Raising the Social Media Bar with Stephanie Grant: Part 2

I will almost always direct them toward hiring someone in-house. Anyone running your social media should be living and breathing your brand day in and day out. They need to know what makes you special, the tiny quirks of your brewery, all of it. That’s what matters most when it comes to choosing someone to capture your story and share it with your audience online.

Before I can tell you which direction to go, there are few things I’d want to understand: What’s the budget? What are your objectives for social—what are you actually trying to accomplish? How hands-on do you want to be in the process? How much do you already understand about social media? If you’re leaning toward someone internal, what does their current workload look like—do they realistically have the bandwidth to take this on?

If you’ve decided to go in-house, the next question is whether to hire someone new or designate someone already on your team. That really depends on how clear you are on what you want for your social media presence.

If you have a clear idea of what you want and just need someone to execute, a team member who may not have social media experience can work—as long as you’re prepared to guide them and help shape the strategy. Not having a strategy is how you end up posting consistently but still feeling like social media isn’t working for you.

If you don’t have a lot of clarity around what your social media presence should look like, you’re better off hiring someone who already understands social, knows what works, and can build a strategic plan. They’ll be the bridge between what’s working on the platform and what your audience is looking for, and they’ll bring the expertise to help you figure out your direction.

As for agencies: I’ve heard from countless brewery owners that agencies struggle to capture the things that make craft beer what it is—the things that differentiate a brewery from a bar, a restaurant, or a macro beer brand. That understanding is hard to outsource, and someone off-site isn’t able to document what’s happening in your brewery at a moment’s notice. Where agencies tend to be a better fit is when you’re looking for someone to build a strategy for your in-house team to follow, or when you’re ready to run paid ads and have already built a solid organic presence.

I read somewhere that journalists make great social media managers because they’re naturally curious, they know how to find a story, and they know how to tell one. Out of all the skills someone could have, those are some of the best qualities you can look for.

It’s great to know how to edit a video or take a good photo, but curiosity and the ability to tell a story—to communicate and translate—are what matter most. What a social media manager is really doing is translating what’s special about your brand to your audience. They’re taking their own excitement and love for the brand and transferring it to the people watching.

That’s changed a lot over the last ten years. In the early days of craft beer, having someone who could take great photos, do fun photoshoots, and write great captions was the standard. That was the thing people were looking for. As social media has evolved and craft beer has moved into a more mature market, though, the ability to differentiate yourself from another brewery, restaurant, or bar has grown significantly.

Now, having someone who can go beyond the surface and really get into what makes your brewery different from everything you’re competing against will go a long way—not just in getting people to pay attention to what you’re doing on social, but in turning them into fans and regulars at your space.

I love this question. Content takes time, and when a social media manager is new to your account, they’re still learning your audience. They can look back at what’s worked before, but every social media manager approaches their work differently—they have their own instincts, their own creative style—and they’ll need time to find their rhythm.

The first 30 days are really about learning your audience, understanding the type of content you’d like to see on your account, and doing a lot of refining. If you’re posting consistently—say three to five or five to seven times a week—you’re already gathering real information during that time.

By 60 days, there should be meaningful learnings from the content you’ve posted. The testing phase never fully ends, but by the two-month mark, there should be a solid foundation to start building from.

By 90 days, depending on your goals—growth, reach, impressions, engagement—you should start seeing meaningful progress. Setting those goals before any of that happens is the most important thing you can do. Whether the social media manager builds the plan or you build it together, there needs to be a plan of attack that guides those first 90 days.

As for what ownership and leadership should be doing: the first 30 days are where you need to be the most present. Sit down with whoever is running your social and set clear expectations. Define the goals. Share everything you know about your audience—what’s worked in the past, what hasn’t, what your brand stands for. Work out the logistics: what does the review process look like, how much content is expected, what are the turnaround times? You’re laying the foundation for how you’ll work together, and the more information you share upfront, the less they’re going in blind.

Monthly check-ins during the onboarding period are a good idea, both to make sure expectations are being met and to look at the numbers together and see if you’re making progress toward your shared goals.

There are three main goals a brewery can have when it comes to social: increasing brand awareness, enhancing community engagement, and building brand loyalty. The goal you’re working toward determines what you’re measuring.

If you’re focused on increasing brand awareness, you want your target audience to know you exist. Beyond reach, look at impressions—how many total times your content was seen—along with follower growth and profile visits. Those signal that people are finding you and wanting to know more.

If you’re focused on enhancing community engagement, you want comments, saves, and shares. Those are the biggest drivers of engagement because people love sharing content they connect with. Story interactions—polls, question stickers, quiz responses—are also strong signals. When someone actively participates, they’re paying attention.

If you’re focused on building brand loyalty—becoming the kind of brand people recommend in the group chat when someone asks where to go for a beer—Instagram doesn’t have a direct metric for that. You’re looking at signals: story completion rate, saves, DMs, user-generated content and mentions, and comment quality. If you’re seeing the same names show up consistently and the conversations feel genuine, that’s loyalty showing up in real behavior.

I’m intentional about not including direct sales as a goal here, because it is genuinely difficult to measure sales from social when you operate a taproom. Trying to draw a direct line between an Instagram post and someone walking through the door will frustrate you.

Beyond social metrics, there are other signals worth paying attention to. Are journalists or podcasters reaching out? How are they finding you? I know of breweries that have gotten earned media based on their social presence alone. Also: talk to your beertenders. Have them ask first-time guests how they found out about you. You won’t get hard numbers, but over time you’ll get a clear sense of whether Instagram is doing its job.

As for time frames—you may not see meaningful results in the first 30 days. Somewhere around 60 to 90 days is when you should start seeing movement. If you’re not, that’s when I’d go back and audit the last 90 days of content, dig into the analytics, and figure out what’s not connecting. If you can’t identify it yourself, that’s a good time to bring in someone for a second opinion.

The way I advise breweries to think about ROI is to align their social media goals with what the platforms actually measure—rather than trying to equate posts with direct revenue. Social media is there to communicate who you are as a brand, why people should pay attention to you, and why they should show up. Trying to put a hard dollar amount on that is going to be a frustrating exercise.

So instead of chasing a number that’s hard to pin down, look at the signals: Are you getting earned media? Are inquiries coming in from people who found you on Instagram? Are journalists and podcasters reaching out? Those things matter because they extend your reach far beyond your existing audience.

When it comes to metrics themselves, they’re most useful when you’re measuring whether you’re hitting your goals and whether the content you’re creating is building your brand. That’s when numbers give you something actionable.

When should you ignore them? When you put out something that feels genuinely fun and true to your brand, and your team is excited about it. If that piece of content doesn’t perform the way you hoped, that’s okay. I’d much rather a brewery create content that feels authentic to them than chase what they think the algorithm wants to see. If it represents your brand well and you’re proud of it, that matters—whether it hits or not.

As for common mistakes: the biggest one I see is trying to draw a direct connection between a social media post and foot traffic or sales. There’s no telling why someone decided to come in on a given day, and there’s no way to know if posting about your beer release at 6 a.m. versus 10 a.m. changed how many people showed up.

The other mistake I see often is putting too much pressure on social media to fix things that social media can’t fix. When event sales are down or ticket numbers aren’t where you want them, scrapping your content plan to post about the event several more times is not likely to get you the results you’re hoping for. More posts won’t fix an experience that isn’t connecting.