This business boosted sales 25% after finding the right social media partner

PASADENA, Calif. — Mia Mazadiego and husband Mark Guenther run the small mom and pop Neon Retro Arcade, where for $10 an hour, you can play retro games like Donkey Kong, Ms. Pac-Man, and Frogger as much as you want.

A retro video arcade is about as unlikely a place to find a big social media following. After all, what’s new about old video games? But thanks to specific input from social media giant Facebook on how to fine-tune their social presence, the couple saw sales increase by 25%.

The couple got invited to join the Facebook Small Business Council, a networking organization that dishes out advice and education on how to get the most out of the social network. Finding the right social media partner — and learning how to work with it — has helped the company boost business.

The council allowed the couple to “connect and have more contact with people who have more experience than we do in advertising, creative and the right targeting,” says Mazadiego.

Being in the council allowed the couple to bounce ideas off others and fine-tune their Facebook posts to bring more people into the store, they say.

Businesses that are new to Facebook can find it very frustrating to get their questions answered. Phone support isn’t available, and if you don’t advertise, the best you can do is post notes in a forum, and hope to get a reply. (Chat and email support come to paid advertisers.)

Members of the council share their experiences on how they grew their business via Facebook in online forums, and at Facebook’s “Boost Your Business,” seminars which are staged regularly around the country. (Some 70 are scheduled for this year.)

If you’re reading this, you’re probably not going to be selected for the council — only 40 businesses get to join yearly.

But Bess Yount, the head of Facebook’s small business marketing, points to many tools the social network does offer, including online courses, webinars, articles, and videos.

• The e-courses include how to create effective advertising, target audiences, use Facebook Pages to communicate with customers and use A/B testing to fine-tune campaigns. https://www.facebook.com/blueprint/courses/

• Videos and articles to introduce small business to working with video for mobile, DIY style. Facebook’s “Creative Shop Mobile Studio” features tips on how to make the video look polished and professional, on a tiny budget. https://www.facebook.com/business/e/mobile_studio

While the Facebook online tools help build a page, they are really geared towards having you spend money. Remember that the social network is set up with a unique algorithm that ensures that only friends who are active on your profile by commenting and liking posts will most likely see your latest. The only way to guarantee that people will actually see the posts? "Boost," the post with advertising dollars, which, depending upon how extensive the campaign, and the geographic area chosen, (you can fine-tune it to a specific ZIP code) can cost anywhere from $5-$10 a day to hundreds of dollars.

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Mazadiego says the couple spends "hundreds" of dollars monthly on their boost campaigns, which helps them generate 10 times as much traffic than normal.  Boost campaigns is how Facebook was able to generate $8 billion in revenues for its latest earnings report.

Still, Yount says the tools and consultation can help any business, even if you don’t want to advertise.

“We don’t want a business to start advertising until they’re comfortable with Facebook and figure out what they want to achieve,” she says.

And small businesses--remember that Facebook should be only on part of your online presence. The arcade has a website, Instagram, Group offers, Yelp page and a YouTube channel as well.

Tools are available from other sites as well:

• Yelp. On it's company blog, Yelp, the site for online reviews, offers links to webinars, articles and invites to live events that aren't focused on selling advertising, but instead just on creating a successful free Yelp business profile. "It's not about creating content or understanding the mystery of hashtags, but just on how to best use Yelp," says John Carroll, Yelp's manager of local business outreach. "Our philosophy is you understand the free tools, advertising is the next step."

• Twitter. Tips on best tweeting practices, how to use hashtags effectively and how to engage live video into social media marketing is offered at Twitter's business blog.

• Instagram. The fast-growing photo sharing app is owned by Facebook, and thus has similar tools to the social network. It also has a page for small businessesto find more information about working with the app, with articles, e-courses and videos.