North Bay Business Journal

In conjunction with the story “Wineries increase use of smartphone, social media technologies,” the Business Journal is collecting ideas wine marketers submitted about how their experiences.

Smartphones and social media are being employed in new ways as many wineries increase their use of the latest technology to reach consumers and maintain control of branding — all across the U.S. To add your experience, comment on this story.

NAPA — Vintners and growers generally look to a recovery of sales of fine wine to 2007 levels in one to two years for volume and two to three years for profits, according to a poll of 28 industry executives presented at the Wine Industry Financial Symposium this morning.

Those within the hospitality and tourism industry are uniquely positioned to both embrace and benefit from the ever-increasing reaches of social media tools as a means to boost occupancy rates.

NORTH BAY — Most companies today feel like they just have to have a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a LinkedIn group and any other of the latest social networking sites out there.

A new survey by Robert Half Technology in Menlo Park said that employees who want to share news via social networking sites will need to be careful about violating company policies.

SANTA ROSA — Schools serving students from kindergarten to college are making use of the constant forward movement of technology to better instruct students both inside and out of the classroom.

NORTH BAY — Clover Stornetta Farms and Straus Family Creamery, which have nearly 2,000 and 1,000 Facebook page fans, respectively, were surprised to hear early last week of a recent change in the giant Internet social network’s promotions policy banning dairy products.

UPDATE, Dec. 22, 2009: Facebook revised its promotions policy to remove the ban on mentioning dairy but still prohibits the offering of dairy products as prizes.