Social media is the most potent method for brewers to connect with drinkers today.

As COVID-19 and digitisation has pushed many of us to spend more and more time in front of screens, the numbers of people logging on to social platforms like Facebook and Instagram continue to increase.

According to We Are Social, there are more than two billion social media users in Asia-Pacific. That represents around 50% of the region’s population – a stunningly high level of penetration of any medium.

It gets higher at the country level, too. 79% of Singapore’s population are active social media users. The little red dot isn’t an outlier: we see similar penetration levels in countries like Thailand and Malaysia.

When you start cutting the data by time, the data gets even more mind-boggling.

People in the Philippines spend a daily average of three hours and 53 minutes using platforms like Instagram and YouTube – leading the world in social media addiction.

However, the rest of the region isn’t far behind. Indonesians, for instance, spend an average of three hours and 26 minutes – still a titanic block of their day to be scrolling through cat memes, family photos and the occasional brewery update.

If you’re sceptical about scaling up your brewery’s social media presence, this data should set the stage for any brewery looking to win more customers.

Even if you think your current drinkers aren’t particularly tech-savvy, you’re missing out on a much wider audience if you’re not cranking great content out from your brand pages and news feeds.

“The sands are shifting – and platforms are increasingly rewarding content that is raw, straightforward and in a natural tone of voice”

Social channels have become essential venues for people to find out more about new breweries and beers.

Facebook & Bain found that 62% of Southeast Asian consumers found social media, short videos and messaging as their preferred online channels for discovering new brands.

While Facebook has skin in the game here, it goes to show that a solid social strategy is now a cornerstone of any business’s growth – particularly in the craft beer scene where we lack the budgets to advertise on traditional media like television.

Fortunately, today it has never been easier to build a strong social media brand presence quickly. By following a handful of principles and guiding policies, you can go from digital novice to social master in a short time.

The Authenticity Dividend

The social approach that’s fit-for-purpose in COVID-drenched 2020 is simple: hardcore authenticity.

In the past, channels like Facebook and YouTube became contests of good looks and high production values. People projected their ‘best selves’ – and brands played into the game, setting unrealistically high standards for themselves around creative production, copywriting and beautiful photography.

Fortunately, the sands are shifting – and platforms are increasingly rewarding content that is raw, straightforward and in a natural tone of voice.

Part of the reason is because Facebook and Instagram realised they weren’t showing enough content from our real friends and family.

Mark Zuckerberg and his buddies realised that saturating our news feeds with brand content that’s over-produced and artificially high quality wasn’t going to keep people happy.

This is part of the explanation behind why funny yet crudely photoshopped memes and POV, low-resolution videos increasingly dominate our newsfeeds.

The ‘authenticity dividend’ is demonstrated by brewer 7 Bridges’ response to a severe brand crisis.

The brewery, based in Vietnam’s central city Danang, faced a temporary taproom shutdown due to visits by COVID-infected tourists.

Going from lemons to lemonade, CEO & Founder Stanley Boots began giving daily updates on Facebook from quarantine, sharing the challenges his brewery faced, and calling for help.

Stanley Boots connected with 7 Bridges customers via Facebook while locked in his brewery

As a result of his genuine frankness about his brewery’s challenging situation, Stanley was able to receive a wave of popular support and many thousands of views on his videos.

This underscores the importance of continuous, straightforward social media communication with your audience in the worst – and best – of times.

People reward you when you have a go, try your best and speak your mind on social media, not when you spend tens of thousands of dollars on fancy brand videos.

Thumb-Stopping Power

Once upon a time, image-based social media simply wasn’t for everyone.

You needed a fancy phone, a keen photographic sense, and be blessed with photogenic genes.

But things are getting easier.

I learnt this from myBurgerLab, a burger chain in Malaysia.

I was invited to one of their ‘R&D’ sessions, where employees had a chance to show off their unique burger creations to senior management and guests.

We were asked to grade each burger. Out of the blue, there was a question that blew my mind: we were asked to rate how ‘Instagrammable’ each burger was.

This experience permanently changed the way I think about social media marketing.

