Should AI Write Social Posts for your Tasting Room?

We’ve talked about how ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Bing and Google’s Bard can help new drinkers find your tasting room. But can Artificial Intelligence (AI) do some of the heavy lifting to make marketing your craft beverage easier? With all the talk about AI creating original stories, completing sommelier exams and writing code, we decided to put Bing and Bard to the test with prompts to create marketing content for our friends at Commonhouse Aleworks in North Charleston, SC. You’ll find outputs to those queries below. But first, we completed our comparison of AI search tools with responses to commonly-asked questions from Google’s Bard. Once again, each of the questions were generally entered into a Bard chat in the format:

“What breweries near Denver, Colorado, <meet some criteria>?”

breweries near Denver, Colorado

Generally speaking, it seemed Bard’s responses were more dated and focused on a smaller set of highly-ranked breweries. We also noticed a pattern of conflicting responses to certain queries that could be both objective and subjective. For example, stating on your website that you’re family-friendly but requiring guests to be 21 or older. Some bars and restaurants made it into the results when we were clearly looking for breweries. It’s important to remember the AI tools are trained using online data, so the potential is there to reflect bias and spread misinformation (remember to fact-check). To better position your business for future advancements in AI, we recommend a thoughtful, strategic approach to storytelling in this new environment:

• Build authority using owned media
  • Define a clear and concise brand story
  • Design web pages highlighting on-site amenities
  • Update the basics: hours of operation, family- and kid-friendly
  • Leverage Google My Business tools and integrations
• Build engagement via social channels
  • Encourage reviews on third party sites
  • Support the DIY/Maker community
  • Offer to host tours, classes or club meetings at your facility
  • Celebrate your space with photo and video tours
• Build buzz through press and competitions
  • Send out press releases, noting any awards in the boilerplate
  • Keep a full calendar of events
  • Outline all available food options
  • Host trade-only events to showcase facility

Want more? Did you see our presentation at the 2023 Craft Beer Professionals Spring Virtual Conference? In it we shared how to ensure Microsoft and Google search engines index your craft beverage business in a way that makes you relevant for AI-enabled chats. Check it out!

using AI to write social posts

Using the same chat prompts, we asked Microsoft’s Bing and Google’s Bard to, “write a 280-character social post for Commonhouse Aleworks in North Charleston, SC, about their upcoming live music event with Molly Durnin.” Here are the results: 

Winner: Bing
Bing search found the upcoming events page on CommonhouseAleworks.com, parsed the time and date within the event listing and crafted a practical story around it. All within 280 characters and complete with relevant emojis. Google search found the event series on CommonhouseAleworks.com, but Bard still wasn’t able to generate a response.

Why have Microsoft’s Bing or Google’s Bard write your social posts, you might ask? It’s a question of resources and workflow. If your social media manager (or the team member who wears that hat plus others) takes 15-30 minutes to draft and post each post, then perhaps there’s a play for automating some of the more basic notifications (upcoming events, special hours, promoting your private event space, etc.) in favor of spending more time on new product releases, team member highlights, partnerships and others. If you choose to use AI to draft your posts, remember to review thoroughly and tweak copy to reflect your brand voice and personality. The team at Market Your Craft feels strongly that AI will soon find its way into tools like Sprout Social and Hootsuite, making it even easier for craft beverage producers to draft and schedule engaging content. Use tools like The Events Calendar to help search engines properly index your content. Up to you at this point whether you disclose that the “origin” of the posts were AI tools, although your customers may react poorly if they find out for themselves…

using AI to write product copy

To test AI’s content creation capabilities even further, we asked Microsoft’s Bing and Google’s Bard to, “write a 2-paragraph description of Commonhouse Aleworks’ Air is Salty, including the style and ABV%.” Here are the results:

Winner: Google
Bing search found the Air is Salty entry on BeerAdvocate.com and repeated it word-for-word in the response, citing references. Even with that information it wasn’t able to provide the ABV%. Google search found a variety of sources, including Untappd, BeerAdvocate.com, CraftShack.com, BeerMenus and others. Bard crafted a response that was longer than requested, but included descriptors, pairings and full brewing specs.

Same question as before: why have Microsoft’s Bing or Google’s Bard write your product descriptions? The answer is, you wouldn’t! The origin of product descriptions should be you and your team, not an AI tool. Sure, drinkers can submit reviews for your product that may differ from your original description. But the product copy on your website should serve as the source of truth, informing Microsoft’s Bing, Google’s Bard and any future AI chat services. This exercise is valuable to see what those tools come up with when asked, based on information they can access. At a minimum, take the time to craft a thorough product description in your brand’s voice and personality. Those descriptions should live on their own pages, easily indexed and ranked by search engines. Where content doesn’t exist, other sites will seek to exert some authority to gain attention, which at least in the current AI conversation makes them a more credible, authoritative source of information. Don’t let that happen!

MailChimp archive:
https://mailchi.mp/3c874be88e2c/230422_ai_social?e=bd76eedb35
Download:
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