With a market size measured at £1.4b, the craft beer industry is set to increase for years to come.
With the impact of both Brexit and the Coronavirus pandemic looming, independent stores risked being shut down, destroying the hard work of many.
However, creating a cult following enables more revenue and eliminates the fear of closing down.
But how do you create a cult brand for craft beer?
Trust, Loyalty and Community
Craft beer has become increasingly popular in recent years, with many craft beer fans seeking out unique and interesting flavours from small, independent breweries. In this highly competitive market, it is essential for craft beer brands to stand out and create a loyal and dedicated cult following.
One way to do this is by focusing on building trust, loyalty, and a sense of community among your customers.
To create a cult following for your craft beer brand, you must first establish yourself as a trustworthy and reliable source of high-quality brews.
This means consistently delivering on your promises and providing excellent customer service for your consumers. Not only producing consistent and delicious beer but also being reliable in the way you communicate and interact with your customers.
Once you have established trust with your customers, you can start to build a loyal fanbase and create a sense of community by engaging with your audience offline and on your social media platforms. This could involve hosting events, offering exclusive promotions or simply providing a welcoming and inclusive space for craft beer lovers and beer enthusiasts to gather and share their passion. As a result, the consumers become loyal to your business through trusting your brand and feeling a part of a group!
It is also important to engage with customers and address their concerns.
By focusing on trust, loyalty, and community, you can create a cult following for your craft beer brand and set yourself apart in a crowded and competitive market.
Transparency and Authenticity
Being transparent and honest in all communication is crucial to gain trust from your audience. Whether it’s about the ingredients in your beer or the way you conduct business, transparency and authenticity is key!
In a world where consumers are bombarded with choices; transparency and authenticity can help your brand stand out and create a dedicated community of fans.
When it comes to building a cult following, transparency and honesty are even more important. This is because a cult following is typically made up of highly-engaged and loyal customers who have a deep connection with your brand. By being transparent and honest in all of your communication, you can foster a sense of trust and credibility with your cult following and further strengthen their loyalty to your brand.
Being transparent humanises your business.
This has worked extremely well for companies such as Lush and Lucy and Yak who both have a strong cult following. By doing this, you can build a positive reputation and increase consumer trust through customer satisfaction and transparency.
Consistency
Being consistent is a key element of any social media platform. More so when creating a cult following.
Developing a clear and consistent brand message for your brewery is imperative in providing a good sense of trust between the consumers and the business.
A consistent brand means you should have the same look, tone and personality on all of your marketing materials and social media platforms. This is crucial for creating a following because your brand will be easily recognisable.
This is expertly done by Beavertown Brewery. Although their branding is incredibly creative, they are consistent with it and therefore it is intriguing and quickly distinguishable from other brands.
Creating a consistent brand for craft beer companies is important because it produces a united and connected aesthetic, product and service. Implementing this into your content can have a bigger impact on your consumers. This is because it can increase your engagement rate and establish trust and credibility.
Inspire your followers
To create a cult following for your beverage company, you must inspire your followers and provide them with a sense of connection, belonging and excitement. This means not only offering high-quality beer, but also providing your customers with a unique and engaging experience that they can’t get anywhere else.
One way to inspire your followers is by sharing the story behind your brand and your beers. This could involve highlighting the local ingredients you use, the unique brewing process you employ, or the inspiration behind your craft breweries.
By sharing your story and passion for craft beer, you can connect with your customers and create a sense of excitement and curiosity about your brand.
To further connect audiences with your brand, share what you care about!
If this is supporting a charitable cause or supporting local independent stores! Inspire your audience to connect with you. This will help build a strong and loyal fan base.
In addition, you can inspire your followers by providing them with exclusive and limited-edition beers, or by offering special promotions and events. For example, you could host a beer-tasting event where customers can sample rare and experimental brews, or offer a discount on a new release to loyal customers.
These exclusive experiences will not only inspire your followers, but also create a sense of exclusivity and community among your consumers. As a result, they will continue to want to buy your products and follow your craft beer business.
Utilise SEO and Increase your Discoverability
To create a cult following for your craft beer brand, you must be discoverable by potential customers. One way to increase your discoverability is by utilising search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques on your website and social media channels.
To improve your SEO, you should include relevant and popular keywords in your website content, bio and captions. Don’t forget to include hashtags as they make your content more searchable. Doing this will help search engines understand what your brand is about and make it easier for potential customers to find you and widen your audience.
You should use location tags in your posts and engage with other users, whether this is your location or a British beer festival. It will increase your visibility and reach on social media platforms.
Furthermore, it is important to engage with other users and craft beer drinkers!
Social media algorithms are built on a foundation of engagement. The more engaging your posts are, the more likely algorithms will push your content!
Additionally, by regularly producing high-quality content and engaging with your audience on social media, you can build trust and credibility, and foster a sense of community among your followers. SEO can help you to attract new customers and cultivate a loyal and dedicated following for your brand.
By utilising SEO techniques and making it easier for potential customers to find you, you can increase your discoverability and reach a wider audience. This will not only help you to attract new customers but also improve the visibility of your brand and create a cult following.
