’s presence on the popular social network Twitter has grown exponentially since the @BluePointBrewer account was created nearly two years ago.
The company’s desire to engage and interact with fellow beer lovers through “tweets” have helped the Patchogue-based small craft brewery gain 3,244 followers (and counting).
Curt Potter, the brewery's director of branding and communications, who established the account on April 21, 2009, emphasized the importance of using sites such as Twitter to promote the brewery and reach out to fans.
“It's what we need to be doing now,” he said. “It’s pretty cool to sit and watch our Twitter feed and number of mentions. We’re definitely seeing the connection and results.”
Having the ability to use sites such as Twitter and Facebook has changed the way the brewery approaches business. Traditional advertising is “tough, both budget- and geography-wise” for a small craft brewery, Potter said, adding that with Twitter, a business can truly reach the audience they want to reach.
The brewery’s number of Facebook page “likes” are also impressive with more than 10,000 fans.
According to Potter, it seems as if there is never enough time to do all that he would like to do with the brewery’s Twitter and Facebook pages. He spends at least a couple of hours a day on the sites, and it's not just the tweets/posts that consume his time, it’s what he finds once he starts looking through the profiles of the brewery’s fans.
“It’s like going down a rabbit hole, all the researching,” Potter said referring to his investigations online of all things beer through searches of people, other breweries and stores/restaurants who sell beer.
Not that he’s complaining. Interacting with beer enthusiasts is entertaining because the online beer community is generally a friendly one, Potter said.
“How much more fun can you have than working with a brewery, talking about beer and engaging with beer nuts?” he asked. “There couldn’t really be a better product or business to publicize through social networking.”
The brewery’s followers often post amusing things when mentioning the brewery or Blue Point beer. Just this past week, Potter said a male follower tweeted about enjoying a (Blue Point) Spring Fling while his wife shampooed the carpet.
“This lets me have a lot of fun with the response,” Potter said. “Twitter lets you engage and have fun with it, which is perfect for beer.”
Though the brewery hasn’t ever crafted a new brew based on a suggestion from a Twitter follower, they have had “a ton of requests and suggestions,” Potter said.
His philosophy is that you shouldn’t be on Twitter if you’re not going to do it right, and said it is one of his pet peeves when people are on Twitter just to gain a ton of followers. Blue Point Brewery follows 2,918 other Twitter members, which is nearly the amount of followers it has.
In the spirit of the craft beer industry, Potter said the brewery’s social networking efforts are “all about sharing and camaraderie.”
“If I’m not engaging and responding to people," he said, "then I’m not doing a big part of my job."
