I’ve set out on a mission to be up-to-date about the latest and greatest in hospitality content marketing. Why? Because I’m working on an online course for small hospitality brands about how to create a content strategy and actual content. And in order to optimize the course, I feel like it’s beneficial to do some case studies.
For the online course, I’m working together with sushi bar Satori. In the first part of the course, we’ve defined their mission, which is to offer a sophisticated, gastronomic experience, surrounded by nature. The main focus is on cocktails, Asian inspired tapas and sushi.
Hence I set out on an Instagram journey to find some bars which are doing particularly well in showing off their cocktails. I am featuring these in this short blog-series called ‘The Instagram Cocktail Bar Series’. I hope for these to bring you new inspiration, insights or just a fun read!
Bar 1: The Violet Hour
“An escape from the average, our James Beard Award winning bar program takes craft cocktails to heart. #violethourchicago #greenhour“
Website: http://www.theviolethour.com/
What do they do well?
The best thing about The Violet Hour must be the absolutely gorgeous pictures of their cocktails. With smoky backgrounds and consistency throughout the range. The lightning of the cocktail pictures is tremendously well done. Other mentionable things are the use of Flixels and the photos in which the cocktails are placed in an outdoor setting.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BcVGctrD8aw/?taken-by=violethourchicago
What could they do better?
It’s a bit all over the place right now. Black and white videos, very well-edited pictures, group pictures, colored videos, flixels. There’s no consistency. Also, there are not that many pictures of people actually holding the cocktail, or the making-off.
What can we learn?
- Get some pictures of the cocktails in good light
- Spice up the account with a variety of content, but make it a consistent variety: you want followers to know what to expect
- Work on backgrounds and product placement. This is something The Violet Hour seems to do very well.
