Woke up this morning to discover that Corona Summerbration was now following me on Twitter. Since I don’t recall tweeting about beer or Corona or summer, I can’t figure out what I did to deserve this honor. Sure I love an icy cold one as much as the next guy, but I’m hardly in Corona’s prime demo which incidentally is the slowest to embrace Twitter. Perhaps Corona is hoping I’m an “influencer” and simply by blogging about the brand here I’ve rewarded their faith in me. Regardless, this made curious about other beer brands that Twitter so I put together the following round up:
Beers that Twitter:
- @EpicBeer: this chatty New Zealand brewery has over 2200 followers and provides a steady stream of information-rich updates from the brewery (over 2200 tweets to-date)
- @GooseIsland: with over 1200 followers, this Chicago microbrewery pushes out offers on a regular basis to its fans
- @EdisonBeer: a Boston brewery with 1150+ fans that it mainly ignores tweeting only 11 times in the last 6 months
- @CrispinCider: a Minnesota beer alternative with 1100+ followers that it updates frequently with news about events and product development
- @Michelob: trying to remake itself into a craft beer, Michelob is the only national brand with over 1000 followers to whom it pushes rapid fire reminder tweets to buy, buy, buy
- @BreckBrew supports Breckenridge Brewery, a Colorado maker of craft ale with about 680 followers that are treated to tweets by a real person with whom you’d actually want to share a beer!
- @Corona_Beer has 586 followers that it hasn’t updated once
- @heinekenBeers has about 350 followers and appears just to aggregate other tweets that mention Heineken or Heiny.
- @heineken_beer calls itself a “global forum for beer” and provides a steady diet of updates from Heineken related activities around the globe to its 250 or so followers.
- @budweiser: the king of beers snubs its 214 followers with nary an update. Whassup with this?
- @summerbration: Corona’s promotional site has attracted nearly 200 followers in under a month as it offers a daily tip on how to celebrate the summer with Corona of course!
It probably shouldn’t be a surprise that the craft beers tend to lead the way having the most loyal and engaged fan base. These seem to be manned by real people who like talking about beer and the craft of beer making. The big brands either don’t bother to have a voice or it’s so forced like Michelob’s that it is actually off-putting. Given that Twitter hasn’t taken off among 21-29 year old males yet, these bigger brands aren’t necessarily missing out…yet. Also, many of these brands like Bud and Coors have done an admirable job building up and engaging their fan bases on other social media like Facebook and MySpace.
Before I wrap up, I wanted to raise the issue of brands following people. Personally, I’m still a little startled when a brand and not a person elects to follow me on Twitter. Some of the beer brands listed above have been aggressive in this area. For example, Epic follows 2109, Edison follows 1997 and Michelob follows 1097. This activity has driven up their follower numbers but in doing so also diminishes the power of their fan base. More impressive are the brands like Goose Island and Breckenridge Brewery who only follow 5 and 53 respectively yet have hundreds of followers.
Bottom line: Twitter is an opportunity for brands to engage with people as if they were people. To do this well requires the brands to behave like real friends not aggressive pitch men. If a brand elects to follow someone, it should have a good reason, a basis for introduction and not drop in out of nowhere like an uninvited guest. Just like people who tweet, brands should avoid becoming a Twitcher or Twitter Whore by maintaining a healthy following to followers ratio. Cheers.
UPDATE 6/15: @coors_light is not run by the folks at Coors so I took it off the list. See comment from the company below. Also, Molson is taking a multi-tweet approach with the following major brand tweeters:
- @MolsonFerg: Molson’s VP of Public Affairs has 2100+ follower.
- @toniahammer: Community relations, PR and social media girl for Molson has 1700+ followers.
- @MolsonMoffat: Manager of Brand & Marketing PR at Molson and member of Molson’s social media team has 800+ followers.
UPDATE 7/13: Got some leads on microbrewers that tweet – and boy, do they ever!
- @magichat: 8,301 followers
- @StoneBrewingCo: 6,401 followers
- @FlyingDog: 7,529 followers
- @lakefront: 1,052 followers
- @HornyGoatBrewCo: 827 followers
- @RogueAles: 2,751 followers
- @Tyranena: 188 followers
- @newbelgium: 6,720 followers
Totally agree with your review and suggestion of brands on Twitter. The Molson team has a number of twitterers in Canada. Each of us has a “purpose” with respect to engaging with the broader community on Twitter. You will see that a lot of this is an extension of our community blog http://blog.molson.com/community/ . If beer drinkers are really interested in contacting our team we refer them to @MolsonGraeme who works with our insider community. We have built some wonderful relationships across the country in Canada and beyond our borders. We have engaged in some promotional opporutntiies, tweet ups, meet ups and just good conversation. I would also point out that some of the brands that you refer to above may not even know that they are on Twitter. The Coors Light brand twitter that you refer to is not offiically a Coors person or advocate. Thus, the challenge for brands to protect their positioning and conversations related to their brands. Thanks for the post…it reinforces the approach that our team at Molson has used in authentically engaging with the social media community. Cheers @MolsonFerg