Saint Arnold Brewing Company Using Social Media to Connect and Grow
Texas brewery using blog, online videos and social networking to interact with community
HOUSTON, January 26, 2009 – Saint Arnold Brewing Company (www.saintarnold.com) may be the oldest craft brewery in Texas, but staffers have always been open to experimenting with new ideas and new approaches. That open mindset helps with brewing award-winning beer, and it also comes in handy when marketing on a shoestring budget. Saint Arnold is finding creative uses for social media to provide new ways for their growing community to be a part of the brewery.
Part of Saint Arnold’s challenge is that its community is growing quickly. Events and promotions that have served them well for more than a decade are on the verge of becoming too big and challenging to manage. So the brewery has turned to social media for help.
Instead of discontinuing its popular pub crawls, Saint Arnold is using online video, photo-sharing Web sites and the micro-blogging site Twitter to reinvent the pub crawl. Saint Arnold’s Scavenger Hunt Pub Crawl used clues in a video posted on YouTube to direct people to different establishments around town. Those who submitted photographic proof of completing the scavenger hunt were invited to a party and the brewery where one person won a Kegerator.
Meanwhile, Saint Arnold has used Twitter to announce spur-of-the-moment events, including a recent open house at the brewery. People who saw the “tweets” quickly spread the word through their networks.
“The way people gather and share information has changed, so we consider this a necessary step to keep growing,” said Brock Wagner, founder of Saint Arnold Brewing. “We owe our popularity and longevity to our community and we are taking steps to ensure we don’t lose that special bond as we grow.”
Saint Arnold has always experimented with new ways to connect with their community. Shortly after beginning operations in the mid-1990s, they established Saint Arnold’s Army, an e-mail list of enthusiasts that has grown to more than 20,000 subscribers. The brewery established its Saint Arnold Brewhouse Blog (www.saintarnold.com/blog/) years ago, has a presence on MySpace and has produced a series of online videos entitled, “Saint Arnold Video News.”
Saint Arnold Brewing's ten brews are made and sold by the company’s staff of 21 dedicated employees. The brewery was listed by USA Today as one of the “10 great places to see what’s brewing in beer.” It is located at 2522 Fairway Park Drive and its brewery tour and tasting is offered every Saturday at 1:00 P.M. For more information on Saint Arnold's five year-round and five seasonal beers as well as root beer, log on to www.saintarnold.com.
# # #