To Summarise
Trust is imperative for building a cult following – this can be done by being transparent and honest with your consumers.
Build a community off and online, people enjoy feeling a part of something bigger! You could even encourage this through members-only exclusives!
Inspire and excite your consumers so they will always want to come back for more.
Always be consistent with everything that you do.Be that communication, branding or how often you post content. Consistency is KEY!
Engage, Engage, Engage! You should both encourage engagement on your posts and also interact and engage with your followers!
Utilise SEO by making sure there are relevant and popular keywords within your content.
Include hashtags in your posts to make your content more searchable.
In such a competitive market with a product that sells itself, it’s getting harder and harder to stand out from the crowd. With a sea of breweries, wineries and distilleries, it can be challenging to find inspiration for your next social media campaign but it’s not impossible! There are many ways to get creative with your campaigns…here are some of our favourites!
BACARDI : #BacardiHouseParty Campaign
The Bacardi house party campaign brought the fun back into their rum with musicals, partying and other experimental, creative experiences. Created by groups of friends partying, the experimental strategy highlights that you don’t need a massive budget to produce an innovative campaign that brings a sense of fun, excitement and relatability. Whilst BrandChannel coined the campaign the ‘Ultimate Millennial Fantasy’, it’s a fun way to play around with different target audiences. Perfectly executed with Bacardi Party Sessions, urging musicians to create the best ‘Bacardi Party Anthem’ to party with Bacardi, designing an experience alongside a drink.
How to be inspired by Bacardi:
#BacardiHouseParty invites people to the inner circle and enables the audience to feel a part of something special. Alongside the hashtag, the experience is a shareable one! Make your own collaborative experience that is fun and interactive, using unique hashtags to get people talking.
Neill Wine: Commune Magazine
Neill Wine Commune Magazines highlights sometimes the conventional way is best! Whilst magazines are a competitive market, the Commune Magazine is transferable and easily shared. As a result, this is a stable and constant way to get your brand out there and network with others through interviews and collaborations. Neill Wine have demonstrated that they are thought leaders, portraying their impressive expertise and knowledge. Consumers are able to recognise this, as a result the company’s consumers feel loyal to the brand. A magazine is a really fun and creative way to get your brand out there, and once the template is created, you can change the content throughout the seasons, holidays and events!
How to be inspired by Neill Wine:
Like Neill Wine, create your own magazine to be shared across social media, increase hits to your website and strengthen your brand identity. Useissuu.com to make your own flipbook and bring your content to life that will capture your consumers attention. Issuu has all the tools you need to create an interactive and creative magazine, using your own content and images. You can even embed videos, audio and slideshows to create fun, exciting and knowledgeable content!
Smirnoff: Show up, Show off #ServeFlavour
Smirnoff have progressively collaborated with popular drag queens and kings to promote their limited-edition vodka. The company have recognised the campaign isn’t just about the product, but the people behind it. This marketing campaign has had a lot of success as it gives an opportunity for people to be themselves and humanises the brand. Not only has this brought in the HUGE following of popular drag stars to their page, but it has also increased their social media engagement as consumers get a say in the ‘final’ of their Show up, Show off #ServeFlavour competition created between the drag stars. This is such a fun and creative way to get the audience involved, with lots of opportunity to create instagram reels.
How to be inspired by Smirnoff’s #ServeFlavour
Humanise your brand and connect with your customers by having fun with your brand!! Like Smirnoff, bring your brand to life with unforgettable characters, stories and humour. Although your budget might not be as big as Smirnoff’s, you can still create competitions and interactive, relatable stories where your customers can choose what happens next. The best way to do this is by creating a story that will resonate with them on a personal level. You can do this by asking the question, “what would my customers like to see from me?”. People love to feel like they are a part of something bigger, so why not include them in the story? Humans are naturally social creatures, so as a brand, it’s important to give them an experience that is fun, yet relevant to your product or service
Bottlechop : Great hampers, great wine and great art! What else could you ask for?
Bottlechop have expanded their product and brand in a unique and modern fashion. First, their hampers are seasonal, personalised and offer great gifts, which appeal to differing clients and are able to provide an experience alongside their product. However, more notably, the company have kept ahead of the game by collaborating with local artists, such as Ruby Hughes (@sshepaints) which is an innovative approach to expanding their target audience and engagement. Through this, they have been able to reach potential customers from different demographics but also have a cross-over of similar interests. This is a clever way to build up brand loyalty and increase sales by engaging and exciting customers, who will ask the question…who will they collaborate with next?
How to be inspired by Bottlechop:
Look at collaborating with local independents! From artists to sauce makers, there are so many different creatives that would love to collaborate with your product. Collaborating aids in advancing your networking skills and engagement on your social media. It’s a win-win for everyone involved! Alternatively, like Bottlechop, create your own seasonal hampers to appeal to existing and new customers, engaging them with your brand. The holiday season is a great time of year to do this, but there’s no reason why you can’t plan on creating new hampers throughout the year.
