> I think this is key. Being "local" is important. I saw this in the comic/gaming shop I volunteered in. We had a web presence and facebook page, but no one used them except for memes and news links. The money was made with people coming into the store and impulse-spending during a Friday Night Magic tournament or RPG sessions. Conversations and real-life interactions with people are why these shops have survived the move to online and big-box outlet stores.

I'm not sure you've thought this through. How are you getting people in to a game shop to spend money? (Or: a game shop is not analogous to Trader Joes.)

10 years ago I ran the Magic events for a large game shop and also the corresponding part of their website. The events mostly ran at break-even to get people into the store to spend money. And the website - specifically the event calendar and email list - was incredibly successful at getting people to come to events.

Game shops should absolutely have as much social media and web presence as possible, tuned towards raising awareness of events. And also possibly raising awareness of their electronic shopfront, if that's something they do - another thing that was a nice extra source of revenue even 10 years ago.