Social Media becomes crucial Marketing Tool for Small Business, By Tiffany Holland

On April 1, Roanoke announced on its Facebook page that it was constructing a cruise ship to float down the Roanoke River.

“City of Roanoke building a cruise ship for River” was the headline sprawled across a picture of a giant ship. Follow-up posts provided details. People commented on the post that this was impossible. It was unbelievable. But it was posted on the city’s verified Facebook page, presumably run by city officials. It had to be real.

Of course, the cruise ship never came. A few hours after the first post, another one appeared saying “April Fools.”

Some people commented that it was funny, others that it was a dumb waste of time. The man behind the posts, city communications coordinator Timothy Martin, said the April Fool’s Day joke did exactly what it was designed to do: bring the city attention.

According to Facebook analytics, the series of posts reached about 300,000 people on Facebook.

“That’s good for us, but not the best,” he said. “Snow storms [pictures] can reach 600,000.”

Martin generally oversees all the social media accounts the city maintains. He watches Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and all the likes, follows and commentary that come with them. Responding to people on the sites is part of his job. The goal is to make Roanoke an attractive place for people to live, work and visit.

For the city and almost every business with a  Facebook page, social media is no longer a place for people to check in with their friends and family. It’s an advertising tool. And it has become an extremely valuable marketing channel.

Facebook, the world’s largest social networking website with more than 1 billion users, had representatives in Roanoke on June 22. It joined the Roanoke-Blacksburg Technology Council and U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke County, in hosting a panel for small business owners. The aim was to give advice on how to use Facebook effectively for marketing.

Nearly 300 people showed up. The room wasn’t just filled with small start-ups, either. Established retail shops, media companies, restaurants and new business managers all came for tips.

“People used to see it as a thing for young people, but it’s not that way anymore,” said RBTC spokeswoman Rebecca Holland. “It’s reaching a lot larger audience than it used to.”

According to numbers from Facebook, 189 million people use the social media site each month in the U.S. Some 40 million small businesses use it for marketing.

The second most popular social media website, Twitter, has more than 300 million users across the world. Twitter, which is designed to be more fluid and works best when used in real time, sees about 500 million tweets sent out daily, according to its stats.

In addition, business networking site LinkedIn and photo-sharing site Instagram have grown in numbers every year. Social media have become a major outlet for communicating, even on the local level. Are people in Roanoke looking for a group to hike with? The Roanoke Appalachian Trail Club can be found on Meetup.com, a social networking site for local clubs to get together. The trail club has more than 800 members.

The writing’s on the Facebook wall

David Aldridge is the e-marketing coordinator for the Roanoke Valley Convention & Visitors Bureau and maintains its social networking sites. Its Facebook page, Visit Virginia’s Blue Ridge, has more than 56,000 followers and its Twitter and Instagram accounts count more than 2,000 followers each.

Aldridge often works with regional small businesses on their branding.

“When we bring [social media] up at a training session, we almost have to cut people off because people will want to talk about it so much,” he said.

One of the biggest benefits for businesses using social media is the fact that setting up an account is free. A Facebook representative at the June event argued that it’s easier to keep track of who sees Facebook advertising than it is with traditional media outlets. She said it can also be cheaper, with the ability to “boost” a post higher onto a page’s news feed for as little as $5 per post.

“I always say, with social media, the price is right,” said Jason Martin, owner of Martin’s Downtown Bar & Grill in Roanoke. “There is no cost other than your personal time.”

He said he uses social media heavily to promote the bands he frequently hosts. He tries to post something at least every other day to keep things current.

“It is the best way to get the word out about shows we have booked,” he said.

Aldridge thinks it has become harder to market successfully as social media has gotten more popular. Facebook, for example, is constantly making changes to what users can see in their feed when they log on.

Aldridge said he used to be able to post a picture of Natural Bridge and get 1,000 likes, but now it’s not that simple. The algorithms Facebook uses to determine what people can see from organic posts, which have no paid promotion, are mostly a mystery to users. Even if a user likes a business’s page, he or she likely will not see every post that the business makes.

Several businesses pointed out at the Facebook event that it has become increasingly common to pay to get more social media reach and more control over who sees their posts.

Social media managers have been able to figure out some of the ways to get attention without spending money. For example, Facebook now allows users to upload video directly to the site, and views tend to be much better if a video is posted this way as opposed to a link from YouTube, Aldridge said. Virginia’s Blue Ridge recently shared a 12-second Facebook video of the Northern Lights over the Blue Ridge Parkway. It amassed nearly 9,000 views.

Andy Schlosser, the owner of Metro restaurant in Roanoke, was on a panel at the Facebook event. He said Facebook invited him after they saw the growth in the numbers of people who interact with his page.

Schlosser reopened Metro for lunch in January. He wanted to attract the lucrative downtown Roanoke lunch crowd, so he began taking pictures of the restaurant’s tastiest and prettiest lunch dishes and posting them to his social media accounts.

“If you are just hitting them with a bunch of logos then that is just obnoxious to them,” he said.

He followed downtown groups on Facebook, and through Facebook advertising he was able to target Facebook users who worked downtown. Metro’s social media accounts began to grow in views, and now his Facebook page has nearly 5,000 followers. His lunch business grew with it.

He now believes social marketing is a must for any growing business. He said the large crowd at Facebook’s event two weeks ago is a testament to this.

“The writing is on the wall — on the Facebook wall,” he said.

Using it effectively

Not everyone agrees. Charlie Hamill owns Rock & Roll Diner, a popular Roanoke food truck. He said he has seen businesses ditching their websites and just maintaining a Facebook page, but that’s not for him.

“Our storefront is our website. It’s not our Facebook page,” he said.

Since the food truck is always on the move, he regularly updates his website with his location. He mostly uses social media to direct people to the website.

“When you rely on [social media] there is all kinds of misinformation out there,” he said. The one place to always get accurate information is to visit Rock & Roll Diner’s website, he added. Hamill often sees social media posts circulating for several days, causing people to see a post on the wrong day, and people won’t check to verify that it’s old news.

“I’ve learned what to do on Facebook to get more results,” he said. “The first thing that really gets results is to pay money.”

Paying hasn’t been successful for everyone, though. Martin’s owner said paid Facebook ads generated mixed results for him.

The trick to successfully promoting something on social media is understanding the medium and its users, using it frequently and posting content people want to see, according to social media coordinators.

“If you are going to use it, use it,” said Timothy Martin, the city’s social media handler. “Don’t create an account and hope it takes care of itself. You have to be behind the scenes driving the account.”

Aldridge agreed. “If you don’t have time to manage an account and to monitor or respond to comments, then don’t have an account,” he said. “Twitter is really bad about this.”

According to data from Twitter, 80 percent of its users access it regularly from a mobile device. Facebook also has a large number of mobile users. Aldridge suggests businesses get an alert on their phone when a user engages with them on a social media account.

“If they connect with you and you don’t respond, that is more frustrating than you not having one,” he said.

Holland with RBTC said social media should be treated as a community for people who share a common interest — almost like a club.

“I think it’s a way to connect with people on a more personal level,” she said. Writing posts and tweets that are human, not just advertisements, can help with engagement.

Timothy Martin’s April Fool’s Day joke from last year won the “Government Social Media Golden Post” award at the Government Social Media Conference & Expo in Nevada this year. It also was seen by hundreds of thousands of people.

“I get the most response when I post a funny gif,” said Aldridge.

“The overall idea is don’t just post basic news bulletin things, post things that stand out.”

Note: This article was earlier published at roanoke.com.

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