MARTINSBURG - Through the effective use of new social media, the Martinsburg Mall is living up to its ability to be the community´s mall, explains Marketing Manager Jeff Rossignol.

A perfect example was the successful Mom´s Night Out event in May cosponsored by the Martinsburg Mall and Eastern Panhandle Moms.com, he says.

Through Melissa Nicholson Smallwood´s Eastern Panhandle Moms Facebook page, the first-time special promotion took on a life of its own with moms contacting each other about the event.

"It became alive on its own," Rossignol says. "We had 300 responses within two minutes."

The Martinsburg Mall offered a free Dell Mini netbook; a chocolate scavenger hunt, where visitors had to walk into the stores to find the chocolate; live entertainment and other specials for the night.

More than 1,200 moms were reached through the social media connections, and 300 moms participated.

That was an additional 300 patrons in traffic to the stores in the mall, all of which reported at least one sale because of the increased traffic, Rossignol says.

"It was a traffic driver for the stores," he says. "It was a huge success. The key was we found the right people to promote it."

And that was through social media.

Rossignol emphasizes a blending of media, the focus of the Martinsburg Mall´s marketing campaign, and warns against the "false separation of media." Networking between websites and Facebook, Twitter and video streaming creates viral advertising, where the promotion becomes contagious.

The social media networking offered by the Martinsburg Mall is not the wave of the future - it is here now and has overtaken other forms of advertising as the first place people go for information about products and services.

"In the future, we will no longer search for products and services, they will find us via social media," Socialnomics founder Erik Qualman says. "Successful companies in social media act more like party planners, aggregators and content providers than traditional advertisers."

Rossignol points out that the Martinsburg Mall is a hub for the community.

"It´s a connecting point for other businesses and organizations," he says. "A tremendous hub for businesses and organizations to reach out."

For instance, tickets for the Thunder Over the Blue Ridge Air Show special chalet packages are available at the Martinsburg Mall and have been promoted on the mall´s Facebook page, which has drawn inquiries from the mall´s contacts.

The Martinsburg Mall is a key ingredient to the success of the community, Rossignol says.

"The success of the Martinsburg Mall benefits everybody economically," he says. "There is an absolute connection between the support of the mall and the support of the economy. It benefits the community."