When I tell breweries that Allagash Brewing is one of the best examples of social media done right in the industry, I almost always get the same response: “They have a big team and a big budget. That doesn’t apply to us.”

I understand the hesitation. Allagash is not a small brewery. But what I’ve come to believe—after years of working in and around brewery social media—is that people are looking at the wrong thing. They see the beautiful photography and miss that there’s a ton of strategy underneath it.

Q&A with Liz Wilson, Allagash’s Senior Marketing Manager

There’s so much we can learn from how Allagash approaches content. So I sat down with Elizabeth “Liz” Wilson, Allagash’s Senior Marketing Manager, to talk about how they actually think about content and why most of what they do is more replicable than it looks.

Stephanie Grant: When I recommend Allagash as a social media example, one of the first things I hear is, “they have a whole team.” How big is your social team, and what does it actually take to do this well?

Liz Wilson: Our team right now is three people. So in the grand scheme of big teams, we’re not that big. I think what it actually takes is curiosity—being an active participant in as many areas of the brewery as possible. If you don’t get out of your own little marketing bubble, then you’re responsible for coming up with all of it on your own when, likely, it’s happening over there. The stories are always happening around you. You just have to go find them.

Finding Stories Worth Sharing

SG: Let’s talk about strategy. How do you decide what to post—what does Allagash stand for and how do you translate that to social media?

LW: The way we think about content is in three giant buckets: we’re a good company, we want you to drink our beer, and we want you to come visit us. When I think about every option out there for what to post, having those categories as my filter—does this fit in any of these three?—is a really helpful way to figure out if it makes sense for us. As a reflection of that, our content feels fairly consistent, even though the posts themselves may be talking about all sorts of specific things. They all ladder up to these three big ideas.

And then, I hate to say it because it’s kind of boring, but you back out from there. You take a lot of the guesswork out of creating content. Here we try to put out four pieces of social content a week. I know I want to talk about our flagship beer once a week. Maine is a huge part of our story, so I want to make sure I post a couple times a month about Maine. As you sort of tick through the stories you want to tell, it makes the actual week feel less stressful because you’re not doing that “oh my gosh, it’s Wednesday, what am I going to post?” feeling. Knowing the stories you want to tell, and backing out your plan from there, is how I approach it.

SG: How does your team actually find the stories worth telling? What does that process look like day to day?

LW: Being an active participant in as many areas of the brewery as possible is really key. We have a weekly internal newsletter, and in it I can often see what’s happening—oh, we’re packaging a new beer this week, so if I want a production shot, I can run over there. Or we’re going to fill up the foeders—we don’t do that that often, so maybe I want to capture that.

The other thing that’s opened up a lot of fun ideas is our sustainability report. I was looking at a draft recently and thinking about how we take this dense content—stuff we’re really proud of—and make it social in a way that’s fun and easy to digest. 

There was a story about a single loose valve in the brewery that was throwing one of our measurements out of spec, and the production and engineering team were searching high and low for it. In my mind, I’m like, oh my gosh—I can see this like a mystery story. 

It ladders up to the sustainability work we do, but told in a way that’s entertaining and true to us as a brewery. That would have never come across my desk if I wasn’t poking around, talking to people, seeing what they were up to.

I also think not feeling like things have to be perfect is important. Sharing that story feels real and interesting. At worst, maybe it just entertains you and makes you like us a little more.

The Business Case

SG: Have there been moments where you could point to social media and say: that did something for the business?

LW: I think the easiest way to track it is events. We’ve certainly hosted events that we promoted and then had great turnout, and I think that points to: okay, this is reaching people, and it is driving sales for us as a business. But I think, as a marketer, you get really protective of your audience and knowing how much of that you can get away with is really important. 

