Social Media and Reclaim Arcade
Similar to the recent tech stack of Reclaim Arcade I wrote about I thought it might not be a bad idea to take stock of where the arcade exists online right now and how it interacts with its audience in those spaces. This started as a rant on Mastodon, a space where ironically I don't have an account for the arcade, about how difficult it is for a local small business that primarily reaches local audiences to engage with networks on the web. Some might say I've done an ok job at it, but I never feel like it's enough and am always open to feedback. This stuff is exhausting for a business owner who just wants to run a cool space that people love, and yet it's also seemingly necessary. Let's start with the rundown:
Probably the primary space for Reclaim Arcade. 8k likes, 9.4k followers (not entirely sure when FB started separating those two things but there you go), by some standards probably a decent following for a local business that just celebrated its 4th anniversary. Engagement there is varied, certainly not as high as an account with that many followers would expect. I suspect if you're not buying ads here it's much harder to get eyeballs on stuff. And yet I post all our events there and post often (used to be daily, now reduced to 3-4x/week).
The business listing for Google is a pretty critical entry point for a lot of people so as a local business it's important to keep an eye on it. Are the directions correct on how to get to us? Are the business hours updated when there are holidays? How about photos and logos and all that? I keep on top of that and I even used to respond to every review. These days I don't do that because (thankfully) we have an abundance of just wonderful reviews from people and with a 4.9 rating across over 500 reviews I can at least say that aspect that normally can be a stress point for businesses is something I don't have to worry about.
3,287 followers at the moment here. I cross-post my Facebook posts to Instagram via Business Suite. Instagram is limiting in that I can't put any links in the description or they won't be clickable, hence the "link in bio" nomenclature. I don't make "Reels", and I don't often make "Stories", I think I've gone live there once to test streaming pinball. It's a space that I'm not super comfortable in which perhaps shows my age. With as many followers as we have I should probably spend more time there, but again, ugh. Interestingly there seem to be some businesses that only exist on Insta and not FB whereas I think the reverse is probably more the norm.
Reclaim Arcade had a Twitter account before we opened, long before that guy took over, renamed it, and turned it into a nazi bar. We never had much engagement there and I stopped posting pretty shortly after we opened focusing more on FB and Instagram at the time. I believe the X account is still there because I can't be bothered to even figure out what the login is and would rather it just lay dormant than engage with that site at all.
TikTok
Created and managed originally by a social media manager I hired that was damn good at getting engagement (14.6k followers, with the most viral video having over 400k views), this has since fallen by the wayside because I am absolutely not a TikTok person and the few attempts I've made have felt not only forced but also incredibly time-consuming and I don't think it's supposed to be (but what do I know). The changes in legislation and questions around the future of Tiktok also make me question whether this is the place to invest any time.
YouTube
Short-form video content might not be my strength (so not spending any time making "Shorts" here) but I do enjoy creating videos for the arcade despite the time and effort involved. I do a weekly update video every Thursday and use YouTube to archive the streams we do live on Twitch for our pinball tournaments. Video production-type stuff has always been fun in my career so I think that probably is why this one feels like less work.
Threads
I adopted a Threads account for the arcade when it first came out, thinking it could be cool to have a short-form text option to get updates out for the arcade. I haven't found myself posting there much after the initial burst though I do still have the app on my phone and sometimes use it to see what people are talking about there. I find it very difficult to find a "community" as a local business in these types of spaces where it feels like I'm just broadcasting the news of what we're doing as opposed to having conversations like I do on my personal Mastodon account.
reclaimarcade.com
Our site runs WordPress and while I don't update it terribly often I've tried to at least quarterly check in on the games list, ensure all the info is correct, and there are some real-time feeds from social media embedded throughout. Notably, I also post a copy of all our events to a widget on the events page as a way of having a space that is not FB to say "here are the upcoming events" and I like having that despite it being double the amount of work.
Notable absences here are all the up-and-coming networks that trend in tech spaces. We don't have a Bluesky account, we don't have a Mastodon account, no Pixelfed. I guess I'm writing this post because of the same question I was left with in my original rant on Mastodon: Are there examples of localized small businesses doing interesting outreach outside of the popular big social media apps? For all the talk of the fediverse being the future of the open social web I wonder, will it be a space for a place like Reclaim Arcade? Perhaps that's something I should push on, but the stakes seem a lot higher as a small business that can't afford to not be seen on the web by a local audience.
Another trend I see folks in the tech sphere adopting that ironically has been used more by local businesses is email. Seen as a "return to the private" the newsletter is back baby! I did try a newsletter for the arcade for a very short period but it became a hassle and no one signed up for it (I had flyers, social media posts, etc and just couldn't get people to pull the trigger on signup so clearly doesn't seem to have value). Anyway, this post was as much stream of consciousness as anything but wanted to put it out there as it helps me think through where I should be spending my time and energy.
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