War Horse Brewing: Pop Culture Aesthetic
Whilst War Horse Brewing is a fairly small company, they have been able to engage customers with their brand and create something fun using their Pop Culture Aesthetic cans. They have achieved this by using their horse mascot and dressing it up as different historical pop culture icons, such as Marilyn Monroe, Ziggy Stardust and Hulk Hogan. Not only are they a fun and creative way to broaden their consumers, but it keeps existing customers wanting more and creates fun and modern collectables. This product isn’t just about the beer, it’s about having fun whilst drinking their beer!
How to be inspired by War Horse Brewing:
War Horse Brewing is a great example of companies having fun with their products! Similar to War Horse Brewing many brands have created a mascot, don’t be afraid to get creative. Whether that means dressing up your mascot as different historical pop culture icons or doing something more whimsical like creating your own character based on an animal or person, it can help you stand out from the crowd and make people remember your brand. Don’t be afraid to take risks! Some people might say that War Horse Brewing’s branding is too much – but we think it’s just what they needed to stand out from the crowd and remind us how much fun drinking beer can be!
Drinkbabe: MEMES!
The Instagram account @drinkbabe highlights significantly that humour sells! With 164k followers on instagram, the company market their product without really ever showing it through the unconventional and creative approach; memes. This modernises their product that quickly and easily follows trends and contemporary culture. The reason why this strategy works so well is because it’s not just about being funny, but creating a community around their brand. However, the company’s humour is what makes them stand out from the rest of the competitive market. As a result, they have been able to produce memes and posts that are shareable, fun and create a strong brand identity and consumer loyalty.
How to be inspired by Drinkbabe:
Have fun with your social media if it fits the brand – let your personality shine through and people will buy into it. Use humour to create a community around your brand and make it easy for your audience to share and engage with you on social media. Be creative with your content, but don’t overdo it! A great mix of memes, video clips and regular posts will keep people engaged in your brand’s world and help you build an audience that is loyal to your brand.
To sum it all up:
Create a fun, interactive, sharable experience for your audience.
Produce your own magazine that is easily shared.
Humanise your brand and connect with your customers by having fun with your brand!
Collaborate with local services or creatives to widen your consumer base and increase your engagement.
Design your own mascot to have fun with, and to make your brand stand out from the rest.
Be creative with your content to build your brand loyalty.
A start-up’s guide to performing well on social media.
What Are Social Media Algorithms?
An algorithm is a combination of metrics, tailored to suit the user experience. Each social media platform has its own algorithm. Algorithms determine which content appears in a user’s feed by relevance rather than publish date. Where it uses several signals to determine what content users should see next. The algorithms consider things such as your location, time spent on the site, who you follow and interact with on the network, the type of device you’re viewing from (desktop/mobile), and more. Before algorithms were introduced, most social media feeds presented content in chronological order. This meant that the newest post was at the top and older posts appeared below it. As a result of the introduction, social media algorithms take charge of determining the content you see based on your behaviour online.
An algorithm does the hard work of sifting through all content by using its own set of criteria to determine whether a post is relevant or not, and disregards any posts that are considered low-quality. However, algorithms are constantly evolving, meaning content creators and marketers must contend with the ever-changing algorithm.
How Do Social Media Algorithms Work
Whilst social media algorithms are founded on expert specialised machines, involving learning and data science. How it works requires both trial and error procedures and understanding and listening to the different algorithms of each platform.
Instagram
With over one billion users worldwide, the photo and video sharing networking service; Instagram have in the past been open and transparent surrounding the function of its algorithm. Instagram can be a difficult site to work out, especially with such a wide range of content such as reels and Instagram stories. According to Instagram, there are six ranking factors the site’s algorithm takes into consideration:
Interest: who and what you have liked in the past.
Relationship: content you have regularly liked, direct messages and accounts you have searched for.
Timeliness: When you post, how new is your content.
Frequency: How often you open the app. The less you open the app, Instagram will show you content it thinks you will enjoy more.
Following: The more accounts you are following, the better selection the algorithm has!
Session Time: The more you use the social networking app.
Instagram introduced the ability to switch from an algorithmic to a chronological feed in 2022. Whilst this is a critical change, it is still imperative to understand how the algorithm affects the content you see, especially if you want to broaden your audience.
Facebook
Facebook the online social networking site is arguably the biggest social media site, with over 2.91 Billion users worldwide. As a result, it is reasonable to say that Facebook’s algorithm is a dark mystery. Despite its changeable signals, Facebook has consistently discussed four key elements that connect the feed and how high it will appear on someone’s feed.
Relationship: How often do you react and comment on the content creator’s posts? This could include, a person, a group, a business or a public figure.
Content type: What type of material do you interact with the most, e.g photo or video?
Popularity: How many people have liked, commented and reacted to it? Is this post being shared
Recency: The newer the post, the more likely it will be placed higher on people’s feeds.
The Facebook algorithm appears to be ever-changing to contend with the wide range of opinions, discussions and culture, with the idea to connect its users with the most useful and significant piece of content for them.
TikTok
The newer social media app, Tiktok, possesses over one billion active users, worldwide. The video-sharing app’s mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. Due to this, TikTok reflects preferences unique to each user. This is where the algorithm is imperative, similar to Instagram and Facebook, engagement is essential. Tiktok has discussed four foundations for its algorithm:
User Interactions: Your engagement to other posts, liked videos, accounts followed and what posts you have commented on.