I think your last piece for the Brewers Association was so important about social’s role in driving business. Because to your point, posting a trivia graphic every week—no one’s going to see that, no one’s going to respond to that. It’s tempting, and I empathize with people who get asked to do that for their breweries, but knowing that that is just not what the platform really excels is something to be aware of. For us, it’s important that we try to drive engagement and relevance and continue to show up in feeds in ways that people respond to. 

We certainly can drive business, and we certainly have, but we try not to sell things directly so often that people feel like they’re just getting sold to all the time. We’re trying to build loyalty and bring new people into the brand with social in general.

I also want to share the importance of building your database as part of your overarching communication strategy. Our newsletter is something that we place a pretty significant amount of focus and effort and care on, because those are our people. And that can’t just be mysteriously ripped away from us one day. So we try to maintain and grow our newsletter base too, in a way that feels fun and connected.

SG: For a brewery owner who isn’t sure the storytelling investment is worth it — what would you tell them?

LW: For me, a lot of the proof comes when it gets played back to us. We heard about a post we did about buying two million pounds of grain—that story helped us have conversations with retailers, showed up in speaking engagements. That storytelling originated on social and came back to us in ways we didn’t expect.

The way people find brands now is not necessarily going to websites. It’s seeing something on social. And spending the bandwidth of a team member to help tell your story in a way that connects with people is really powerful, especially compared to a radio buy or a significant media spend just to get your message out.

I feel deeply passionate about it. The almost untapped potential of building your fan base is largely online these days.

Beyond Follower Count

SG: The algorithm has shifted pretty significantly—away from followers and toward interest and intent. How has that changed how you think about your content?

LW: It’s one of the most interesting challenges right now. We built our audience, and we sort of know what they want—we want to deliver for them. But now there’s always this potential of: this is going to be seen by a bunch of non-followers. What do you want that impression to be?

For us, when we talk about Maine in particular—Portland is such a tourism city—we see a spike in non-followers when we do Maine content. What that signals to me is: is there a way to introduce the brand in a not-hit-you-over-the-head way that reaches new audiences and brings them in? Oh, Maine, Allagash White—I should think of those things together. That’s where I’ve been as we go into summer, thinking through how we can make content that achieves both things at once.

And I also think forever and ever we were told: get more followers, follower growth. But that just doesn’t even make sense anymore to some degree, because it’s not how consumer behavior on the platform works right now. Keeping track of what is actually happening on these platforms technically can help explain a lot of what you feel in your gut when you’re looking at your content.

Authenticity Will Take You Far

SG: Any advice for the brewery social media manager who’s doing all of this alone?

LW: Get yourself a mini mic and talk to the camera. It’s not my vibe personally—I get that many people aren’t comfortable with it—but it is a way to bypass feeling like you need production and the perfect shot. People can be pretty forgiving when it’s just you showing up real at your brewery: “Come look at this cool thing that’s happening today.” Cut out the awkward pauses. That honesty and transparency—”I wasn’t a video editor, but here I am showing you this”—people respond to that.

And text on images. Pick a single backdrop and tell a story with the carousel. A lot of it is trial and error, but tools like Canva can give you a really solid place to start. And there are tools that don’t cost a ton of money that, if you have your strategy dialed in, can make a very daunting piece of the business a little easier.

Oh—and does the post ladder up to your buckets? Or does it bring you joy? That is a great reason to do it. If something makes you really happy to think about and create, there’s something behind it. There’s some passion there. That’s one of our very official measures of success.

The Takeaway for Smaller Breweries

When you don’t have a plan, everything feels overwhelming. You have so many options, so many things you could post about, and no clear way to decide what matters. That feeling isn’t a creativity problem. It’s a strategy problem.

When I was managing social at a brewery, knowing what message I wanted to share with our audience made storytelling much easier. It gave me clarity and focus, and it’s something I still come back to in my own work.

That’s what Allagash has built. And it’s not out of reach for a team of one.

The algorithm will keep changing. Platforms will keep shifting how they work. But a brewery that knows its story, and shows up to tell it with curiosity and intention, will always have something worth following.