Over the past six months, we’ve put a lot of effort into simplifying and standardizing our taproom experience and our brand: we’ve nailed down five flagship beers and eight seasonals, set a killer schedule of events and programming, and become a regular food truck hub and the host of monthly roundups. Now it’s time to simplify and standardize how we communicate all of this to you.
When our company was young and we didn’t have a lot of complexity to deal with, it was easy to operate a single-stream social media strategy. When the bulk of the content you’re producing consists of renovation photos and your team consists of only two people, it’s not the worst thing to have the same content reposted across all of your platforms; at that point, everyone’s still in the process of familiarizing themselves with you and your story, and the variety of what you’re putting out there isn’t broad enough to warrant specialized channels.
Fast-forward to nearly a year after opening our doors, and we’ve got a brewhouse with brewhouse staff, a taproom with taproom staff, and two co-founders who wear a lot of different hats. We’ve got a hell of a lot going on, and sometimes it’s easy to miss things in the chaos. In order to best avoid confusion and clutter moving forward, we’re working to segment each of our social media channels and provide different streams of content based on the strengths of each platform. Here’s an overview of what we’ll be focusing on within each channel.
Our weekly email blast is our foremost information channel, and the best way to stay on top of our most current news and updates. It’s a nice, quick overview of everything that’s going on with the company in the coming week – beer releases, food truck schedules, special events and promotions, and general taproom information.
We’ve been telling our story through pictures since before we opened. We believe beer is a beautiful thing, but that the best part of beer is the community it creates. Follow our story on Instagram to see the people, places, and things that make The Brew Gentlemen Beer Co. who we are.
Although our email blast is the best way to stay informed about our taproom on a weekly basis, things always move pretty quickly around here. Twitter is the best way to get simple, to-the-minute updates. It’s also a great way to get in contact with us, should you have any questions or comments.
The blog where we’re able share a bit more thoughtful, long-form accounts of our experiences. All of our other social media channels give a good overview of the what, but the blog is where we explain the why. This is where we announce and provide background for new beers, events, and projects.
Let’s face it: Facebook is a horrible, predatory corporation that feeds on small businesses by algorithmically choking their ability to reach their willing followers unless they pay to boost their posts. Really, its only advantage is as an events listing platform. So we’ve decided to use Facebook exclusively as such from here on out. Follow our company page here and check out all of our upcoming events here – don’t forget to click “subscribe” so you don’t miss a beat.
So there you have it – several different ways to stay on top of what we’re up to. As new channels emerge and the social media landscape evolves, we’ll continue to develop new mediums. For us, this is a meaningful step towards ‘growing up’ as a company. It’ll take a while to settle into things, we may make mistakes here or there, but making it easy for our ever-expanding family to stay connected is just as important as the beer in the glass.