Six channels, three hours a week
Craft & Ferment is a six-person brewery. About 70% of revenue comes from 40 pubs and restaurants that order kegs by phone or email; 30% comes from weekend taproom visitors and online sales of cans. The owner has just created accounts on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, X and YouTube because "everyone said we need to be everywhere". Two staff can give social media roughly three hours a week in total. Three months later, four accounts have never been posted on, the Instagram bio has no location, no link and no opening hours, and a pub landlord who searched for the brewery found an unclaimed Facebook page carrying an old address and two one-star reviews.
1. Which platforms should the brewery keep, and which should it close or park? Justify each decision against the revenue split and the three-hour constraint.
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Start from the objective, not the platform list. There are two audiences with different jobs: trade buyers (40 accounts, high value per conversion) and taproom/online consumers (many, low value per conversion).
Keep and invest:
- Instagram - the visual product (cans, taproom, events) suits it, and it is where consumer demand is discovered. It also serves trade buyers who check a brewery looks active before stocking it.
- Facebook - still where local event and community groups live, and where many pub landlords actually are. The duplicate page problem must be resolved here anyway.
- LinkedIn - cheap to maintain at low frequency and the only credible channel for reaching pub groups, distributors and event buyers directly.
Close or park:
- TikTok - a full-time content treadmill; three hours a week will produce sporadic, low-quality output that damages more than absence.
- YouTube - video production cost is far above the available time.
- X - no evidence it reaches either audience here; the account adds a moderation burden for no return.
Rule applied: one well-maintained channel beats six dormant ones, because dormant profiles are what a landlord sees when verifying credibility.
2. Before any new content is posted, what should be fixed on the profiles? Give a prioritised list with the reasoning for the order.
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Priority 1 - stop the bleed.
- Resolve the unclaimed duplicate Facebook page: claim it if possible, otherwise merge or report it, and correct the address on whichever page survives. Every day it exists, it actively misinforms buyers and carries negative reviews.
- Correct name, address, opening hours, phone and website on all surviving profiles. These are factual and appear in local search results.
Priority 2 - make the profiles convert.
- Add a working link (taproom bookings / trade enquiry, whichever the profile targets) and a one-line bio saying what the brewery is, where it is and who it serves.
- Add a trade contact route: an email or form for keg orders, since that is 70% of revenue.
Priority 3 - consistency.
- Same handle, same logo, same description tone across the kept channels.
Why this order: profile accuracy is a one-off cost with permanent effect; content is an ongoing cost. Publishing onto a broken profile sends interested people to a dead end, which is worse than posting nothing.
3. The owner wants a simple way to know whether the three hours a week are working. Propose a minimal measurement routine consistent with the limited time available.
Read the worked answer
Pick a small number of metrics tied to the two revenue streams, reviewed monthly in under 30 minutes.
Trade stream (70% of revenue):
- Number of inbound trade enquiries that mention social media or the website, tracked by simply asking "how did you hear about us?" on the order call. Three hours a week cannot support a CRM; a shared spreadsheet can.
- Profile visits and follower growth from trade-relevant accounts (pub, restaurant, distributor) on LinkedIn and Instagram.
Consumer stream (30%):
- Link clicks to the shop and taproom booking page, and orders from social referrals - which requires a tracked link per channel (see the analytics discipline: untagged links make this impossible).
- Saves and shares on Instagram as a leading indicator that content is worth someone's attention, not just likes.
Ignore: total follower count, impressions and likes in isolation. They cannot be tied to kegs or cans.
Decision rule for review: if a channel produces no trade enquiry and no measurable shop click for two consecutive quarters, it fails the three-hour test and gets closed.