Creating a buzz for your brewery in 2021 requires great beer, a great atmosphere, and a presence online so people know about it. If you want to increase the presence of your craft brewery this summer, it’s a good idea to start planning now, because summer will be here in no time. Creating and managing an effective social media strategy can help your brewery reach more customer and boost sales in your taproom.
Plan your goals so you can reach them
If you’re not busy yet, this is the ideal time to start planning your social media calendar and content. If you’re already becoming busy, block out some time on one of the slower days in the week to sit down and focus with your team on what goals you want to reach with your social media channels over the summer. In doing so, ensure you get everyone’s input throughout this process and be specific where you can. Once you have confirmed your list of goals as a team, set about creating an action plan to reach those goals.
Refresh your digital presence online
There’s only one chance to make a first impression, and it lasts, so make sure all your brewery, product, taproom, allergen and menu information is accurate and up to date across all your digital platforms. If you haven’t updated your social media profiles, your website, your Google Maps listing within the last calendar month, ensure you take the time to have a spring clean and tidy things up to refresh your overall look and feel. Update your highlights on Instagram, update your pinned posts on Facebook, delete old and irrelevant content which doesn’t match your current branding, the list goes on. Consistency and frequency are key to a credible online presence, so take the time now to prepare and this will pay dividends soon.
Stop posting on social media at the last minute
If you’re the type of business that is posting things on a whim, and at the last minute once everything else has been done and the tables are cleared, reassess how much value you’re placing on social media. The world can see you online, so a clear, concise, engaging and high-quality social media feed reflects the value you’re placing on everything else you do as a brewery, your taproom and even your beer products. You don’t necessarily have to plan 4 weeks in advance for all the content you want to schedule and send out, but begin to build a system of posts, their frequency and the kind of content you have seen that people engage with.
Take advantage of the digital tools out there
Creating content for your brewery in batches is a huge timesaver. Scheduling your social media posts ahead of time with a clear vision of who you’re trying to reach with a post, as opposed to acting on impulse and relying on guesswork with spontaneous posts will mean in the long run, you have time to perfect your content. This includes the captions along with photos, the correct hashtags, spelling and grammar, and ensuring posts are sent at optimal times when your target audience is online. Scheduling tools like Later, Buffer and Hootsuite are fantastic tools to utilise for an effective social media strategy and offer valuable insights into the performance of posts sent out too.
What you don’t track, you can’t improve
Once you have started recording, tracking and testing your social media content, you’re able to identify what kinds of posts and at what times your target audience is engaging with your content. If you’re not tracking social media metrics already, ensure you set up a simple spreadsheet to track the performance of posts you send out and relate these metrics to what matters most to your brewery. Are you simply looking for more followers, or looking to increase engagement with your existing audience?
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