14 years later and Short’s Brewing Company is recognized as one of the best craft breweries in Michigan; it even appears in this 2014 Thrillist article saying as much. You’re known for your uniquely named, exceptionally crafted, and creatively flavored beer. There is no contention that you have a great product, or that you are one of the best craft breweries around. When it comes to crafting a remarkable beer, you’ve got the system streamlined. While you have an excellent system for creating a remarkable product, you lack the system for creating compelling content for your social media accounts.
I am an advertising student at Michigan State University, and one of our projects was to pick from a list of companies and to study them, to take a deep dive into their brand, and to explore their digital media strategy. You are my brand and I am writing this open letter today to offer my suggestions for how you can improve your presence on social media.
Social media has become one of the most important aspects of marketing and advertising for businesses over the past five to ten years. It is a way for businesses to reach out to their current and potential consumers and to build relationships and communities. Social media is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to reach certain age groups, millennials and Gen Zers specifically, which makes it an obvious choice to so many when building a digital marketing strategy. The struggle, and often confusion, comes when deciding which platforms are right and creating the right content for the right platforms. Over the past decade, the amount of social media platforms has grown at an astronomical rate, from Facebook to Twitter to Snapchat, to YouTube, to Pinterest, and so on. The question businesses have to ask has changed from “Should we use Social Media?” to “Which social media platform do we use?”. Short’s Brewing Company has dealt with this question, and I believe that the most common misconception has been used as the answer: use them all.
When I first started examining Short’s’ various digital media outlets, the first thing I noticed was the amount of social media accounts: YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Flickr. With so many accounts, it is nearly impossible to create meaningful content for each platform, which makes it harder to gather followers and increase awareness and grow brand identity. The amount of social media accounts that a business uses successfully is determined by how the business can use each account, and how they differentiate the content when they use more than one platform. Short’s Brewing Company has five social media accounts, but they have content of two; Flickr and the others. Having so many accounts with the same content creates more work and less return for the efforts. There is no incentive for consumers to follow or subscribe to all of the different accounts when they can just follow one of them. When creating a social media campaign, it is imperative that the company decides on what platform or platforms will be most effective at reaching their target market, and then how they are going to engage and create value for their followers. Here are # suggestions on how to improve Short’s Brewing Company’s social media presence and attract more followers:
1. Create Value
Creating valuable and shareable content for your followers is the best way to build a stronger brand reputation and gather loyal followers. Many businesses will use social media just to sell to their customers, but this is a big mistake. Social media should be used to create value for your customers, which means that the majority of your posts should be focused on providing valuable content that compels your followers to share your posts. This could be through sharing fun and tasty recipes for snacks, like a pub style cheese dip, to enjoy along with a pint of Huma Lupa Licious, or suggesting what beers pair best with what foods, or sharing lists of beautiful places in Michigan to share their favorite pint from Short’s. When crafting content to be shared on your platforms, it is important that the content supports the brand image that you want. This means that it is important to screen your posts for potentially controversial or offensive content, like a joke that may not be received well by your followers. HubSpot is an excellent resource for businesses working on their social media presence, they recently posted this article “New Data: What Types of Content Perform Best on Social Media?”, which outlines that the most popular and shareable posts are: how-to posts, list posts, what-posts, why-posts, and videos.
2. Streamline Your Presence
It is more valuable to have a couple of social media accounts that share valuable, customized content than it is to have five or more accounts that all share the same content. When someone chooses to follow a brand on a particular social media platform it is because that platform creates value for them that another platform does not. When that person decides to follower a brand on more than one platform it is because the different accounts create different value for them.
For Short’s, my suggestion is to eliminate the Flickr and YouTube Accounts. Neither account creates any real value for the consumer or the company. Neither platform makes much sense for the industry that Short’s is in, and Twitter, Facebook and Instagram all have the ability to have photos and videos shared and uploaded to them. Then, differentiate the content that is being shared across the platforms. Facebook is great for promoting brand awareness, Instagram is the king of images, which means that it is a great place to promote new craft brews and share pictures of the events that Short’s Brewing Company is associated with. Twitter makes engaging with followers easy; answering questions, providing live updates on events, etc.
3. Engage with you Audience
One of the most compelling reasons to use social media as a business is the ability to engage with your audience. Having the ability to communicate easily with your consumers has become essential, especially with millennials who are more likely to email, text, or message online than make a phone call, as suggested by this Forbes article. A report published by Texas Tech University shows that brands who use social media to engage with their audience had higher loyalty from their customers. Use emojis to express personality to your followers and create short quizzes, as short as just one question, as a fun and easy way to gain insights about your followers.
I believe that Short’s Brewing Company has the potential to have a digital media strategy that is as strong, valuable, and creative as the craft beer that they brew. Trimming the number of platforms used and creating valuable and shareable content will be key to boosting the effectiveness of Short’s’ social media presence. Remember that it isn’t the amount of accounts that you have, but the quality of those accounts that matter. Best of luck, Short’s!
Regards,
Matthew Ott