Council Member Maloney questions Khan on social media marketing data and SBS engagement with influencers

If I can keep going.

Okay.

I did want to ask a few questions, thank you, Chair, about the social media program of Intro 408, which anecdotally I've heard has really helped a lot of these businesses that are transitioning through the decades.

In fact, Council Member Shanel-Thomas-Henry and I visited

the luncheonette, which is in my district, and described revitalization after they got more involved in social media marketing, and everyone should go and try their milkshakes, which are the last homemade milkshakes actually

made fresh right there.

So I've heard this anecdotal evidence, but curious if you've seen those trends citywide and if SBS has any.

Data on social media marketing and how that's helped small businesses, and also if SBS has any current engagement either with

social media companies or with the influencers that are creating the content and how you're thinking about pairing small businesses with that tool to help keep folks.

In business.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Yes, to all of those questions.

We have relationships with the social media companies.

We also have relationships with the content creators in the social media landscape.

And we also already have existing programming that seeks to promote digital marketing and leveraging social media.

We have webinars that we do.

We have events that we do.

We have a social media marketing webinar on September 30th that's coming up soon.

And as part of our Small Business Month Expo, which took place on May 29th in Manhattan, where we had over 2,000, Shirtama Senri was there, 2,000 plus small businesses from all over the city.

We did a big marketing campaign.

We did boots on the ground.

single borough try to promote this one-stop shop event so you could get connected with hundreds of different services, resources, not just the ones the city offers, but the ones the state offers,

CDFIs and other affordable lenders, and just anything you could think of that could support a small business, including the commercial lease assistance right in front of you with direct service hours.

If you then learned about it and wanted to then have a consultation with the lawyer, you could also do that.

And at that event, we specifically did a panel on how important the new content creation social media economy is for small businesses.

And we featured influencers that have worked with small businesses before so that they could learn more on best practices so they could also be part of this economy.

And the first part of the question was if you have specific data on the trends or how small businesses are leveraging social media marketing.

We don't have any in-house trends that we're tracking or maintaining, but we know for a fact it is a vital and critical avenue for businesses to remain visible to customers.

It's a new reality.

It's a new reality.

And for some businesses, they may be able to survive, including some of the legacy businesses.

They have such a following, and the service or the product they're offering is one that doesn't require reaching new customers or engaging with customers every week.

Maybe it's a service that is...

Like your regular barbershop in the neighborhood may not have the same need to be on social media as another type of business where they constantly

They need the churn of new customers who may not be coming there frequently for like their monthly appointment, but they need to ensure that they're constantly visible and attracting the right customer, especially in neighborhoods that are changing where there's population shifts.

So yes, very important.

That's why we've baked in the service.

We want to always and continuously improve on that service and would be really excited at the opportunity of resource to expand the programming on social media.

Thank you very much, Chair.