Braxton Brewing: How Good Social Media Can Make a Microbrewery Feel Bigger From The Get-Go

The city of Convington, Kentucky is located just south of the Ohio River and only a walk across the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge from Downtown Cincinnati. This city is also home to Braxton Brewing Company – a young brewery who knows the importance of great craft beer and a strong social media presence.

Braxton was co-founded in 2015 by Evan Rouse (seen in the picture above pouring a beer for a customer), who started homebrewing at age 16 in his parent’s garage. He’s passion for beer led him to working in the industry for some years until finally deciding to launch his own brewery. The brewery is named after the street he grew up on.

The brewery is named after the street he grew up on.

From the beginning, Braxton Brewery has been combining the tradition of brewing craft beer and technology.

In 2014, Braxton Brewing Co. launched a record-breaking and very successful Kickstarter campaign raising more than $70,000. Setting the all-time funding record for a brewery on Kickstarter.

Many microbreweries and craft beer establishments often miss the importance of the online world and the great impact it can have on their business. When I sat with Jonathan Gandolf who is the Head of Marketing at Braxton it was obvious that this wasn’t the case with Braxton Brewery.

Braxton Brewery is one of the few small breweries that have always had a strong online presence through the good use of social media since day one. They have a built a following and a loyal audience online that has led them to launching an online store for merchandise and even their own mobile app.

I asked Jonathan (pictured above) a few questions about their social media marketing efforts and this is what I found out.

How important is it for Braxton Brewery to have a strong presence on social media?

Jonathan Gandolf: We knew from the get-go that marketing was going to be a point of emphasis for us. We wanted to feel bigger than we actually were from the get-go and I think we’ve succeeded at that. We come from a marketing background and when I say we, I basically mean Jake (co-owner of Braxton) and I. We come from this marketing background where we can see the power of it. It’s also a way for us to be different and it creates a competitive advantage for us.

How many hours a week do you feel are necessary in order to do social media right?

Jonathan Gandolf: Social media could be a 40-hour a week job for us.

How many hours do you actually spend on social media?

Jonathan Gandolf: It’s hard to say how much time I spend on social media. I’m plugged in 24/7. The community dictates how much you work at it. I’ll put it this way, it could be a 40-hour a week job. I spend less than forty hours a week doing it, but if I wanted to I could easily spend forty hours just doing social media.

Would you say social media for a brewery is a necessity or a luxury in today’s digital age?

Jonathan Gandolf: Man… I would say it’s a necessity! I think there was a time where you could rely on good beer. I think you see that with breweries like 3 Floyds. They were kind of that cusp of “we make really good beer and we don’t give a sh** what you have to think about it.” But I think now there are too many people making good beer that you can’t rely solely on the beer.

Which social media platform do you feel is most beneficial to a brewery like Braxton and why?

Jonathan Gandolf: This is something we often debate about. Facebook has the largest following, so it makes the most sense to use Facebook but you know how Facebooks works now where you have to “pay to play”. The biggest advantage with using Facebook for us is their event management. It makes it easy to create the events, measuring the interest in them, measuring RSVP’s in them, and being able to communicate directly to a crowd. That’s why I like using Facebook.

However, Instagram is probably our most successful platform. I think we do a go job with our imagery. I think people are a little bit more invested in it. I think that somebody double tapping your photo is a little more than somebody just seeing your tweet or facebook post. I think it’s probably the best to drive action although sometimes it can be hard to measure that action. But I often see that if I post for example a picture of a hoodie, and look at our product mix the next day and notice we’ve sold, let’s say, 7 sweaters–there’s some correlation there but it’s still very hard to measure.

What is the biggest struggle when it comes to managing every social media channel?

Jonathan Gandolf: Time. I wish I had more time to manage all platforms more effectively.

How do you measure the effectiveness of your social media campaigns?

Jonathan Gandolf: Facebook is very easy. We know the average ticket price when we do events and it’s very easy to know that if we spend x amount of money on an ad, we need to make that same amount in order to brake even.

Twitter is about the same scenario.

Instagram is one where we just try to use it to “capture the moment”. We just know that things will follow. For example, if we just post beautiful pictures of our beers those people will eventually make it inside.

Have you ever considered using other platforms like Snapchat or Periscope?

Jonathan Gandolf: We’ve already experimented with Periscope a couple of times.

Snapchat is one that we haven’t used yet but I’m sure we’ll be using it soon. There are many moments where I come across content that would be ideal for Snapchat. One reason we haven’t used it yet is due to it’s demographic but times are changing. I just read an article that said Snapchat is expected to “10X” it’s growth this year compared to other social media channels. That’s exactly why I feel very strongly about using the platform this year.