Week 1 at Elliott Bay Brewing Co. was great! Initially, I did a did quite a bit of research to mine for content inspiration. Prior to the start of my internship, I followed upwards of 100 breweries, restaurants, and food Instagram accounts so that I could see what others were doing. I kept note of what caught my eye and inspired me, as well as what the most popular accounts in the craft beer world were doing.
My introduction at Elliott Bay Brewing included meeting many new people and getting tours at all three pubs, as well as at Brother Barrel, which is Elliott Bay’s “little brother bar.”
At the start of this week I focused on creating goals for Elliott Bay based on my research findings. I came up with a list of popular hashtags both locally and globally. I spent most of my time this week creating content. This includes taking and editing photos, posting across 6 social media sites, and engaging folks across all social media platforms. This engagement could be responding to a comment, but it also includes liking/commenting on photos of accounts who follow similar accounts to ours, and liking/commenting on photos of other brands in our field. I am trying to increase awareness of the Elliott Bay Brand.
The biggest takeaway I have from this week is how much work it is to be a social media manager. Prior to me coming on board, Travis was managing at the West Seattle pub AND in running Elliott Bay’s social media outlets. I give him props for this, because it has become so clear to me in the past 5 days that being a social media manager is a full-time job. There is no wonder that he was not able to post consistently. It is A LOT of work. There is so much content I want to create and things on my mental to do list, and there is just no way to do it all in the 30 hours I have dedicated to this internship. For example, there are tons of photos I want to take, employee spotlights I want to write, and educational content I would like to produce (such as what different kinds of malt and hops look like and what it means to create certified Organic beer). HOWEVER, what I have learned from this process, is that these things take time. Due to how Elliott Bay runs (and potential food waste), I can’t simply go in one day and take photos of every single beer and food item. I have to take a few photos at a time. In order to create the employee profiles, I must coordinate with the employees who are all EXTREMELY busy, and who don’t have time to make a Facebook post their priority. Plus, I am posting content for 4 different locations, and realistically I can only get to one (maybe two locations) a day. I am learning about patience and planning!
I am so excited for the next 9 weeks and to share the content I am creating. For reference, here are the 6 sites I am posting to:
Elliott Bay Brewing Co. Facebook
Elliott Bay Brewing Co. Twitter
Elliott Bay Brewing Co. Instagram
In the future, I may also do some work with UnTapped and helping to update the Elliott Bay Brewing Co. website but I have not begun to tackle those platforms.