When your potential customers are scrolling through news feeds on your mobile phone, you want photos of your beer to have ‘thumb-stopping power’.

As a brewer, it creates an imperative to raise your game on packaging design and apply the Instagrammability principle.

• Do the cans in your core range look great in a photo with a backdrop of a beautiful beach vista?
• Do your beers stand out in a photo of a bar fridge?
• Does your tap handle look spectacular when someone’s doing a live video from the bar top?

While you can’t change your packaging design and taproom architecture overnight, you’ve got to start thinking about how that new beer or packaging format will look in a customer’s hand on an Instagram feed even before it reaches the market.

Sourcing ‘Free’ Content

If this still seems intimidating or outside your wheelhouse of beer and brewing, here are two tricks to get content without spending money on a photographer or influencer.

When you open your brewery’s Instagram profile, click on ‘Tagged’. You’ll find all the images people have tagged your brewery in – often, there will be a few great photos of a beer on a beach or a beautiful snapshot of your taproom.

Even smaller alcoholic beverage brands without a taproom (like Lion City Meadery in Singapore) have a bunch of lovely photography of their packaging, kegs and in-venue product tagged on Instagram by fans.

Your customers can help provide great free shots of your product for social media

Reach out to these people and ask them nicely if you can re-use their photo – you’ve then got a free post you can share across your social platforms and made a customer feel good in the process.

Another trick is to find the Instagram location tags for your bar, brewery or venues that serve your beer.

Even if someone hasn’t used your brand hashtag (a lot of people won’t bother), people often check-in to a location when they take a photo.

This inevitably creates more content for you to identify and re-use if you’re willing to spend some time trawling through Instagram.

Friends on Facebook

The reports of Facebook’s death have been greatly exaggerated. While Mark Zuckerberg might have been sweating in front of congress, COVID-19 has arrested a decline in Facebook’s Daily Active Users (DAUs).

In our region, it is particularly evident Facebook remains a powerful platform to connect.

But besides the authenticity dividend, there are a few techniques your brewery can use to project a more robust social presence and break through the crowded newsfeed.

One is tapping into the power of Facebook Groups, a topic I’ve previously written about.

Another is using tactical bursts of paid media (also known as boosting).

The trick here is to identify your most resonant organic content before you boost, thereby knowing what the platform’s algorithm and your audience like.

Once you know what’s organically popular, start with small (20 USD, for instance) boosts and continue to scale up.

Testing and learning like this will not only build up your audience but will make you a more experienced social media marketer.

I used this tactic to build an audience of several thousand fans on my Beer Asia Facebook Page, only spending a couple of hundred dollars in the process.

Micro, Not Macro, Influence

Many brewers continue to associate effective social media strategy with influencer campaigns.

Indeed, much of my career has been using influencers to jumpstart campaigns for brands like McDonald’s and Samsung.

Even these well-known global brands often lack the confidence to stand on their own two feet and instead use celebrities’ large social media followings instead of maximising their own.

It is tempting to throw money at lifestyle tastemakers and photogenic musicians to lure crowds into taprooms.

But the reality is much of this spend is wasted: you’re just helping the influencer pay for their next holiday or house, while often the brand association quickly dies off once they move onto their next client.

You’re much better off working with ‘micro-influencers’. Think customers, beer lovers or up-and-coming food & beverage bloggers with small but passionate social followings.

The best way to start finding micro-influencers is among your existing customers.

Is there a bar regular who has a decent social following and a knack for crafting funny captions whenever they’re drinking your beer?

Why not have a chat with them about giving them a few free pints a week in return for the occasional post.

If you want to go larger, there are swathes of under-paid food writers in your city who would happily create a series of social posts introducing you and your beers to a broader audience.

Parting Thoughts

When you are drawing up a formal social strategy for your brewery, focus on keeping it short, sweet and focused.

Don’t try and do too many things at once. Start with the basic principles of communicating authentically, creating Instagrammable products and spaces, and projecting your brand via genuine, passionate advocacy.

While you may not succeed overnight, keep at it – and don’t be afraid to ask for help once in a while from other brewers. Digital marketing success will come eventually with consistency, effort and distinctiveness.