Video information: The length of the video, the captions (The character count has recently increased), the sounds and what different filters have been used.
Hashtags: Using relevant hashtags that contain keywords, important to remember SEO.
Device and account settings: Components that are tracked to optimise app performance, like language preference, country setting and device type
The TikTok algorithm is great for outreaching to different audiences both national and international. Despite being the newer of the social networking apps, it appears to have a huge movement behind it and an easier algorithm to work with due to trending sounds and filters, making it a great app to create content on.
LinkedIn
Despite being a professional platform, the networking site still has an algorithm similar to the other platforms. This is to ensure that valuable and relevant content is shown to the right audience. Due to the app being filled with like-minded industry people, the engagement rate on the app is high. Yet, Linkedln’s algorithm focuses on four main attributes:
Text-focused Content: Useful, helpful and detailed information on the content.
Timeliness: Finding the best time to post for your audience, for the most engagement.
Hashtags: Use more than five hashtags to make your content more traceable.
Comments: Engaging conversations within your comments
Engagement seems to be one of the main aspects of the site’s algorithm, which means that if you’re able to engage people, then you’ll get better results. Connecting with business-minded people not just expands your network but could possibly get the algorithm’s eye.
Why Is Being Consistent Important?
Being consistent is a fundamental principle for any social media platform’s algorithm. The key to success is consistency in every aspect of your social media, not only for the algorithm but for your audience too. Consistency is one of the most important factors for any business and social media marketing, especially when it comes to the content which as a result affects the algorithm. It’s important to keep things fresh and interesting, but certain elements need to remain the same from day to day or week to week.
Consistent Brand
Having a consistent brand is imperative for any business, and this needs to be communicated on your social media. Brand recognition is essential in building a loyal and trustworthy following in social media, so it’s crucial to have a consistent brand online.
Consistent branding is important for any business. But what does that mean, exactly? And how can you make sure your brand is the same across all of your social media platforms?
Well, first of all: consistency means you should have the same look, feel and tone on each platform. Your Instagram bio should match your Facebook page bio. Your Twitter header should match your LinkedIn header. And so on and so forth.
But wait—doesn’t this make things boring? No! If anything, it makes things more exciting! You can be as creative as you want to be within the parameters of your brand’s guidelines, which allow you to show off your personality and make people feel like they know you better and humanise your brand.
Algorithms recognise that having a consistent user experience is important because users want to experience consistent results.
Consistent Posting & Content
Finding harmony for consistent posting can be a difficult hurdle to overcome. The balance isn’t between the type of content but the amount and timings. Adopting a social media strategy that maintains consistent posting and content is extremely important.
There are many types of content you can post, but you need to post frequently enough so that your audience feels connected with your brand and engaged in your content. Your audience should also feel like they are receiving updates in a timely manner. You don’t want them to feel as if they’ve been abandoned by your brand for months at a time.
The content you post should feel consistent with your brand personality, otherwise, it could be a quick and effective way to lose followers and consumers. The algorithm loves both consistent posting and consistent content. Frequent posting of content can result in more posts being seen by social media algorithms. Yet, the frequency with which you post is as important as the quality of your content. If you publish a lot of low-quality content, it will be filtered out by social media algorithms.
Consistent Aesthetics
Your profile aesthetics come hand-in-hand with consistent branding and consistent content. Many studies show that people are naturally drawn to visually appealing features offline and online. As a result, so does the algorithm.
Consistent aesthetics create cohesion and coherence in your photos and posts, which has an even bigger impact on consumers.
Aesthetic consistency is important for many reasons: it helps you build trust with your audience, establish credibility and authority, and increase engagement.
The most popular brands have mastered the art of consistency. They’ve found ways to make their brand look cohesive while still staying true to their core values and mission statement.
How To Be Consistent On Social Media
Social media consistency is key. You want your followers to know that they can rely on your content, whether it’s a picture of your dog on Instagram or a witty Tweet about politics. But it’s not always easy to get into the habit of posting consistently—especially with all the other things vying for our attention. So how do you make sure you’re giving your audience what they need?
Encourage Engagement
Engagement is a fundamental factor for most platforms’ algorithms. The more likes, comments and shares from your audience develop into a sort of reward from the algorithm. An easy way to engage with audiences by asking questions to increase your chances of comments and interactions.
Hashtags
Hashtags make your content more searchable and as a result, that post’s reach by connecting it to a certain category that people follow or explore. It is important to use specific and relevant hashtags that contain keywords. Regarding social algorithms, hashtags designate a category to your content to make it much more likely to appear to users and audiences interested in that particular hashtag.
Tags
Tagging other accounts and users produce a type of invitation for people to engage with your content and are a great way to build brand awareness and create a sense of community.
When you tag other accounts and users, it creates an invitation for them to engage with your content. It also helps you build relationships with those accounts, which can help you make connections in the future.
