Rock & Brews Social Media Guidelines: Instagram

Welcome to the band! With our touring team expanding, we have created our social media best practice guidelines to ensure you are set up for success with your department. This particular portion will be covering Instagram and our policies for creating, posting, sharing, commenting, and messaging. We want to ensure it is seamless between those who have access to the account to guarantee consistent, quality, A-list postings.

Why do we use social media?

Our employees and our audience are on social media, and we need to meet them there. It is crucial to tune in to what they are saying about their experience as consumers and workers. Their word affects our reputation and success. We need to be aware of our feedback that can be missed by not being a part of social media. It can act as free PR if we reach out, post, and engage correctly. We could even use the feedback to create surveys and determine what products should continue, stop, or return. Not only can it help our reputation, but it can also save us from legal trouble and ensure we are clear in our communication efforts. It also creates an additional outlet for a wider audience to connect with. Our overall tone on social media is to create a family-friendly environment but with a little more edge. We do have live entertainment offerings to showcase, and our rock and roll vision and imagery suggest values and tones more in line with the 70s, 80s, and 90s. We can use this playful tone along with catchphrases and sayings in our postings to keep a consistent style and branding.

Content Creation

The following are guidelines for the type of content we post each day. We post every other day as too many posts create clutter and can disengage our audience. We typically post between 6pm to 8pm to cater to both the west and east coasts as we have 20 locations across the country. This would be the average dinner time and people will see these more often when they are about to get off of work and figure out where they want to eat or are sitting down and relaxing for the night. While it may be 5pm somewhere, 9am would not be absolute best time to post about new beer offerings. We follow the following schedule and then restart:

• Week 1 postings are Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday.
• Week 2 postings are Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday.

The overall feed must be orderly with a grunge/rock and roll aesthetic with colors, red, black, and yellow to keep a consistent look to the overall page and our brand. We want to keep balanced with our types of posts and have outlined what will be posted on the different days of the week.

• Mondays are sport or physical related posts #MatchMonday
• Tuesdays are for new or featured food or drink related items #TreatTuesday
• Wednesdays are days we feature pets that come in since we are pet friendly #WhiskerWednesday
• Thursdays are throwbacks with best hits, best costumes, best food with our play on names. Any type of content that can connect to our rock and roll theme. #ThrowbackThursday
• Fridays are for features. We will showcase the best guest experience moments or share guest’s photos from one of our 20 locations. #FeatureFriday
• Saturdays and Sundays are days we promote our exclusive brunch for the weekend. #SippingSaturday / #SunriseSunday

Captioning

Each post must include the corresponding hashtag for that day as well as #RockNBrew. 5–7 additional hashtags are allowed and must be agreed upon by the team. If it is a repost or not our own original content, the original poster/submitter must be tagged in the caption to give the proper credit. The location feature must be used to tag the photo’s location to increase engagement and those who are searching for our different location options. There will be a 150 character limit on captions, not including hashtags or the original poster’s caption if it is included. Below are some previous posts from our page. We will highlight the positive and negative attributes of each post as examples.

This post is an example of featuring a pet on what we will start as #WhiskerWednesday. The caption is within guidelines; however, there are a few too many hashtags. The image itself also lacks centering and proper coloring adjustment to follow the overall page’s aesthetic.

This post is an example of the type of content we would feature on #TreatTuesday. The caption is a perfect length with the use of an emoji, and the amount of hashtags is great. The main issue here is the black border. When taking the photos, we do not want to have borders on any postings and must be cropped accordingly.

This post is another example of #TreatTuesday or even #FeatureFriday, as it features our new hot sauce offering. The caption has a good reference and provides information on the product featured as well. However, there are too many hashtags that are not fully relevant. Instead of tagging each location, one could state in the original caption that it is available at most locations and to check the website for details.

This is a great example of #FeatureFriday! The caption features a fun “National Day” and follows the red, black, and family-friendly aesthetic. It could use a few more hashtags in this case but does include the location tag at the top!

Commenting/Customer Responses

For every comment we receive, we must respond to their comment. If positive, thank them and engage back. If negative, follow up with an apology first and then ask them to send a message and we can follow up or provide a link for them to submit further information. Not only will an increase in comments help our reach and analytics, but it will create a better rapport with our audience to establish better relationships.

Direct Messages

We must respond to all direct messages that are sent through the app. All messages must be responded to within 24 hours of being sent. Timeliness on social media is crucial and often where people look for fast responses versus reaching out via email. We want to ensure that service and features are provided and create a positive experience for our customers. If the message contains a complaint, apologize first and ask for further details. If the situation needs remedying, ask to follow up via email to create a better system to file their information in and accommodate from there. Our tone here should be more professional especially when trying to mediate guest situations. This will ensure they know we are taking their matter seriously and will be handled accordingly.

Stories

We do utilize the “stories” function on our page. We can use this to showcase and repost casual everyday posts that do not fit our typical aesthetic. We can post pictures of our employees working, guests and highlight our live artists who come in to play. Every Wednesday, there will be a poll for people to select which drink/food item they want to be our next featured item. These winnings will be posted on the Tuesday posts for our regular feed.

Finally, don’t forget to play along with our audience and have fun! When we are in character, talking in slang, and incorporating people in to our fun, rock and roll atmosphere on social media, it makes their experience of coming into the restaurant that much more engaging and memorable.

#UFCJCOnline

References

Cyca, M. (2020, August 19). 7 of the Best Social Media Campaigns (And What You Can Learn From Them). Hootsuite. https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-campaign-strategy/

Newberry, C. (2020, September 08). How to Create a Social Media Style Guide for Your Brand (Free Template). Hootsuite. https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-style-guide/

Newberry, C., & LePage, E. (2021, May 14). How to Create a Social Media Strategy in 8 Easy Steps (Free Template). Hootsuite. https://blog.hootsuite.com/how-to-create-a-social-media-marketing-plan/

Sehl, K. (2020, February 03). How to Create Effective Social Media Guidelines for Your Business. Hootsuite. https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-guidelines/

York, A. (2017, April 24). 5 Social Media Best Practices Every Marketer Must Follow. SproutSocial. https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-best-practices/