Steph Alpin FBII runs The Blacksmiths Arms in Rotherhithe, South East London, with partner Tommy James. As they look to boost business and attract new customers, Steph has been using AI to help develop the pub’s presence online.
Using AI to help generate captions for photos and plan regular posts, Steph is finding that as her confidence and experience grows, she is having greater success online. Her investment in a pair of Ray-Ban Meta glasses is paying off, helping to create fun video footage for posting online.
“We create several posts for Instagram and Facebook a week, as well as our daily stories. Our posts stay online permanently, whereas story content disappears after 24-hours. Stories are ideal for uploading clips of us at work, behind the scenes stuff — dishes being prepared or setting up the function room for an event.
“Posts for us are about promoting what we’re doing, in terms of events, such as Valentine’s Day, which we extended across the weekend, with specials to appeal to couples to come in for a date night on the Friday, when we host our weekly live music, as well as on the Saturday.”
Steph plans events a month in advance, two months in advance for Christmas, beginning by planning the menu and specials. For Mother’s Day, it was all about advertising and having a theme, which was pastel flower displays, with the offer elevated as the day drew nearer.
“AI helps me create a calendar of content, plan posts — including when is the best time of day to post, etc. I use an AI tool that uses several AI agents, which specialise in different areas. For instance, one helps me with emails and social, another is more of a Virtual Assistant. AI helps me organise booking confirmations too,” says Steph, who boosted her knowledge by attending a Fuller’s Social Media course.
“It’s all about knowing how AI can help you understand your business better and how to promote your business as a brand. Having a brand and sticking to it, helps you be consistent across all areas, from the website and on social, along with any advertising and marketing.”
Creating a brand for your pub is about deciding what image you’d like to project. In the Blacksmiths’ case, as a traditional pub with a great history and story to tell, the colour palate we use reflects the rich, deep colours of the interior to the pub — which has wood panelling.
Being consistent with colours, as well as the font (type face) being used, means that people will recognise your brand across all mediums — online, on posters, in advertising and so on.
AI can help, when it comes to devising a brand and will even create images to support it.
A great place to start, suggests Steph, is to upload your information onto an AI platform, such as Chat GPT. “It’s simple things, like saying, my name is Steph and I run this company, here’s the link to our website and socials. It will hold onto this information and save it for future conversations. It’s free and it helped us make our website better. For instance, we wanted to make our site easier for people to navigate and it suggested having the menu displayed on our website, along with a link which allows people to download it. You can ask it to highlight allergens and allow people to see what dishes they can choose from.”
Having your menu displayed on your website, as well as featuring information about events, offers and what you’re known for (from your delicious Sunday roasts to live music nights) helps customers find you more easily.
Your website content and social media should be in tune with one another, so anyone seeing a post on social can find out more online.
When the Blacksmiths posted about the launch of its new gift card, it was the next day that someone popped in to buy one as a thank you for a friend. “The more you post, the more the algorithms like you and help you reach more people. You can also control how you post to people in different age groups. We focus on our local area and we know from feedback that more people are seeing what we’re doing.” The team helps too by reposting and tagging the pub.
“I feel as if we are definitely going down the right road, and it all gets a lot easier to navigate with more experience. AI has really helped too. It can generate images, and so on, but we still like to try and do our own pictures and videos, to give our content that extra boost,” says Steph.
Monitoring Success
With your business Meta account, you can easily get information about your reach on Facebook and Instagram, says Steph.
“It tells you about the interactions from customers and even looks at similar businesses in the area to provide a comparison of your performance over a competitor,” says Steph.
“For instance, we found out that in a 28-day period, pubs near us had posted 15-25 times, whereas we were over 40. It shows you how many new followers you’ve got too.”
Capturing New Followers
Experience has taught Steph and Tommy that creating ‘that’ post that goes viral, while an amazing experience, isn’t the elixir that everyone might think it is.
Some years ago, the British impressionist, comedian and TV star Rory Bremner gave the Blacksmiths a shout out on his social media page — creating a huge amount of interest for the pub. Steph says: “Everyone chases that viral content, but after that one post, it all drops off and you don’t end up with lots of new followers. We’ve found that making sure content is consistent, with regular posts and good branding, is the best way to slowly build a good following.”
Finding Great Content
The Blacksmiths is also listed as somewhere television crews can film. The pub has been featured in several programmes on ITV and BBC. There is a fee involved — with Steph explaining that they only hire out the space when the pub is closed — but in addition, it gets them noticed.
“We had a message from someone asking if we were featured in an ITV documentary, called the Pillar in the House. A detective had been interviewed in the pub and even though the pub didn’t get a mention, this person recognised us,” says Steph, adding that the Blacksmiths will appear in forthcoming documentary about the Mitford Sisters, which sees the pub transformed into a German café. “But we have to wait for the programme to air, before we’re allowed to post photos,” adds Steph.
