successful project that nowadays helps to promote social, digital marketing strategies that were developed by me during the internship. The wine sector overall is quite conservative, but the Portuguese wine sector even more cautious. During conversations with the people, it was not easy to convince them that developed social media are getting essential nowadays. But after creating a personal page for the Portuguese wine sector in Instagram and Facebook, it's getting easier to prove to the other companies that these strategies are working and with using them companies can attract a lot of people.

As a result, during two months from the creation, the blog reached 11000 followers on the Instagram page from scratch. Moreover, this page already considering like famous Portuguese wine blog and has significant potential for influence in the Portuguese wine market with the primary goal to attract people to the country. The primary goal is to promote Portuguese wine sector for people who are potential clients for wine tourism and not just all. This page has good potential even to grow as an

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international blog with the promotion of Portuguese wine sector and also as evidence of how social media can be efficient.

Below the example of this account in Instagram that proves that using correct strategies for social media, the company can achieve a lot of followers for a short time. The first post was made 28 of March and during 2 months page already obtained 11000 from scratch.

Figure6. Analysing statistics of

https://www.instagram.com/portuguese_wine_revolution/

More than 46% of people share that they read blogs more than once a day and out of those blog readers 81% of American online consumers trust information and tips from blogs (Hubspot, 2017). For instance, 16% of page followers are Americans, mostly who are interested in wine and wine tourism. The primary mechanism for attracting followers by showcasing the destination's landscape, food scene, a recommendation of wines, local attractions, winery for tourism, through `creative and engaging content as a blog. Moreover, the page can educate, inform, recommend and familiarise the audience with Portuguese wine sector.

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5. CONCLUSION

The impact of social media plays a vital role in the wine industry. Day by day, social media is becoming a significant part of the marketing strategies in the wine industry in any country in the World. Based on the research of Portuguese wine sector in digital marketing, I found out that the use of social media still in the initial stage and not just in Portugal. According to Wilson & Quinton (2012), and Dean & Forbes (2016), wine-oriented companies currently do not optimize their value creation through social media. The wine industry tries to understand how social media can help to improve the business and that existence with proper marketing strategies are essential in social media to be competitive in the market. Each day marketing getting more complicated and more competitive in any sector and the wine sector is one of the most competitive in the World. The wineries need to follow trends and understand which marketing tools are the most important in the market. According to Flint (2016), whereas social media are becoming well entrenched in the wine industry, the wineries will begin to leverage and master it more. Consumers want to engage with wine experience, and social media can provide it, to be always in touch with customers.b

As a result, SMM is becoming a complicated issue and very modern. In Portugal, wineries and wine industry are unknowledgeable about how to manage social media, which opens up enormous opportunities for the implementation of the developed strategies. One of the essential aspect that the project presented in this paper, it is not just academic and already works.

With the knowledge acquired during my internship from these different experience, it provides me with a reasonable basis to implement SMM strategies into the Portuguese market and improve them with time and with support of Paladares Travel company. By applying the approach described in the concept, wineries can benefit by attracting more tourists in their places, increase their sales, enhance brand awareness, increase quantity and quality of recommendations, build a strong relationship with customers, build brand loyalty and promote the destination. These and other advantages make the winery more competitive in the wine industry.

Moreover, a finished concept is a powerful tool that allows my future career and allows me to improve SMM in the Portuguese wine sector and not only. These strategies enable enhancing quality of wine tourism sector in Portugal and attracting and educating people who are not familiar with the Portuguese wine world. Moreover, the blog that was created by me has significant potential and already recognized by many companies, journalists, bloggers, and getting more famous day by day. The biggest goal is improving Portuguese wine sector and give more awareness about the enormous potential of so underestimated country in the World.

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ANNEX 1. Analysis of the top post of Quinta do Crasto winery

ANNEX 2. Analysis of the top post of Quinta do Vallado winery

Development social digital marketing strategies in wine tourism for Portuguese wine market

MASTER THESIS