Create a content calendar
Creating a content calendar and a content strategy allows you as a creator not to be overwhelmed with the number of posts needed to stay consistent. You can plan out your content in advance, and create it all at once instead of trying to fit everything into one post. This is especially helpful in making sure that your content is of high quality rather than rushing low and poor-quality content out there, for the sake of consistency. The algorithm won’t pick this up and neither will your audience.
Listen to your audience
Listen to your audience for what works best for your social media. The algorithm loves engagement, the more engagement you get on your posts, the higher they will rank in the feeds of your followers, and the more likely they are to engage with them. So if your audience is responding more enthusiastically to one post than another, that might be an indicator that you’re using the right type of content—or even just the right approach—for that audience and platform.
What Else Impacts Social Media Algorithms
Social media algorithms are constantly changing and evolving, so what will impact you and your business now, might not impact it in a year. It’s not just about posting consistently, though that is essential.
The most important thing to remember is that social media algorithms are built on a foundation of engagement. Likes, comments and shares are what helps catch the eye of the algorithm. The more engaged your audience is, the more likely the algorithm will push your content.
In addition to engagement, it is crucial to make sure you have good content – This is obvious but often overlooked by businesses who focus on quantity over quality when it comes to content creation. You don’t want just any old post on Facebook or Twitter, you want something worth sharing with friends and family members! Create content for you, not just to be viral.
Furthermore, post regularly but don’t overdo it – If you post too much then people won’t see your posts because they’re buried under all the other content being posted by others. You need to post regularly enough so people can see what’s new without posting too often so people start ignoring your posts altogether!
Lastly, use hashtags – Hashtags help people find your business when they’re looking for specific information. People use hashtags on social media to connect with others who share their interests, so use hashtags to connect with your audience.
Conclusion
Consistent posting on social networks can help you achieve better results than if you post sporadically. When you’re constantly publishing content, you should keep the frequency of the scheduled posts consistent.
It will help your brand gain traction by increasing its reach and driving people towards your content. After all, when you post consistently, alongside encouraging engagement and creating high-quality content on social media, your audience can have a better understanding of what your brand represents.
Brand Stories: Lindsay Pinchuk – Founder & Ex-CEO of Baby Bump & Beyond and is an award-winning B2B Marketing Consultant
The way businesses market themselves has changed dramatically over the last ten years or so with the adoption of social media, the way businesses attract and speak to customers has evolved.
It is easier than ever to connect and communicate with customers or prospective buyers, and market research can be done in hours, rather than weeks by going directly to the consumer.
For a lot of brands, the goal is to build a community with their audience and do so online, through Facebook groups or membership programmes. Before the mass use of social media, brands had to operate differently to be able to do this. Lindsay Pinchuk, the founder and former CEO of Bump Club & Beyond is a fantastic example of this; she built her community in 2010 when it was based on meeting face-to-face rather than solely through a computer screen.
Founded in Chicago, Bump Club & Beyond held events across North America in over 30 different cities. The brand was aimed at both parents-to-be and to parents of children under five years old, connecting them through online and in-person events and offering product advice, resources and information. Lindsay has since moved away from Bump Club & Beyond, and offers her services as a Marketing Consultant, but we chatted to Lindsay about her experience building the hugely successful platform and how she created her loyal following.
How did you come up with the idea for Bump Club & Beyond?
When I was initially pregnant in 2010, before social media was a thing, I wanted real life community and support. Living in downtown Chicago, I had no friends who were pregnant so I decided to start hosting events for pregnant women. First, we did a prenatal workout then a shopping event, and eventually educational dinners. Through word of mouth and the need for this community in a big city, we filled our events from day one. Eventually, and through my background in ad sales and integrated marketing communications, we began working with all of the major baby brands. We created custom activations for Target, Nordstrom, The Honest Company, and more. We grew to host events in 30+ cities, reached 3MM per month and generated 7-figures in topline revenue from our community every year.
What are the trends that affect your industry?
First and foremost, consumer buying habits. The mom who was our customer in 2010 is not the mom of BCB today. She consumes media differently, she shops differently and she looks for advice differently. You have to stay up-to-date with changes to continue to meet her where she is. Also, social media is a major trend that impacted BCB and continues to do so. With the addition of new platforms, moms are in different places. Facebook was huge for BCB in 2010-2011, but now they need to be on Snapchat and TikTok. Lastly, in the baby space new products come out all the time because it is an incredibly innovative industry. It’s important to remain on top of all of the latest products and information because that is what this community wants. They want to know the latest and the greatest because they only want the best for their baby.
What is your favourite anecdote from Bump Club & Beyond?
I had a big competitor and we hated each other, but at the same time we were reaching different geographies. I also knew that these two women were the only people on the planet who understood what I did every day and what I dealt with.
One day, they asked me for lunch. We had a really great time, and forged both a friendship and relationship of support that still exists today, even after we both sold and exited our businesses. This just proves the point that there is enough business for everyone.
If your brand could be endorsed by a celebrity, who would it be?
Kristen Bell, we interviewed her once.
What sets your brand apart from its competitors?
There was a face, a person, a human tied to this brand. Me.
