The wine industry is ridiculously competitive and the sales process is tedious. There are visits to wine shops, education to each customer that walks into a shop, and competition from online shops. Smart wine pushers can reap the rewards of a good Instagram strategy. It’s not just about posting pretty pictures though. You need to be smart, have clear goals, be consistent and engaging. Just think about it. Today, I can follow my favorite wine shop, my favorite winery, and even my favorite wine. It’s a lot less intimidating to buy a wine in a shop or to choose it from a wine list if I have already been familiarized with it online. Instagram is also a great place to track social depletions. Just think about it, every Instagram post by someone outside the industry is a bottle that was purchased. That is proof of ROI…and you can make this proof easier to track with hashtags. Today we’ll discuss the best practices for wine on Instagram, as well as some great wine hashtag tactics. Before we do, take a few seconds to copy and save the hashtags below. These are optimized wine hashtags will be the basis (but not the whole of your strategy).

Wine Hashtags

Copy these optimized Wine Hashtags by clicking on the “copy” button on your iPhone, Android, iPad or PC.

#redwine #winetasting #winelover #winery #winetime #whitewine #instawine #winecountry #winelovers #winetasting #wineaddict #winetime #winepairing #mywinemoment #winewednesday #winedownwednesday #winesofinstagram #wineoclock #winemaker #winemaking #wineoftheday #winestagram

Best Practices for Wine Hashtags on Instagram

Start off with Targeting

The hashtags you copied above are your generic hashtags. These are your basics and will appeal to a larger, general audience.

The issue here is that you’re not just pushing any wine to any customer. Yes, you want to reach all wine consumers (and you want to convert them), but just like when you’re conducting a tasting, it is much easier to convert those who already like or know your product.

On top of that, due to the nature of the Instagram feed, when you use the #wine hashtag, you will quickly drop on the feed due to the large number of posts tagged this way. When you use more specific hashtags, you will give yourself more visibility with the right people.

The sweet spot is using a combination of general industry hashtags and targeted that have between 50,000 -500,000 uses.

The above post from Loire Valley Wine (whose social media team uses the Socialdraft dashboard) is a great example of how to target your post to a targeted audience.

They really get specific with #LoireValleyWine #LoireRose which are very specific, but they don’t ignore the more general audience by using #winemonday #winesoffrance #vineyard and #frenchwine. They also completely skip spammy hashtags which simply do not work.

Use Geo-Targeted Hashtags

Even if you are an online retailer, you should be geo-tagging your posts. If you are a wine shop, restaurant, or wine seller, then you ABSOLUTELY need to geotag your posts.

You need to stop thinking of Instagram as a social network and more as a search engine (yeah, just like Google). Say you are a wine shop in New York, if you don’t geo-tag your posts when people search those local hashtags you’re not giving them a chance to discover you.

Jordan is as good at using local hashtags as they are at making wine (although they could benefit from actually adding a location to their posts – do this and I will call you an Instagram master).

Notice their hashtags #sonomacounty #healdsburg #California #AlexanderValley. Whenever anyone searches Instagram for these hashtags, Jordan is giving themselves a chance to be discovered by both people interested in the region and those who are currently there.

Use wine hashtags and local hashtags to reach a local audience

Here’s another example from Cellar To Table. Their post is not only hashtagged #williamsburg and #brooklyn, they have also tagged the location on their post. This means that someone can discover this post and decide to go to that restaurant. That’s a bottle sold and depletion goals on their way to being achieved.

Branded Hashtags

Yes, I know this is not wine, but Cognac Maniacs ran an incredible repost campaign using the Socialdraft dashboard, so I could not resist.

Notice their write up. It includes a call to action telling users to share their Cognac Cocktails with the tag #CognacManiacs.

What are the benefits of a call to action as clear as this one?

This strengthens their brand, prompts sales, and leads to depletions. Every Cognac cocktail that was posted to Instagram with this tag is proof of social ROI. On top of that, the brand within the industry became well known, people wanted to be reposted.

Branding is important. Instagram can help you with this.

We recommend you take time to come up with a great branded hashtag and that you teach your community to use it. Encourage them to share so you can build your brand and prove that social media can get you depletions and brand ambassadors.

Instagram Wine Tips

Tag Others

This is a smart wine pusher. Notice the gorgeous mix of generic and targeted hashtags…but then, click the image. You’ll see that David has taken the time to tag the distributor he works for, the winery in the picture, and more people in the post.

All these people will receive notifications that he has posted about them. They will most likely like and comment on the post and remember this wonderful relationship later on. Another smart social marketer.

Work with an Influencer

Influencers have spent lots of time building a strong and engaging community that can convert into sales.

Veuve Clicquot partnered with Whitney, a New Orleans visual artist. Working with her allows them to reach out to a whole new set of customers.

You may not have the same budget as Veuve, but you can work with smaller influencers as well.

They can be just as powerful. If you haven’t yet worked with an influencer, click the following guide on how to collaborate with an Instagram Influencer. Just make sure you follow all the FTC rules and to set clear expectations as to what you expect and how and when the Influencer will be paid.

What to Do Daily on Instagram to Get Results

All the stuff I told you above is not enough to get you a robust ROI on Instagram, there are more things you need to do:

Post Daily:

Instagram is a Facebook property. They have recently implemented their algorithm. If you don’t post daily, you won’t get engagement and the algo will kick in. This means you will lose followers and that you will come up lower on the feed. Do yourself a favor and use a scheduler like Socialdraft (you can see it above) to keep yourself on a good, consistent schedule.

Like & Engage:

The best way to get people to like your content is to spread the love. Think of each like and comment as a link, a way for people to get to you.

Click through on one of your hashtags. Then check out the area that says “Top Posts”. Click on each of the first 10 people on every post. Like and comment on their posts. Then head back on the Socialdraft dashboard and like 50 posts related to that hashtag. You will see more likes, comments, and follows on all your posts.