Tiktok has become an important marketing tool for Newport businesses. Would a ban hurt?

Virality on social media is hard to predict, often hitting content as randomly as a strike of lightning. However, for local companies and organizations, that one viral post can translate to a massive boost in business.

“Over the past year, we’ve seen an increase from 60-80% in business at all of our stores from an increase in (activity on) TikTok,” Nitro Bar coffee shop co-owner Audrey Finocchiaro told The Newport Daily News.

Finocchiaro and her assistant, Jacquelyn Tantimonaco, run The Nitro Bar’s social media accounts and have focused heavily on promoting the business on the video sharing platform TikTok for about a year. By creating entertaining content based around the coffee chain, such as having baristas prepare odd orders they have had to make before, the small Rhode Island-based business has been able to score a following of coffee lovers beyond the Ocean State.

“People want to follow a person, not a brand,” Finocchiaro said.

The Nitro Bar is not the only Rhode Island business to experience viral success on social media platforms like TikTok, either. Discover Newport Communications Director Cassandra Earle said other local businesses like Newport Car Museum in Portsmouth and Wally’s Weiners on Newport’s Lower Thames Street have also gone viral through videos posted to TikTok.

Part of the social media pie

Even Discover Newport uses social media, its influencers and content creation abilities, to promote Newport and Bristol counties.

“(Social media) is a part of a pie, in terms of storytelling,” Earle said. “Social media is a part of it, digital print media is a part of it, PR is a part of it, but social media has taken a larger stake in it for well over a decade now. It’s a way to communicate and it varies on what kind of audience that you want to reach. Some of our audience is on TikTok or Instagram, so we want to be in that space so that way we’re representing our destination there.”

Content creators outside of Rhode Island are even taking a shine to the Ocean State. Joey Calcavecchia, also known by his handle The Roaming Foodie, lives up to his name by traveling all across New England to post about different restaurants, despite being based in New Hampshire, and has been to several restaurants in Providence and Rhode Island. He said he sometimes collaborates with the restaurants to get the word out, but other times, he just visits because he saw a restaurant on social media and thought it looked interesting.

“Providence specifically, their food scene just keeps getting better and better, and part of that is that I think, is because it’s not a city like Boston where rents are so ridiculous, so you can have these cool places just come down here and open up unique concepts,” Calcavecchia said.

Another New England influencer, Alaina Pinto, has made it a goal to visit more of Rhode Island. She said the state has its own unique appeal that has worked well on her social media in the past, when she visited Newport.

“There’s so many cute small towns that exist here that are like a more accessible version of Nantucket, or even Newport, same vibes, same energy, less intimidating, less difficult to get to or book a hotel at, maybe more affordable and so worth a visit,” Pinto said. “I went to Wickford Village in December and was like, ‘This town is so cute.’ It is precious and I feel like there’s so many hidden gems in Rhode Island that need to be explored. I need to see them all.”

Discover Newport invited Finocchiaro and the three New England-based social media influencers to give Newport County businesses tips and tricks on how to use social media to promote their products and services during a marketing meeting on Wednesday. Advice ranged from Finocchiaro explaining what works with different audiences on different platforms to Meredith Ewenson, a Newport-based hiking and nature exploration content creator, telling business owners the best methods for reaching out and collaborating with influencers. For example, Ewenson told the business owners that they should find influencers whose content fits their brand, like how she occasionally works with local tourism boards, such as Discover Newport, to promote hiking trails in their areas.

“With my partnership with Discover Newport last summer, it drove a lot of interest and conversation and traffic to people who wanted to explore the outdoors spaces that Rhode Island and specifically Newport and Bristol counties have to offer,” Ewenson said. “That was an obvious good fit because people were not only interested in the content but took action on it.”

Potential effects of a TikTok ban

While the Rhode Island social media scene is growing, there are still problems with hinging success on a platform you don’t have total control over, Ewenson noted. Recently, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would force TikTok’s parent company ByteDance to sell the platform to a U.S.-based company or risk the app being banned from US app stores and web-service providers.

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Finocchiaro, Ewenson, Calcavecchia and Pinto all had different feelings regarding the ban. Although he focuses on his content on Instagram, Calcavecchia said the ban could mean a massive loss for the businesses he helps promote.

“It hurts me because that hurts the businesses, and that’s what I care about,” Calcavecchia said. “Say TikTok is banned tomorrow, these restaurants that have built a whole platform on there, like Nitro Cart, they would lose all that and it hurts all the small businesses, if anything.”

Ewenson also focuses more on Instagram content and said that she has been working to increase engagement off of social media, such as through email. Pinto, whose whole career has become social media content creation, said she has built skills through her work that she believes could translate elsewhere if something were to happen to TikTok or Instagram.

As for Finocchiaro, she doubts the impact the ban will have altogether.

“It’s a business move, so whoever has the most money will buy (TikTok),” Finocchiaro said. “I don’t see it going anywhere anytime soon.”

This article originally appeared on Newport Daily News: Newport business owner talks about potential impact of TikTok ban