I started this company by showing up and sharing my life as an expectant mom. People connected with me and a community was formed. Later, when we travelled all over for events, moms-to-be would come to the events to meet me and take pictures with me – I was the one talking to them on social media.
When I was at the company there was always a human connection, our competitors didn’t have that. They didn’t put themselves out there, or put their faces out there the way that we did. Even now that I left BCB, it is not the same. They don’t have a face of the company anymore. People reach out to me daily telling me how much they miss seeing me on BCB.
How did you build your loyal following?
I showed up as myself on BCB every single day. Additionally, I never took money from brands or products I myself wouldn’t use. It is incredibly important not to compromise your integrity for short term financial gain. Consumers see right through this.
What was the best business decision you made, and why?
Selling my company. As my kids grew older I knew I could not be the face of this company forever. I built the brand on authenticity and yet I was all of a sudden telling people which stroller to push, but I was no longer pushing one. It didn’t feel right. I knew that I wanted an exit at some point, but I didn’t want to close down the business. I believe so much in the services we were providing to parents and parents-to-be.
Now the brand and the mission can live on for others to reap the benefit of.
What was the worst business decision you made, and why?
Not hiring a bookkeeper and a CFO sooner. Had I made this investment 2-3 years prior to when I did, I believe that the business would have grown faster and potentially I could have eventually made more money from the sale. I am not a numbers person, but when I finally asked for help the business began to grow leaps and bounds and people started taking me seriously.
Lindsay Pinchuk is an award-winning entrepreneur, consultant, community builder, connector, storyteller, expert marketer, social media maven, spokesperson, on-air expert, small business champion, and Mother. Since selling Baby Bump & Beyond, Lindsay is using her experience to help brands tell their own story and build a community, whilst growing their business.
If you’d like to learn more about Lindsay Pinchuk, head to www.lindsaypinchuk.com or follow her Instagram @lindsaypinchuk
Background music is an essential part of any video. It helps set the tone of the video and makes it more engaging to listen to. It can emphasise the hilarity of a comedy sequence or increase the tension of a horror sequence. But you can sometimes find the right track or segment of a track for your video, only to find that it’s too short to cover the entire sequence.
You can attempt to increase the length by manually copying the track, but this can be a little hit or miss and often requires a lot of tweaking to get it sounding just right.
Instead of this you can use a little bit of machine learning from inside of premiere pro and get your track sorted in moments.
First, you want to drag your track into your sequence. Then go to the essential sound drop down on the right. If you don’t see this then head to the effects workspace from the top and you should see it waiting for you.
Click ‘Music’, tick the ‘Duration’ box and once the analysis is finished, type in your target duration. Premiere will then attempt to extend the duration of that clip to your desired length.
If it does something similar to the video where it repeats the same short part over and over, then click customise and reduce the number of segments. This will increase the part of the track repeated and generally get you a more natural-sounding track.
And that’s pretty much it, you can now drag the music into position, set your desired volume and your video now has a complete soundtrack!
Camera tracking can allow you to make very convincing visual effects even if you have a moving camera. Normally, you’d need to use tedious keyframing to keep track of your elements but with Camera Tracking, you can do it all automatically
To get started you of course need your footage and the visual effect you want to add to it. For this example, I’m going to use a bit of stock footage that I’ll add an explosion to
We start by dragging everything into our after effects project. Create a composition based on the settings of your footage.
I’m going to select the stock footage and on the right-hand side go to tracker and click track camera. This should take a little bit of time but once it’s done you’ll be most of the way there.
Under the 3D camera tracker drop down you’re going to change “render track points” to on. This lets you see all the points that are being tracked in the footage.
Now select an area on your preview window where you want to track something in. The red target will help you choose an area that’s facing the right way.
Once you have an area you’re happy with you’re going to right-click and create null and camera.
Now you drag in whatever your tracked object is, in this case, it’s my explosion.
I’m going to head under the transform menu and grab the pick whip from position and drag it to the position of the null object. You might need to resize or move it around, just make sure you use the scale and anchor point sliders so you don’t make a mess of the position.
This will ensure the tracked object will follow wherever that selected area wherever it moves in the footage and allow you to get easy peasy visual effects comping in minutes.
Although it may sound daunting, a social media audit isn’t as intensive as it sounds, it is basically performing a health-check for your various social media platforms. The audit will help you set realistic goals for your accounts and how to achieve them by analysing what is and isn’t working well. It will ultimately make your social media strategy more efficient and effective.
Why Would You Want to Perform a Social Media Audit?
A social media audit will help you understand your audience and where you are performing best. It can narrow in on areas that you are performing weakly, so you can make changes to your strategy and turn your followers into customers. Ideally, an audit should be performed every three months to help you keep in line with your goals.
Conduct a Social Media Audit in Seven Steps:
Make a list of all your social media accounts and identify where the analytics are, if you are not already familiar. It is a good idea to keep track of analytics on a weekly basis to understand how well your posts are performing and when your audience is most likely to be online.
Perform some basic admin by ensuring that all logos are the same across your platforms to make it easier for your audience to recognise and follow your various accounts. You may have a different style of writing and vary posts between platforms, but it is important to ensure that your brand identity is strong and consistent.
