Want to make sure your winery or other brand’s most engaged customers and prospective fans are following you on social media? So that they continue to visit your tasting room, buy your wines, or show up to your ticketed events?

Then you should be making it as EASY as possible to find your social media profiles, no matter how people discover your business on the web. This blog post covers some very basic best practices for driving new people to follow you – so feel free to skim if you’ve already taken care of these tips in your own marketing efforts – or share with someone else you know who might need the tips.

So how do you reduce the amount of effort it takes for customers and would-be customers to find you on social? Let’s start with your website…

1. Link to Your Social Profiles with Icon Links on Your Website

This tip may sound obvious, and many businesses are already doing this really well: make sure that somewhere on your website template, whether it’s the top right of your header, or in the footer that shows up on the bottom of all your pages, there are icons linking to your social media profiles. I start with this because while it is basic, and most good website templates these days will prompt you to include this, I’ve come across plenty of wineries and other brands that haven’t put social media links anywhere on their websites.

Additionally – even when the icons are there, sometimes, no one has bothered to add in the hyperlinks to that brand’s social profiles, so they generically link to instagram.com, or nothing at all. Make sure your links are working properly!

These icons are important to my own work, when I am planning social media content for a client and want to make sure to tag another business correctly. So I go to their website to find their Instagram handle, and when I have to hunt for it, or can’t find it all, it’s only hurting THEM, because now, unless I correctly search and find them in Instagram itself (which doesn’t always work, especially if their name is a common word), they won’t be tagged in my client’s post, which would have driven new traffic to their profile.

For YOUR purposes, as a winery or other business, keeping these icons in an obvious place on your website makes it that much easier for anyone interested in your product to find you and follow you, and keep seeing your updates, and buy more of what you’re selling. It also helps them verify that you are the correct business associated with a social media account – since there are so many accounts with similar names these days.

2. Include Social Media Icon Links in Your Email Blast Template

Here’s another one that may sound basic to seasoned marketers, but may not at all have crossed the mind of a busy small business owner: put social media icon links in your email blast or newsletter template! This is a pretty standard practice, and is usually placed at the bottom of an email template, as seen below.

This way, even if a subscriber wasn’t enticed to click on whatever the focus of your email blast was this time, they may see your social links and decide to check them out.

Despite how obvious this tip may seem – I’ve opened plenty an email from wineries missing this crucially easy way to get more people onto their profiles and following them. In analytics I do for my email marketing clients, I see these social icons consistently get a few clicks in every email we send.

3. Ask your email subscribers to follow you on social

Here’s another not-so-secret secret of marketing: Prospective customers don’t always immediately know what it is we want them to do, or click on.

You might have crafted a beautiful Instagram post showing off your wines, and think it’s so obvious that you’re encouraging followers to buy the wine on your website, that it would be too obvious to say so. Or you might put some pretty social media icon links at the bottom of your email blast template, and assume people will notice right away that you’ve added them to the design.

But since this post is all about ways to make it as. easy. as. possible. for new people to follow you, sometimes you need to engage in a little hand holding.

In that social post I mentioned above, you will likely get increased traffic to your online store if you actually include a note in your caption that those wines can be found on your website and the link is in your Instagram bio. Likewise, you might catch more of your email readers’ attention if you include a note at the end of your eblast encouraging them to check you out on social media at the links below.

So there you have it – 3 basic ways I’ve observed that businesses could better drive their fans to their social media profiles. Is your brand following these tips already? Have questions about anything I’ve explained on the blog? Reach out below.

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Meaghan Webster is a wine and food photographer, marketing consultant, and results-based social media manager for wineries in Washington, DC, Virginia, and New York. Learn more about her services at meaghanwebster.com or see her latest work and tips at instagram.com/meaghanwmarketing.

In addition to managing social media and taking photos for clients, Meaghan is also available to host classes, lessons, and one-on-one workshops on social media best practices for brands. Interested in booking a workshop or class? Get in touch here!