April 13, 2022

WineTok w/ Amanda McCrossin aka SommVivant

WineTok w/ Amanda McCrossin aka SommVivant

Wine influencer Amanda McCrossin (somm_vivant) has gained momentum in this “wild west” and now has over 100k followers on TikTok.

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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