Did you know that on average, beer, wine, and liquor brands have an engagement rate of 1.53% on social media, yet the most highly engaged alcohol brands have an engagement rate of 2.85%? Since the pandemic, it’s no surprise that e-commerce saw a surge, and online alcohol purchases were no exception. Beverage e-commerce grew by 42% on social media in 2020 across the core markets. This means that brands have a huge opportunity to boost engagement and build a loyal and engaged community, leading to more conversions.
It's clear that alcohol e-commerce is thriving, which is why your brand's social media presence must also be thriving. This goes beyond just posting fun content but by forging an online social community through thoughtful communication.
To sustain a strong brand reputation and protect your audience, your brand must ensure its online community consists of legal drinking-age consumers. Create community guidelines that clearly state who can view and share your content. Moderate the comments section to ensure that no inappropriate content is being shared in the comments section and ensure that your audience comprises adults of legal drinking age.
BrandBastion’s Moderation & Alerts Solution can help protect your brand from situations that it considers sensitive or dangerous.
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Grey Goose makes following the rules fun and easy by stating in their Instagram bio, “Sip Responsibly” and “Must be legal drinking age to view/share.”
Many alcohol brands have a strong community in the real world, but it's important (and sometimes tricky) to extend that community to the online world. One way to create an engaged community is to respond to comments at scale. I don't mean a simple "thx," but instead, a thoughtful reply addressing the consumer by name. Alcohol brands tend to have strong brand identities, and it can be fun to bring that identity to the online space by engaging in a fun, humorous, or even sarcastic tone! Your community grows when you engage them.
If your brand is having trouble responding to comments at scale across social accounts, consider BrandBastion's Customer Engagement Solution. BrandBastion's Customer Engagement Solution issues public, customized, and personalized responses to customer complaints on a brand's behalf. We can also handle customer complaints in a private channel, using a public-to-private flow. In this case, responses are issued on the brands' behalf publicly (to comments) and privately (through Messenger) to make the customer service journey as fast and efficient as possible.
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Hard Seltzer brand, White Claw, has a large online community of white claw lovers. The brand helps engage and maintain that community by engaging with its followers and responding to them. Here, you can see a fan community comment that the brand chose to praise and engage.
It’s important to steer clear of harmful or dangerous hashtags such as #drunk or #alcoholic. These are sensitive topics and are likely surrounded by sensitive content. Steer clear of promoting underage drinking at all costs by strategizing the hashtags your brand wants to use. Consider using some of these: #mixologist #Happyhour #bartenderlife. Bartenders and bar owners always follow alcohol accounts and are always looking for new and exciting recipes. Engage them by taking advantage of the use of hashtags in the comments section.
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Popular gin brand, Bombay Sapphire, manages to engage bartenders by using the #cocktailinspo hashtag.
Whether you want to add drinks recipes to your stories or ‘house rules’ to make space for a bio free from community guidelines, consider making stories and then adding them to your highlights. Consistent stories are wonderful for engagement as they fall at the top of your followers' feeds and boost your brand’s discoverability. Alcohol brands, in particular, can ask questions, post quizzes, and run polls to get followers extra involved in your brand and create community.
Smirnoff is extra creative with the use of their Instagram highlights. They have a fun and games section, a recipes section, and a hang-out from home section to get people engaged.
Discover more trends in the alcohol industry here!
We moderate comments across paid and organic on your behalf 24/7, manage customer responses, provide custom insights, and issue alerts on major activity unfolding on your accounts.
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