Earlier this week, HOW I SOCIAL spoke with Derek, the Social Media Manager for Castle Island Brewing Co. about using social media to stay relevant in what some deem a saturated market, getting people from the channels into the taproom, and not taking yourself too seriously.
The Stats:
Castle Island Brewing
Norwood, MA
Instagram: 13,700 Followers
Facebook: 14,082 Followers, 13,718 Likes, 9,220 Check-Ins
Twitter: 6,219 Followers, 5,177 Likes
About:
Founded in 2014, Castle Island Brewing Co. is a microbrewery located in Norwood, MA, about 20 miles from downtown Boston. They also have a satellite seasonal location right on the water in the Constitution Wharf area of Charlestown. They offer a full range of beers in the taproom; from tried and true standards, to rotating seasonal beers, collaborations, and limited edition offerings.
According to MA.gov, there are over 130 visitable breweries located in the state of MA, with a large number of those located in or around the City of Boston. Given all those choices, how does Castle Island get people to choose them over the next guy? As Derek explains, it’s simple: by using social media to show how fun it is to hang out with the crew in the brewery and inviting their fans to come join in. Oh yea, and by brewing award winning beer.
The Chat:
Tell us about Castle Island Brewing Co.
We make beer for everyone. We feel the best party is one that everyone is invited to, and we try to be as inclusive as possible. We have a brewery in Norwood, a beer garden in Charlestown and hopefully more on the horizon. We just want to make the kind of beer that you can drink one of, or 8 of, and be cool with it. That’s our whole brand mantra: work hard, play hard, and have a good time, all the time.
Describe the companies voice on social media channels.
The way we’ve done it is to show our personalty, and its proving to work. Our engagements are up further than they've been in the past and its purely from showing how we operate on a daily basis.The guys who make the beer, the guys who celler it, package it, everything top to bottom, they’re entertaining, funny kinds of guys. And it certainly doesn't hurt when you have to make that relevant content, to be able to put out stuff in your feed and try to garner a following. We’ve been lucky enough to where our staffing is naturally funny and they know how to act on our different marketing ventures.
What channels do you generally use?
Instagram is number one. We try to get out there in everything, but we know that certain channels garner more interest. Instagram has been killing it recently these days, Facebook seems to be trending downwards, and our Twitter exposure has been very good recently, so we’ve been trying to lean into that as well.
What’s your target audience?
We stick close to the brewery. We’ve found that a lot of our top accounts are the ones that are located close to the actual brewery. We focus on what’s already getting a buzz, and we tend to try to add into that events that play off that buzz and drive taproom traffic. That’s where a good majority of our margins come from, the straight up beer-to-hand taproom traffic.
Do you tap into influencers to get the word out about your beer?
There’s no reason to not consider influencers on social media, there’s a reason they’re influencers. There’s an audience for it; it’s almost ignorant to ignore that aspect to things. We’ve directly sent certain beers to certain influencers to create a buzz around a buzz worthy beer. Ultimately, I feel the liquid always speaks foremost before anything else; we prefer to let our fan base spread the word for us.
Do you use any tools to measure ROI on your campaigns?
We measure engagement. We do weekly sit downs talking about how our current fan base is engaging with the product we’re putting out on social media. We also talk about how we’ve garnered new exposure for our social media presence. We try to look at things as a learning experience because we’re still new, we’re not even at our four year mark, so we‘re trying to make it work as we go. We use all the analytics that we can use: Instagram, Google, Facebook, all of it.
What advice would you give to a small business interested in using social media to promote their brand?
It’s all about believing in the content you’re putting out there, making sure that it’s both selling your product and the brand. And, it’s giving people a reason to stop when they’re scrolling through their Instagram feed or their Facebook feed or anything like that. It’s trying to make it like, “Ok, this is visually engaging, I’m going to tag a friend in this because it looks interesting”. It’s all about trying to set yourself apart in the realm of putting yourself out there and creating quality content to support the brand.
Finding your voice, showing personality, setting yourself apart from other brands trying to do the same things. It’s not easy, it’s just being creative and trying to, in a weird way, just garner likes. However you can do it, is a good way to do it. But if you can do it organically and put yourself out there as a brand who wants to have fun, doesn't take themselves too seriously; it’s seems to be what resonates with people these days.
What resources would you recommend people check out?
I’ve always looked to brands I like. That seems to be the starting point with a lot of people. Allagash on Instagram, friends of mine run a jam company in Brooklyn, the Jam Stand- they do a lot of visually stimulating stuff for their feed. That has influenced me a lot.
Have you been able to successfully collaborate with other brands?
We’ve been lucky enough to do a lot of that. We have a partnerships with a comedian Nick Stevens, he does the WEEI morning show with Greg Hill. He’s a big fan of ours and we’re a big fan of his; we came together on a mutual agreement to be able to do some low key marketing ideas together to promote each other’s brands. We’ve been lucky enough to do collaborations with Rheinghest, Otter Creek Brewing, Medusa was another recent one. Also, we’ve collaborated with smaller brands and companies; we’ve allowed them to do pop up events in our space and in our taproom.
Have you been able to use social media to handle any crisis?
If someone finds a four pack and messages on Facebook to tell us something was off, we’ll message them and invite them down to the taproom to swap it out.
Thanks for chatting Derek!
To follow Castle Island:
Instagram, Twitter: @cibrewing
Facebook: @castleislandbeer
Places Derek mentioned influenced him:
Allagash Brewing
Instagram, Twitter: @AllagashBrewing
Facebook: @AllagashBrewingCompany
The Jam Stand:
Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest: @thejamstand
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