With the rapidly changing social media landscape, TikTok has started (as of late 2021, early 2022) to arrive as a place for wine lovers. Wine influencer Amanda McCrossin (somm_vivant) has gained momentum in this “wild west” and now has over 100k followers. She shares her journey, best practices, and what makes TikTok special.
Detailed Show Notes:
Former sommelier and wine director at Press Napa Valley, full background on Episode 12
Featured in SF Chronicle article about TikTok and wine (March 2022)
- 2 of Amanda’s videos converted well for wineries, 1st proof of ROI
- Duhig got 1,100 signups for their mailing list from a video
- Massican got $3,000 in sales and 70 list signups from 1 video
Recent shifts that allowed Amanda to excel on TikTok
- Understanding TikTok is short form content vs dance videos (not social media)
- Time limit increases (15 sec -> 1min (summer 2021); 1 min -> 3 min (Fall 2021)) -> enabled ability to dig in deeper (can technically do 10 min videos)
TikTok vs other platforms
- Can’t DM w/ people, need to be following them
- Conversations happen in comments
- Ability to go live
- Ability to reply w/ video in comments (“Duets” - do side by side w/ another’s content, Amanda did one w/ port tongs that has 2M views)
- IG reels (only 30 sec - 1 min) don’t have as much educational content, trends usually 3 weeks later than Tiktok
- IG feels older, more copycat, behind on trends
Demographics - female leading
- Amanda’s - 75% female, 25% male
- US, Canada, Australia top regions
- Over 21 years old, deep into 30s and beyond, Over 50% of platform is over 30 years old
Amanda’s TikTok journey
- Started July 2021 as an experiment
- Decanting video got 30k views, but stalled out
- Dec 2021 - started posting 2-3x/day, 1 video hit and others started snowballing
- Still “wild west” on TikTok for wine
- In 1 month went from 250 -> 30k followers (Jan 2022), now 110k followers (Mar 2022)
TikTok best practices
- The “hook” is key - 1.5 seconds to catch people’s attention (e.g. - what you do, say, or put on the screen; Amanda puts topic of video on top)
- Spend 2 weeks - 1 month to watch and listen
- Post multiple times per day (Amanda now does 1/day)
- Need quickness in video
- Stay within a niche -> helps algorithm find the target audience
- Optimal video length - 2 mins for Amanda (was 7-9 sec on TikTok for a while)
- Need to react quickly to trends
Restrictions on alcohol (a grey area)
- Similar to IG and FB, but enforced differently
- No alcohol w/ minors
- No excessive consumption
- No solicitation of alcohol
- Doesn’t drink on videos b/c got a disclaimer flag on one
WineTok creators: winewithdavid, themillennialsomm, jaimeegriffwine, legallywined, lexiswinelist
TikTok for wine brands
- Joe Wagner - 30k followers - mostly production videos
- Brands should respond in comments
- Need a presence so people can find them
- Establish relationships with creators first
Social media tips for brands
- Don’t recycle content across platforms
- Tiktok - looks less polished vs YouTube
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