Take the stress out while simultaneously promoting your brand.
Breweries can get a craft beer brand boost via social media sites.
Social media can be a tricky thing, but it can also be an essential tool to growing your craft beer company. With so many social channels to create content for, you may find yourself feeling like you’re posting the same thing over and over. Encouraging your community to create content that you can share can take the stress out of maintaining social media channels and spread awareness about your brand.
Pick a Hashtag
On Instagram, hashtags are a great way to collect content from your community. They are easily searchable and people creating quality content often use them to increase the reach of their posts. First, choose a hashtag that fits your brand (it can be as simple as the name of your company), and start using it in your own posts where applicable. If you’re well established on Instagram but don’t have a single hashtag that you consider “yours,” look to see what variations of your company’s name already have the most posts. If you’re selecting a hashtag around a particular campaign or event, be sure it’s short enough to remember, but specific enough to describe the event.
Once you’ve chosen your hashtag, let people know that using the hashtag means that they’re giving permission for you to share their photos. You can do this in your posts, but it is most effective in your profile.
Check out these brands on Instagram for examples:
- Anchor Brewing: #Raiseyouranchor
- Imbibe Magazine: #imbibegram
- Green Flash Brewing Company: #greenflashbeer
Green Flash Brewing on Instagram.
Cross Promote Beyond a Single Social Media Channel
Hashtags may be most effective on Instagram, but that doesn’t mean you can’t share photos on other social media channels. Share a photo on Instagram, then a few days later, share it on Facebook, but also encourage folks to visit you over on Instagram. You’ll be able to reuse content and encourage people to follow you on your various social channels. (This all works other ways as well, whether it’s from Facebook over to Twitter, or Twitter to Untappd.)
Whether you’re asking for content on a single social media channel or across several, encouraging your community to create social content for you can extend past the internet. Whether it’s on signage at your brewery, print ads, or even your labels. This encourages people to snap pictures while they’re holding your product in their hand.
New Belgium’s Citradelic Label
Create a Contest or Giveaway
Contests are a great way to play up people’s desire to have their content shared, adding another incentive to the mix can help increase participation in a contest that will help you collect content for your social channels.
While you could run the contest year round, it’s most effective around a particular campaign. Include your hashtag, contest rules, and call to action on anything related to the campaign. Print ads, display pieces, or merchandise can all be a way to encourage social media sharing. Not only will it create content for you to use, but it will also extend the reach of your campaign to the followers of people who share your content.
As an example, Terrapin Beer Co. chooses a favorite post and offers a free shirt.
- Terrapinbeer.com/taketerrapin
- Terrapin Beer Co.: #TakeTerrapin
These various efforts build on each other. So it’s perfectly fine to start small (and free) and extend into other ways of encouraging your community to create content on social media for you as you grow.
If you liked this article, you may also like: Boost Your Craft Beverage Brand With Point of Sale Items.
