I went to Rebec Vinyard’s wine festival this last weekend. It was a fantastic event with vendors lining the pathways to live music, food and of course, wineries. Rebec has some fantastic wine, by the way (I liked Autumn Glow). My favorite was the Peaks of Otter “Fruit of the Farm” wines like Strawberry Shortcake and Blueberry Muffin.

A few things I noticed at the festival:

1) Social media is “da bomb.” I saw my realtor’s son at the festival, who was not with his mother, whom I have never met. How did I recognize him? Social media. Facebook pictures, Flickr photos, whatnot. We just redid Nannette’s blog – and we linked it to Flickr where I saw a picture of her son. Isn’t it crazy how social media works?

2) Author testimony: I spoke with the author of ‘The Kokopelli Journals’ who had a booth at the festival for her books – she told me that she is self published and hasn’t used a distributor because she has sold so many copies at the festivals. I thought that was a great testament to the power of face-to-face selling.

Online social media will never in a million years replace the power of face to face networking. But if we use it right, it can increase and enhance constant contact so when we are in-person, it is that much better!