Grassroots Marketing: Where Social Media Makes Perfect Sense

We belong to a local Chamber of Commerce that represents a lot of small communities in the area that we live. It represents small communities with populations as high as 8,000, but most closer to 1,000. Like a lot of small communities, the summers are filled with unique and creative events on the weekends.  The events have no real media budgets 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.

The Chamber meetings we have attended are mostly spent on individuals talking and promoting upcoming events their communities are having, all good but, you’re preaching to the choir. So what are you trying to accomplish by doing this?  Grassroots marketing and word of mouth advertising!  Yes, you’re hoping that people will leave the meeting and talk about it in passing about what is going on the weekend of (you fill in the blank). Those who have been and are involved in social media know there is no better way to create word of mouth than social media.

This Chamber covers a large area, with several small communities.  It also has a great name for the area that the small communities are located in.  It just 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 nearby larger community.  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 picture’s of the event, create 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. The Chamber like most chambers has a website that lists all the events, but where social media excels over a website in this situation is that a website is passive. You have to advertise your website to get people to go there, or they have to think about you to 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 pro-active!  Facebook and Twitter allow you to be more pro-active!  Where I believe at some point, everybody who has a website today will be involved in some social media.  Some businesses are obviously more conducive for social media.  This is one of those situations.  The opportunities are endless of what this community could do promoting their fantastic events!