1. Social Media Best
Practices
Tamre Mullins - Roundpeg
Jeff Wharton - Drink Craft Beer

2. Agenda
• Why Social Media?
• The #1 Secret to Social Media Success
• Best Practices on Major Platforms
• Case Study

3. Why Social Media?
• You're writing...why not write for an audience?
• Instant feedback.
• Build relationships
• Move from 1-way street to 2-way
conversation.

4. #1 Secret to Social Media Success
IT'S ALL
ABOUT THE
CONTENT!!!

5. #1 Secret to Social Media Success
• Don't copy, paste or repeat without original
content
• Why should your audience care?
• Be you...
• Give people a reason to tune in!

6. Best Practices for Major Platforms
• Each platform has its own voice, tone, and
preferred content
• Grow your community
o More people who share your content, the larger your
footprint is.
o Share their content

7. Facebook
• Profiles are for People - Pages are for
Companies
• EdgeRank: More Engagement = More
Views.
o Ask questions
o Caption Contests
o Photo Albums - 1.8 x Engagment.
• Be a Data Dork.
o Use Facebook Insights
o Give fans what they love!
• Don't over inundate

8. Facebook Engagement
• Pictures work great.
o Use albums.
o Share across other platforms.
o Use Tags
• Talk with, not at your fans
o On the DCB text posts usually low engagement.
 Questions are the exception.
 Questions drive the most engagement for us.
 37 engaged people commenting on a question
about summer beers.
 Twice the engagement of pictures.

9. Facebook: Measure "Talking
About"
• Over last month the DCB Facebook page
has made 66 posts.
o Average 15 uniques "Talking About This" per post.
o Average 18 "Talking About This" per photo post.
(20% > average)
o Average 3 "Talking About This" per status update.
(80% < average)
o Average 10 "Talking About This" per link post.
(67% < average)

10. Facebook - Top DCB Images
~50 engaged for each

11. Twitter
• This is "what is happening now."
• Give people the view into the life of a beer
blogger.
o What are you drinking?
o Where are you drinking/eating?
o What food/beer pairing are you noshing?
• Give people the good stuff.
o Even mundane can work sometimes.
o Just think of why they'll care.

12. Twitter
• Use Hashtags!
o Great for organizing discussions.
o Also great for being found for a topic like #craftbeer.
o Don't overuse...no more than 2-3 in a post.
 #Confusing!
• Pictures are great.
o Use the native photo editor/posting features.
 Instagram no longer shows up in Twitter,
TweetDeck/etc.
 People will have to leave Twitter to view.
 Less engagement with non native photos

13. Twitter
• Update often
o Tweets have a short life span
o No EdgeRank - Every user sees every tweet from
person they follow.
o Unlike Facebook people tend to view only recent
tweets
• Share the love
o Want people to notice and share your stuff? Share
theirs
o RT'ing someone's post with a link in it, make sure
you get the link

14. Instagram
• 40 million+ photos posted/day.
• Engagement driven by followers & relevant
hashtags.
• #Craftbeer feed is up to 750k photos and
rising.
• Since Facebook bought Instagram:
o Instagram content shows nicely in FB Newsfeed.
o Instagram video has been introduced.

15. DCB Most Liked Instagram Pictures

16. Pinterest
• 50 million users.
• Great for pictures.
• Pinterest vs Facebook
o Pinterst: 69% of users make a purchase after
pinning
o Facebook: 40% of users make a purchase after
liking a photo.
• Demographics skew heavily female.
• Best times to post are 7-9pm weekdays and
Saturday mornings.

17. Pinterest
• Food is the #1 category.
• Plays well with others.
• Curate a board (i.e. Top 10 list).
o Find images from your blog.
o Mix with images from elsewhere.
o Link all pins to the original content.
 Pins w/o link aren't valuable to you or audience!
o Share boards on FB and Twitter.
o Cross pollinations engenders greater engagement.
o Use a strong image to promote contests and events

18. Tumblr
• Community driven platform.
• Proceed with caution
o Can be hard to break into the group.
o Use hashtags and follow influential accounts.
o Harder to drive traffic to offers or websites

19. Google+
• Google+ is a search tool, not a social
platform (yet)
• Google+ is like eating your vegetables.
o You don't want to do it, but it's good for you.
• Copy Facebook strategy on G+

20. Google Authorship
• Earn credit everywhere you publish
• For example:
o You write for a site "BeerFriends.com" with a friend.
o You do a guest post on another site.
• It's like an online portfolio for your work
• Google's Author Rank takes into account
quality content combined with Authorship.
• Your content will rank higher in searches.

21. LinkedIn
• Beer? On LinkedIn?! Yes!
• Post beer content to LinkedIn if it pertains to
business.
• For example, is a new brewery in your
community asking for a tax abatement?
• Separate professional & beer accounts?
Maybe
• Also, great craft beer groups on LinkedIn.

22. Integrated Strategy
• How do you can use them together to full
effect?
o Each case is different, based on audience.
• If you have your blog, Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram and Pinterest, don't think of them
as completely separate.
o How do they work together to tell your story better?
• How can you cross promote to other
platforms to increase engagement?

23. Case Study:
Drink Craft Beer Springfest Beer
• April 2013 we brewed the official fest beer
with Jack's Abby in Framingham, MA.
• To drive interest in the beer and in our fest,
we used a broad array of social media
platforms to best leverage our audience and
drive engagement.

24. Case Study:
Drink Craft Beer Springfest Beer
• Twitter - Before, During and After.
o Before The Brew Day:
 Event hashtag, #DCBSpringfest, to label
everything that we did around brewing the beer.
 The night before we started hyping the brew day
using the #hashtag.
o During the brew day,
 Used Twitter to send updates and pictures of
what was going on at that moment.
o After the brew day,
 We tweeted the blog post, FB album and
updates from the brewery about the beer.

26. Case Study:
Drink Craft Beer Springfest Beer
• Facebook
o Similar to Twitter in some ways, we hyped before it
happened
o Sent a few pictures via Facebook during the event.
o Less posts than for Twitter
o After the brew day
 Built an album of pictures to show the "behind
the scenes" of the brew day - more pictures than
could be live posted.
 Linked to the blog post and promoted via Twitter.
 Promoted the blog post after we wrote it.

28. Case Study:
Drink Craft Beer Springfest Beer
• Instagram
o Sent photos throughout the day, to FB and Twitter.
 (This is against best practices, but sometimes it's
a time vs. benefit calculation for us.)
o Got engagement from followers on Instagram
o Able to leverage Twitter/Facebook audiences at the
same time.
o Different conversations on all the platforms.
o Always used the hashtag #DCBSpringfest.

30. Case Study:
Drink Craft Beer Springfest Beer
• Blog
o In-depth story of the brew day.
o This is the "meat" of the issue.
o Here we gave analysis and made the audience care:
 The story behind how the beer came together.
 Ingredients.
 Hopes.
 How was it brewing with Jack's Abby?
 What's it like being a professional brewer?

32. Case Study:
Drink Craft Beer Springfest Beer
Results
• Sold a record number of tickets
• Engagement up Across All Platforms
• Facebook 3-4x engagement - now the
engagement is up permanently
• Stories in local traditional media outlets
• Email list is up 25-30%

33. Questions? Want to Chat Later?
• Tamre Mullins
o tamre.s.mullins@gmail.com
o Roundpeg.biz | Twitter: @TamreMullins
• Jeff Wharton
o jeff@drinkcraftbeer.com
o DrinkCraftBeer.com | Twitter: @DrinkCraftBeer