Social Media Content and Connection Building in the Wine Industry: The Case of Acino Nobile

In today's dynamic digital environment, consumers have become active participants in filtering, suggesting, sharing, and even co-creating brand messages. At the same time, keeping connection with consumers and getting their attention have now become the biggest challenges for companies. In this scenario, content marketing has emerged as a winning marketing approach for building genuine and long-lasting relationships with consumers, and driving profitable customer actions for organizations. The main goal of this thesis is to investigate how this marketing approach carried out on social media platforms can be leveraged to boost customer engagement in the wine industry. Drawing on existing research, Chapter 1 sets the theoretical background by defining the notions of content marketing and customer engagement. After examining the adoption of content marketing across various sectors and its numerous potential benefits for organizations, the chapter analyses how content marketing drives customer engagement on social media. It then outlines how to effectively create and implement a content marketing strategy, with a focus on video content. Chapter 2 narrows the scope of this thesis to the wine industry, a sector where storytelling, authenticity, and sensory experience are key factors to create value for wine consumers. After a comprehensive review of the peculiarities as well as the key marketing challenges faced by wine producers, especially from the perspective of a renowned Argentinian wine producer from Italy, the chapter contextualizes the role of content marketing in this specific sector. Following, wine consumer segmentation, effective storytelling usage, and social media adoption in the wine industry are explored in depth. Chapter 2 concludes by introducing Acino Nobile, an Italian wine blog with a structured multi-channel digital content strategy that serves as a practical example on how content marketing is performed in the wine industry. Chapter 3 presents a quantitative analysis of Acino Nobile’s social media content strategy, employing a machine learning-based thematic classification model and examining performance metrics to identify engagement trends on its Instagram and Facebook pages. The empirical investigation assesses the effectiveness of various content formats, themes, and posting practices, and analyses audience demographics and platform-specific behaviours. Additionally, it also explores how algorithmic visibility can interfere with content performance measurement, regardless of content quality. Overall, the Acino Nobile case provides a practical example of how to apply content marketing theories and strategic frameworks in a real-world setting.