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Micro-brewing Social Media

Social media’s power to help the David’s of the business world compete with the Goliath’s is a lesson I’ve heard many times, and I know it well. But never before has David’s empowerment struck me as hard as it did in last weeks meeting with a local microbrewery.

I was absolutely blown away by the potential for positive social growth. The beauty of microbreweries (other than the great beer) is that they’re small and intimate, and often filled with fiercely passionate employees.

Imagine what could be achieved if you were able to transfer even an ounce of that intimacy and passion online. There are already enormous online beer communities just waiting to be fed. Thousands of collectors, connoisseurs and enthusiastic hobbyists all longing to connect with the people brewing the good stuff.

Big breweries have scientists, accountants and brands whereas micro-breweries have down-to-earth stories, struggles, and personalities. Social media is where the little guy gains the edge, as the large corporate beer merchants tend to lose these stories and personalities.

A Rough Guide To Micro-brewing Social Media

First things first, prior to encouraging Jim & Joe brew mixer to go crazy online, ensure that they have solid understanding about what it means to be part of the conversation. Once you’ve done that, stir in one or two online profiles, two parts home made media, and three parts online conversation, let it settle and what you’ve got is one potent brew.

1. Online Profiles

• If people love your beer let them become fans and followers – pick the social networking sites where they hang out and create profiles e.g. if appropriate start a Facebook page and create a Twitter profile.
• Update the page and profile with information – not just about your company, but about the things that make your company and the people in it tick.
• Engage with your fans and followers – listen to them, be interested, respond to questions, create polls and include them in new product and packaging innovation.
• Reward your fans for helping you – hold a Facebook Fans brewery tour – if that’s too much to deal with just say thank you.

2. Pics & Vids

• Buy a digital camera, and leave it lying around the office – encourage all your employees to take photos, make it a competition for best pic of the week.
• Regularly upload those photos to Flickr, Facebook and Twitpic.
• Get a web cam or hand-held digital camcorder (doesn’t have to be fancy) – give it to your employees and let them capture the things that inspire them. Interview them about their work and encourage them to be themselves.
• Start a Youtube, Vimeo or Viddler chanel upload the inspiring moments that you and your employees capture.
• Use your videos and photos in your status updates e.g. on Facebook and Twitter.
• Use the feedback from your fans & followers to help guide what you film and photograph.

3. Blogs, Vlogs & Forums

• Whether you choose to write a blog or to post a video diary is up to you – choose whatever suits your company and personality best.
• What you choose to write about or record depends on what you want to achieve – it helps if you have a focus/mission e.g. “unleashing the inspiration behind our beer” or “connecting you with our brewers”.
• Add this blog or vlog to your website (along with links to your video channel and social media profiles).
• Depending on it’s focus you could use your blog/vlog to describe what powers your innovations, discuss new branding ideas, ask for feedback, and post the videos and pictures that your staff take.
• Realise that just because you call it a blog or vlog doesn’t mean people won’t use it to dialogue and debate things, sometimes irrelevant things, so why not start a forum.
• Start a forum so that your fans have a place to discuss your new ales, branding and anything else they want – keep you finger on the pulse of this conversation, and chime in from time to time.
• Use polls and ratings in both your forum and on your blog/vlog to help better understand what your fans like and dislike.
• You could even get them to create a new logo, packaging design or ad for you.

Why should you do all this?

• Better tasting beer – having a loving (but honest) community will help you work out what sort of beer people love the most.
• Community – creating a community around your brew will supercharge your offline word of mouth. The more great content you feed your online community the more they’ll talk about your beer offline.
• Targeted Marketing – knowing more about the people who love your brew allows you to create more meaningful promotions, you can also promote directly to those who are the most likely to buy your brew or spread your message.
• Viral marketing – with retweets and diggs everything can go viral. Every blog post you write and video you make has the potential to be shared and seen by thousands, if not millions.
• B-2-B Relationships – a subject not yet widely discussed, but clearly very important. Not only can you use social media to connect with the people in your business network, you can also unlock the value of your following to attract new sponsors, partners and backers.
• Sales – if you do even half of what’s been mentioned above (and you do it well) it’s highly likely to result in increased sales.

Is this the perfect mix…certainly not. Please help improve the recipe by adding your preferred ingredients in the comments below.