The Lost Abbey Explains Why Social Media has Become the Face of a Brewery

Located in North San Diego, California, and in the original Stone Brewing Company location you’ll find The Lost Abbey, Port Brewing and The Hop Concept. For the uniformed, it may seem like they are three different breweries but in reality it’s the same brewery producing three different brands under different names.

Why, you ask? To put it in very simple terms, the beers each brand produces are so different that it made more sense to divide them up into three different brands.

The Lost Abbey focuses on Belgian-inspired and premium beers like Avant Garde and Judgment Day, while Port Brewing focuses on American / West Coast-style beers like Wipeout, Old Viscosity, and Shark Attack. The Hop Concept really only offer 4 seasonal beers a year that provide “honest, hoppy beers, from the people who know how to make them” as they put it.

One of the biggest challenges this brewery faces as a result of the three different brands it operates is being able to tell the story of each brand effectively. You see, each brand has it’s own identity and unique voice. Being able to speak to the appropriate audience is a major key to the success of the Lost Abbey, Port Brewing and The Hop Concept brands.

Adam Martinez (pictured above) is the mastermind behind the success of this brewery’s online success and massive following online. Adam is the Director of Media & Marketing at Lost Abbey and leads a small team that makes it all happen.

I interviewed Adam to pick his brain and ask him a few questions about what makes The Lost Abbey such a dominant brewery online and how they have accomplished the loyal following that they have.

How important is it for Port Brewing/ The Lost Abbey/ The Hop Concept to have a strong presence on social media?

Adam Martinez: Incredibly important.

Social media is the new wave right now and as we try to get away from it, we get pulled more into it.

A great examples is the recent incident we had with the release of Duck Duck Gooze 2016, we were posting email addresses and asking people to email us directly with their questions and people still reverted back to asking us questions on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

So, while we want to get more direct with consumers, consumers are more likely to want to communicate through social media in a more open avenue. For us, this way of communicating is not ideal because then I have to pay someone to constantly look at these questions and sort out between the legitimate ones and the trolls.

Social media for a brewery is integral. You can’t just not do it.

Describe the purpose of Social Media for a brewery like Port Brewing/ The Lost Abbey/ The Hop Concept.

Adam Martinez: Branding for us is huge.

Also telling our story as a brewery is very important for us. There are close to 3,000 breweries right now in America all trying to tell their story.

So, we’re trying to tell our story right now of who we are and why we do the things we do.

Why we barrel age beers.

Why we’re very art-forward with our Lost Abbey brand.

Why on the Hop Concept brand we’re very “stripped down” and literal about the beers.

Dank and Sticky and Tropical and Juicy; why do we call them that? Because that’s exactly what they’re like.

So, our main purpose with social media is to tell our story of why we’re different than the guy down the street. We’re not saying we’re better or worse than them but just different. Every brewery is different and putting that in a story telling version on social media is important to us.

How do you handle telling the stories of three different brands (Port Brewing/ The Lost Abbey/ The Hop Concept) on social media all at the same time?

Adam Martinez: Right now, Port and Lost Abbey share the same social media channel only because those two brands were together for 7 years when we first opened in 2006.

We created The Hop Concept in early 2015 and for that reason it has it’s own separate social channel.

I haven’t separated Port and Lost Abbey simply because I don’t have a full time social media person that can create dedicated content, good content and good consistent communication for each post.

So, handling the three brands is very tough because on one hand you’re telling the story of Lost Abbey which is more of a boutique brand while on the other hand Port is more of a lifestyle brand or an every-day brand.

An then you have The Hop Concept which is a more of velocity brand because we don’t brew a whole ton of it so it moves pretty quickly.

It really just comes down to changing our tone with each post and what we’re posting. Being more reverent with Lost Abbey, a little more “Happy go lucky” with Port and very direct with The Hop Concept brand.

What are the major challenges when managing the social media presence of three different breweries/brands?

Adam Martinez: The biggest challenge comes down to monitoring every social media channel. It takes a lot effort and time to really sort through all the comments and find actual questions that need to be given a response to.

How many hours a week do you spend on social media?

Adam Martinez: About 25-30 hours a week.

In a perfect world, how many hours a week do you feel are actually necessary in order to do social media right?

Adam Martinez: I would love to have someone for 40 hours a week. I would help us create more content, monitor our feeds better, and be able to tell people more of our story.

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

Adam Martinez: Oh, it’s essential! You can’t not do it.

We’re past the point of people saying “you have to go to our website to do stuff”.

Social media is pretty much and “aggregate search engine” and you need to use it as such. People go to social media and they pick all their topics they’re interested in and then they follow them and like them so that their given their information all in one place.

Social media is a tool. It’s not just soccer moms and people posting selfies. If you’re not looking at social media as a tool, you’re not looking at it close enough.

If you had to pick one social media platform for Port Brewing/ The Lost Abbey/ The Hop Concept, which one would it be and why?

Adam Martinez: Instagram is the one we lean on the most and the one we’re the most protective of. If we don’t have a great picture to tell our story, we rather not post at all.

With Instagram we also get the most interaction and the most amount of audience penetration.

I also feel like the Instagram audience has a much more positive vibe and is an other reason why I would pick them as my favorite platform.

What is your biggest frustration about Social Media as it relates to a brewery?

Adam Martinez: People’s determination to communicate every little thing though social media.

We have a website and we make our email addresses very public so people can contact us directly with questions or concerns on there. We’ll also answer you right away because we work in front of our computers and we’re always on. Yet, people still choose to reach out to us with questions, not through a direct message but directly under our social media posts which makes it very difficult to identify and it’s also very time consuming for us.

How do you measure the ROI of social media?

Adam Martinez: It’s tough to measure ROI on social media.

To me, measuring ROI is really just looking at engagement and making sure customers feel we’re creating a good channel of communication.

How do you justify the expense of hiring a guy to spend 25-30 hours a week on social media and how do you sell it to the owners with out having a direct ROI to show?

Adam Martinez: It really requires owners who understand that social media is the way of the future.

You need someone knowledgable to constantly monitor every platform or your brand is going to get trashed online.

It becomes a sales pitch to try to explain that I’m more valuable spending time on the things that have a clear ROI than spending the time that I need to spend on social media.