Grassroots Marketing: Where Social Media Makes Perfect Sense

We belong to a local Chamber of Commerce that represents many small communities where we live. It means small communities with populations as high as 8,000, but most closer to 1,000. Like many small communities, the summers are filled with unique and creative weekend events.  The events have no accurate media budgets; they are all done on a grassroots level and promoted with grassroots marketing. This is where the first level of success is getting as many people that they can come from their community to participate and volunteer, the real success of these events is how many people they can attract from the larger community on a Saturday some 15 to 20 miles away. This Chamber covers a large area with several small communities. It also has a great name for the area where the small communities are located. It makes perfect sense to develop a Facebook page and Twitter account representing their area.

Using Social Media for Grassroots Marketing

Facebook and Twitter will allow you to get “Likes” and “followers” from the larger community nearby. It is a cost-effective way to post and tweet all the upcoming events. It will allow all the different communities to be a part of the page. The event coordinators can participate on the wall; they can post pictures of the event, creating buzz and word of mouth! You can talk about the Facebook page and Twitter account to the visitors of the events and make sure that they sign up so they can see all the upcoming events. Like most chambers, the Chamber has a website that lists all the events, but social media excels over a website in this situation because a website is passive. You have to advertise your website to get people to go there, or they have to think about you, Google it, or go directly to your site. Facebook and Twitter allow you to be proactive with posts and tweets to all your “Likes” and “followers.” When you’re dealing with events, you have to be more proactive!  Facebook and Twitter allow you to be more proactive!  I believe that, at some point, everybody who has a website today will be involved in social media. Some businesses are more conducive to social media. This is one of those situations. There are endless opportunities for what this community could do to promote its fantastic events!