Social Media Sucks for the Firearms Industry
*Warning* This is a giant rant because I just gotta get this off my chest.
This is a rant from Heather.
We're on the struggle bus, ya'll. Like Ariel says, "I wanna be where the people are." We want people to see and hear all the awesome stuff we having going on here at River Valley Arms & Ammo but it seems that there are a huge number of platforms that think guns are bad... no matter how you look at them.
Punished by Meta
You've been hearing us preach for awhile that Facebook and Instagram continue to punish us and reduce our exposure. It's against their community standards to promote the sale of weapons. In addition, a lot of their AI tools and bots confuse firearms with a weapon or confuse us posting about firearms with trying to sell.
We have attempted to appeal and a large number of posts that have been flagged and there just doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason behind which ones are allowed back up and which ones that aren't.
Because of the major restrictions on our content, we've moved towards making our content a little less interesting by having to cover up pieces of images, not show any sort of sale information, and talk about things that are still cool but just not as cool as guns.
We're still active on Facebook and Instagram so if you are looking for our content and you seek it out, you'll still find something there but it's not as good as it could be because of those community standards.
We're Not the Bad Guy, Damnit!
We are a licensed Federal Firearms License (FFL). We abide by all levels of laws including federal, state and local laws. We don't want bad guys to have guns either. Every firearm that enters our premises must be logged in. Every firearm that leaves our premises must be logged out. In order to log a firearm out, we must run a 4473 FBI NICS background check.
SMS Not Allowed for Firearms Industry Either
Here's another fun story. As you may or may not know, we're big supporters of the Redwood Falls Sportsmen's Club and Defensive Pistol League. This year, we thought it might be handy to get a text message reminder program set up so we can better communicate with people when there's a rain delay or whatever. Turns out, you can't send messages pertaining to firearms through SMS marketing... like... it's a rule. So the providers we attempted to work with wouldn't even allow us to have an account.
Kicked Off Snapchat
Most recently, we started pushing our followers that want to see more of our incoming stock to Snapchat because it appeared they were a little more reasonable with what they allow to be posted. We were having a lot of success (and fun) sharing all the new toys we were getting in and - bonus - it was helping us get more traffic into the store. Then, one of the two gun shop Snapchat accounts (RVAA Becky) was shut down without warning. So, no, Becky didn't decide that she doesn't like you and just stop talking to you. 🙂 My River Valley Arms Snapchat account is still operational but that's making me pretty gun shy (pun intended).
So What's the Best Way to Stay in Touch with RVAA?
We're working with some awesome partners like RV Tech Solutions and VantagePoint Marketing to create a space online where we can get you the content that we know you want without the fear of having it be gone tomorrow. It might take us a bit to get them all set up though.
So for now, you should sign up for our email list. We are planning on changing the frequency of our emails and sending something out about once every 3 weeks with information on new products and stock at the store.
