On Saturday October 6th, I attended Elysian’s Great Pumpkin Beer Festival. While posting to Elliott Bay’s Instagram story to live broadcast what was happening at the event, I tasted a variety of pumpkin themed and Octoberfest beers from local companies. The night involved games, food trucks, a DJ, tapping a giant pumpkin, and dancing with cornstalks! It was such a fun experience, and I felt pretty cool being in attendance at the event as a social media manager. Plus, all proceeds from the event benefited the Fred Hutch cancer research center.
As for the rest of this past week, it was extremely busy. I scheduled 11 interviews with employees across all three locations. There was quite a bit of travel involved, which left me feeling exhausted, but I was grateful to have had the opportunity to sit down with so many different folks at Elliott Bay. Due to the fact that I am splitting my time between Lake City, West Seattle, and Burien, I have found it difficult to remember the names of and get to know all of the staff at the 3 pubs and Brother Barrel. I have been interviewing as many staff members as possible in order to write profiles (employee spotlights) on them for the Facebook page. It is so fun getting the chance to chat with them about their experiences, passions, and time at Elliott Bay! Community is highly valued at the company (which is clear through my personal experience and the interviews) and it is important to the managers that I showcase how wonderful their community of employees (and neighbors and regulars) is!
As usual, I have been sure to post on social media for Elliott Bay and Brother Barrel consistently, every day. Doug and I have also decided it would be beneficial for us to meet weekly to discuss progress, and so that I have all the support that I need. This internship is very self-directed, so I appreciate having an outlet to ask any questions or share concerns I may have. Most of all, I welcome the opportunity to get any feedback. My experience as a social media manager is extremely limited, and being a food photographer is a completely new experience. I often feel overwhelmed because I don’t really know what I’m doing. I constantly have to remind myself that I am an intern, so this is a learning experience. I don’t have to be perfect. There was no one dedicated to the position prior to me joining the team, so I do not really have anyone to show me the ropes or give me advice/criticism. This is wonderful in terms of creative freedom, but it has been a challenge because I have had to teach myself the skills through trial and error.
A perfect example of trial and error is the use of photoshop. I’ve found that VSCO has a lot of the basic features that photoshop does, but they are easier to use. I can imagine that if I was doing professional photos the photo quality would be better if I used photoshop, but seeing as I only post to Instagram/Twitter/Facebook (which don’t require large photo dimensions) I don’t think that photoshop is a necessary tool. After spending way too long messing around with it and not getting the results I had hoped for, I have come to the conclusion that non-professional users probably do not require what photoshop offers.
Another example of learning by doing, was figuring out which outlets to use for each post. Before I took over the position, anything posted by Elliott Bay was automatically shared to all social media outlets: Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. So, when I first began, I would post a photo to one of the outlets and then turn around and post that same photo to all the rest. I noticed that although we were increasing reach by posting more content, likes on the Facebook were actually decreasing. We were getting more likes on each post and more people were clicking on the page, but some people were taking the time to “un-like” the page! This made sense to me, because when I follow a restaurant on Facebook, I do not want to see a post from them every day. Rather, I want to hear about events, read fun stories, or see when new specials are coming out.
I have now begun to tailor posts and captions to each individual outlet. Sometimes I share the same photo across all 3, but I often change around the wording. For example, I put less information in my captions on Twitter than I do on Facebook, because tweets should be short and sweet, while Facebook posts can be longer.
My goal for next week is to take more photos of beers (because it’s a brewery, and I haven’t done much of that) and to post the first employee profile!