Reflection: Social Media Management of Brewery Bhavana
Below is a write-up discussing my time as the social media manager for Brewery Bhavana–a restaurant and brewery in Raleigh, NC–from January 2024 to the present. You can learn more about the company on the website here.
INTRO:
While my time as the official Social Media Manager for Brewery Bhavana began in January of 2024, my time with the company as a whole actually started two years earlier. Having just graduated from NC State University two weeks prior, I snagged a job at the restaurant in late December of 2021 bussing tables with the goal of making enough money to pay the bills until I landed a marketing related job.
By April, I had been hired as an Associate Media Planner working remotely for an agency called Madwell based out of Brooklyn, NY. This occupied my weekdays, but I maintained my position bussing tables at Bhavana on the weekends. I’m not sure why I decided to work 7 days a week–I’m sure the extra cash and fun coworkers were a part of that decision making–but it worked out that I did, as my time with Madwell ended a short four months later during a round of layoffs that hit many marketing agencies in the summer of 2022.
I went back to full-time at the restaurant that July as I searched for a new job, moving over to barbacking and eventually serving and bartending. By late fall of that year I decided to take a break from the job hunt. There was ultimately no rush, and I had become very discouraged by the lack of opportunities for young professionals at the time and the lack of responses from hiring managers.
While I grew as a server and bartender, I began discussing my social media experience with management. I had assisted with a small product shoot a couple months into working at the restaurant, but–until the end of 2023–the company was working with a different social media manager who lived out of state. My marketing experience discussions evolved into my assistance with content creation for the existing social media manager during the later half of that year, and then eventually management decided to move forward with me as the sole manager at the start of the 2024 new year.
BREAKDOWN:
What were the expectations as I stepped into this role?
When it came to strategy, I did not have any specific metrics to hit or KPIs to monitor and report on. My contract deliverables were three posts a week on Instagram and Facebook, with at least one being an Instagram Reel, and for at least one Instagram Story per week that was not a guest-generated repost. The main goals were to maintain a consistent social presence and to prioritize meaningful engagement. Any increase in followers or engagement that came alongside growth in these areas was considered an added bonus but not the main goal. With the Instagram page sitting at approximately 32K followers when I started and the restaurant itself hitting record sales the year prior, the owner recognized that the social media was unlikely to be a source of consistent conversions in direct sales and instead saw the pages’ primary roles to be extensions of the brand itself. My job was to maintain brand image and utilize the page to build upon the existing community around the business and its identity.
What challenges was I facing when I began?
While the Instagram page had a solid base following, it struggled to garner engagement from said followers, ultimately impacting the page’s reach. The previous social media manager was posting consistently, but much of the previous content was extremely similar, with certain images being posted multiple times over the course of the two years prior to my appointment. Additionally, Instagram Reels were rarely utilized, resulting in a page that lacked depth or variety.
In fairness to the previous manager, they were located out of state and struggled to get timely information on new products from the restaurant side of the business due to the large existing workload of the front-of-house managers on site in Raleigh. It’s nearly impossible to provide accurate updates on new cocktails or the occasional holiday wine special when you are not informed of their existence! My presence both in Raleigh and at the restaurant as a server was a huge selling point for my appointment to this role, as it allowed for the content to stay up to date and relevant.
That being said, the updates worthy of being posted on the business’ socials were few and far between compared to many other restaurants. Due to the restaurant being very high volume, the food menu almost never changes, leaving only new beer releases and drink menu updates to provide any novelty to the social media pages. This certainly made the challenge of providing variety to the business’s socials that much harder.
What was my approach to content strategy as a whole?
Due to the social media goals being broad, I had a lot of flexibility when it came to the content being posted. I did my best to highlight both the restaurant and the brewery equally, though the introductions of new beers on a consistent basis–and the lack thereof when it came to the food menu–made this challenging at times.
I always strived to create individual posts with the Instagram page as a whole in mind. Like I mentioned before, brand image and consistency was one of the few more explicit goals, so this was always top of mind when planning content. My efforts in this can be seen in these screenshots of the page below.
The content itself usually fell into three categories and revolved around one of five content pillars:
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New Product Announcements: New Beers, New Beer Batches, New Cocktails
Both announcement-focused pillars are pretty straightforward, though this one in particular saw more use than the other, as these announcements were much more frequent than the other type. As a result, this category was almost exclusively responsible for any novelty brought to the social pages.
Business Announcements: Hours Changes, New Location Updates
While posts included in this pillar were less frequent, they usually garnered more attention as a result. Any announcements surrounding the business’s opening of its second location–set to open in April of this year (2025), for example–easily out performed all other posts. This category featured a higher percentage of graphics than many of the others as this was frequently my best opportunity to include any text in the image posted itself.
Physical Product: Food Imagery, Educational/Informational Content
Frequently, content pertaining to this category acted as filler between more exciting posts, but there was still value to these images. New diners or customers could look at the content of our dishes or our core beers for inspiration when planning their first meal with us. Just because many of our followers were previous diners does not mean that there wasn’t value to be provided in our content to potential new followers and guests. These less exciting posts grounded the brand identity on the social media pages.
Emotional Product: Aesthetic, Experience
Beyond the physical products of beer and Asian-based food, many diners come to Brewery Bhavana for the experience as a whole with a large factor being the aesthetics of the space itself. Neglecting to advertise such a large and appealing part of the dining experience would result in an inaccurate portrayal of the brand.
Brand Community & Identity: "Behind Bhavana", General BTS
This last category acknowledges the humanity behind the business. At the end of the day, I believe consumers connect to a brand much more strongly when they feel they know the faces behind it. This pillar is dedicated to demonstrating the people behind the products, with the primary type of content coming out of this category being my mini “Behind Bhavana” Series.
