Good morning!
Would you believe it? We are six months into the journey towards better office coffee. Time flies when you are having fun, doesn’t it! How is it going for you all? I hope by now at least some of you have noticed a drastic improvement in the coffee you drink at work, and that you might’ve learnt a few things about coffee along the way, too…
I’m just sitting down with a cup of our coffee of the month, Honest Coffees’ ‘El Capitan‘ from Peru. It’s the perfect companion to the cold Autumn mornings, with its deep, dark hazelnut and chocolate flavours. Coffee in hand, I’ve been reflecting on what writing this column has taught me about content creation and community building over the past six months. I’ve realised just how wide and engaged the global coffee community is, and how well coffee and content go together!
Given that content is what we do for our clients every day here at Greener Media, I thought it’d be interesting to look at how mail-order coffee companies, roasters and coffee shops use content to engage coffee lovers online and stand out in an extremely competitive industry.
Coffee’s Gift to Content
Coffee lends itself perfectly to interesting and engaging content – it’s a highly visual, artisan industry with a compelling narrative from bean to cup. Whether its ‘Hot-To’ infographics, Instagram posts of latte art or an article about the state of the global coffee industry, coffee companies around the world are finding innovative and creative ways to show who they are, tell their story and engage the global coffee community online.
Our partner, Honest Coffees, for example, write extremely shareable and informative blog articles on all aspects of office coffee culture to engage their target audiences with their products (look out for my first guest article, coming soon… thanks Wyatt!). The content on Pact Coffee’s ‘Perc’ company blog is very visual, and their colourful images, entertaining videos and brew guides set them apart in a growing mail-order coffee industry. HasBean, meanwhile, invest a lot of time and energy in content creation and brand storytelling, tracking the journey of its coffee from bean to cup through videos, blog articles, forums and its very own HasBean TV!
Across the pond, Intelligentsia coffee are routinely used by content marketing experts as an example of a job well done! A core purpose in content marketing is to establish yourself as an authority, a thought-leader within your industry. With their high-quality, visual brew guides for V60, chemex and French Press, Intelligentsia certainly achieves that – they’re a darn sight more interesting than a B2B white paper, too!
I also came across the cooperative Equal Exchange in my research, who make sure their customers know that they do a fair deal with the farmers who grow their coffee through novel brand storytelling. Their takeaway cups alone, tell that story, as well as offering tips for home brewing through infographics and illustrations. And then it all goes on Instagram (see below)!
Coffee in itself is not a hard sell – 80% of us drink it after all. But it’s great to see such innovative efforts from coffee companies to show what makes them different, how their coffee and the service they provide is better, more ethical and tastier, too.
Thanks for reading another edition of Abe’s Coffee Column. I’ll be back in two weeks time, but keep an eye on the Greener Media blog… in an upcoming article, I’ll be reflecting on what I’ve learnt about content and community-building from the first six months of my coffee column!
See you all on here on 2nd November, but in the meantime, keep in touch in the comments section or on Twitter @Abe_Greener. I’d love to hear about your office coffee at the six-month mark.
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