Check out each page’s engagement metrics and make a note of how your account is performing. If you are trying to grow your followers, assess your total follower count and how many followers have increased over the three month period. On the other hand, you may be focussing on increasing audience interaction with the account, so you can examine the engagement data to see the figures for this period.
Assess where and what you are performing best at and then plan to do more of it. If you are really good at making reels or videos and your engagement is highest with these kinds of posts, then focus more attention here to grow your page. At the same time, look at which type of posts aren’t performing well and assess why. It could be the type of content, or it might not be right for that particular platform.
Take a look at other platforms and see how you could use your strengths to build up an audience where you might not have considered before. If you are great at writing humorous captions on Instagram, you might be able to find some success on Twitter too. It may be that you excel at getting clicks on your posts or stories, leading customers to your website or elsewhere. If you are, you may want to look at Pinterest and see how you can adapt your content for that platform.
Check out similar social media accounts that are performing well and evaluate how often they post, what types of posts perform well and which platforms they have grown best on. Make a list of 5-10 accounts that are within your industry and use them as an inspiration. For example, if they are posting a lot of reels with high engagement rates or using their stories to update their customers, this is something that you can use as inspiration for your own account.
Set realistic goals based on what you have discovered from your audit so you can measure the success of these in three months time. The information that you have gathered from the audit will give you direction for the accounts on different platforms and the areas that need improvement.
Conclusion
A social media audit is essential for all businesses and influencers, no matter what size. By adding an audit into your schedule, you are more likely to grow your social media following and increase the engagement rate. The analytics are there to give you information about your account and your followers, so you might as well use it to make your account the best it can be.
AI is becoming more prevalent in our everyday lives. From self-driving cars to smart speakers, AI is being integrated into almost every aspect of our daily lives. With the rise of artificial intelligence, businesses are using it to improve their customer service and marketing strategies. In fact, some companies are even using AI to write content.
By making use of this new technology you can have AI:
AI that writes content for you – no need to write anything yourself
Write articles and press releases for you
Create social media posts for you
Schedule tweets and Facebook updates for you
Research topics for you
Find relevant images for you
Provide answers to questions for you
Do all this at a fraction of the cost of human writers
This is not only useful for small business owners but also for bloggers who want to automate part of their work routine. You don’t need to hire people or pay them monthly salaries to help with your blog. There are many applications that do most of the work for you.
The best thing about these tools is that they are always learning from previous tasks. They get better over time. The more data you feed them, the smarter they become. So if you want to make sure that your content is up to date, then you should keep feeding it with fresh information.
Aside from saving time and money, using AI for content writing also helps you save on writer’s block. When you’re stuck on what to write next, just ask an AI tool to generate ideas for you.
Here are 3 AI tools that will help you create great content faster than ever before:
CoSchedule has been around since 2009 and was one of the first platforms to offer AI-powered content creation. It uses machine learning algorithms to analyze your website traffic and find out which types of content perform well. Based on this analysis, it generates content recommendations for you.
You can choose between two different plans: Basic ($99/mo) and Premium ($199/mo). Both include unlimited submissions, scheduled publishing, and analytics. However, the premium plan includes additional features such as access to advanced reporting, custom domains, and mobile apps.
BuzzSumo is another platform that uses AI to provide insights on trending topics. It analyzes millions of pieces of content and finds patterns in terms of popularity, influencers, and competitors.
BuzzSumo provides three different plans: Free, Pro ($29/mo), and Enterprise (starting at $299/mo). All plans allow you to track keywords, monitor competitor rankings, and see how often users share your content. However, the enterprise plan comes with additional features like real-time alerts, competitive intelligence reports, and API integration.
frase.io is a web application that allows you to quickly create and publish content. It offers both free and paid versions. While the free version limits you to 500 words per post, the paid version gives you an unlimited word count.
The app works by analyzing the text you type and suggests related phrases based on its database of over 50 million phrases. It also lets you add multimedia files and links to support your points.
Frequently Asked Questions about AI content writing:
Q: How does AI content writing work?
A: AI programs are able to read through thousands of pages of text and find patterns within those texts. By analyzing these patterns, they come up with suggestions and recommendations for future content.
Q: What kind of content can I create with AI?
A: You can use AI to write any type of content including blog posts, product descriptions, sales letters, press releases, web copy, etc.
Q: Is there any limit to the number of words I can include when creating content with AI?
A: No! As long as the source material has enough words, you will be fine. However, the quality of the output may suffer if the source material is too short.
Q: Can I use AI to write my whole website?
A: No. It is impossible to use AI to write everything on a website. Even though you might think that you could train an AI program to write your entire site, it would take years before the program became good enough to produce high-quality content for every single page.
Q: Does AI content writing require special skills?
A: Not really. Anyone can use AI to write content.
If you still aren’t sure about AI written content and if it can pass as human written, just take a look at this blog and guess what wrote it.
Video editing can be one of the most time-consuming tasks in all content creation. This can scare a lot of people from committing to video content but with a few simple tricks, you can make it a lot easier, quicker and cheaper.
Using Premiere Pro Presets
Greenscreen any footage with Machine Learning
Automatically remove silence in clips
Find customisable templates
Using Premiere Pro Presets
If you find yourself adding the same effects to footage over and over again, setting up presets can save you a lot of time. They allow you to combine multiple effects into one simple drag and drop allowing you to immediately as many effects as you want in a single click.
To begin find a piece of footage that has all your desired effects and ctrl+click all the effects in the effects controls panel.
Right-click and select save preset. Give it a name and hit ok.
Next time you want to use the same effects, go to the Effects panel, find your preset and drag it onto your footage. You can still tweak the individual effects and their settings once you’re dragged onto a piece of footage but those initial settings will save you a bunch of time.
This one is ridiculously simple and can save you minutes every time you want to use those effects which can quickly add up to hours throughout your career. Just be sure to give your presets useful names otherwise it can get a little confusing once you have a few.
Greenscreen any footage with Machine Learning
This sounds complicated but I promise you it’s actually straightforward!
First, you need a piece of footage. For the sake of this tutorial, I’m going to use this footage of Sam our MD dancing on a company night out.
Next, you need to open a browser and head to runwayml.com.
You will need to sign up to an account to use but it’s free to export to 720p and they hardly ever send emails.
Now you simply upload your footage and drag it onto the timeline. You can do any trimming to get the exact clip you want to cut out.
Then under the magic tools, select greenscreen.
Now you simply click on the subject you want to cut out, in this case, that’s Sam. You keep adding points to include and exclude until it’s a perfect mask. Then play the clip and any find any points where the mask goes wrong, simply pause it and add more points.
Do this until the end of your clip and when you’re happy click go-to project.
Now he’s cut out you can put whatever you want behind him right in the web editor.
If you want to download the clip to use in your editing program or are happy with your creation, then click export, give it a name and select the quality you want. It’ll take a little time depending on the size of the sequence but once it’s done you can download it and edit it like any other piece of footage.
Automatically remove silence in clips
When recording anything you’re going to stumble every now and then, especially when you’re just getting started. Removing all those stumbles and gaps of awkward silence is the first task you have to do when editing and its time consuming (as well as a bit demoralising sometimes).
You can speed this up by automatically removing silences using Adobe Audition.
You want to start by dragging your clip into premiere. Look at all those gaps of silence. Manually removing all that would take a lot of time just to get to the actual edit.
Drag your clip into the timeline and select edit in Adobe Audition. This sometimes fails so if it does create a new sequence from the clip and then go to edit sequence in Audition.
Now we’re in you want to double click on your audio channel and find the diagnostic tab. If you don’t have I already go to window and add it to your workspace.
Select Mark Audio from the drop-down menu, then click Find Levels then Scan once it’s done.
Below you should now see a list of markers and you can scroll through these to check they have successfully removed the silence. If it hasn’t then tweak the silence and audio settings.
Once you’re happy you want to Mark all markers and head to the markers tab.
Select all markers using CTRL + A and right-click and select change marker types to Sub clip.
File and save as an audio file. Sadly you can directly save as a video file.
Now to get this to work as a video we need to add an empty video track to this so we’re going to open up media encoder and drag in the audio file we just saved.
We’re going to render it out as a QuickTime since they are fast to render but it doesn’t matter.
Now you need to match the resolution and frame rate to your source clip and render it out.
Drag this new file into premiere. It’s going to appear as a bunch of clips but don’t worry and right click and make offline
Then you want to link media to all these now offline clips and select your original clip.
Once this is done you simply drag into the sub-clips and add them to your sequence and all the silence should be removed. You’ll still need to remove your stumbles but it’ll be a lot faster than scrubbing through all the silence
You can also easily extend any clips where audio has been cut off to get the timing just right.
Use customisable Templates
Creating complex graphics in premiere can be a challenge especially if you don’t have a lot of experience. Even once you do it also ends up being a very time-consuming task so if you’re on a deadline it’s just not possible…that is unless you use templates.
Using sites like Envato Elements you can find many templates for everything from titles to transitions to fully animated intro sequences. Now Envato Elements does require a £14.50 subscription to use but they do have a free 7-day trial so you can give it a try before you buy and maybe just download as many as possible since once you’ve downloaded them you’re free to use them at your leisure but you didn’t hear that from us 😉
Now, these templates can come in one of 2 forms:
MOGRTs
Full Projects
Each has its advantages and disadvantages but to keep it simple we’ll explain it like this.
MOGRTs are templates that can be found in the essential graphics panel and customised from within Premiere Pro. They are essentially linked After Effects compositions so will run extremely slowly unless you render and replace them once you are happy with the settings.
The Full Projects are normally much more customizable as you can tweak every single aspect and element. This means you can get exactly what you are looking for but you’ll need to do a bit more of the heavy lifting yourself. If you’re going this route, you should probably look into the After Effects template as they can be found for the same effects, but After Effects is more built for that kind of work.
Whichever you pick, once you’re happy with whatever you’ve created, I recommend rendering them out into a format you can easily reuse should you need to. For example, make that title sequence into an MP4 so you can drag it into any video you need.
