Last week, I chatted with Maribel Araujo of Caracas Arepa Bar to learn more about how she’s used social media to grow a truly loyal customer base. (And by loyal, think: 883 Yelp reviews, averaging 4.5 stars!)

Caracas is a self-proclaimed two-man operation, consisting of Maribel and her husband, Aristides Barrios.  Maribel is in charge of all of the restaurants’ operations, including social media, marketing, and advertising.  Her husband handles the bookkeeping, accounting, and art direction.

Like many other New York success stories, Maribel’s journey to become an owner of three restaurant operations was full of twists.  She first moved to New York to work with a ‘dot.com’ company.  After that company crashed, Maribel worked as an assistant on several independent movie projects.  The long hours and horrible pay prompted Maribel to think about what else would make her happy—and the idea of opening an arepa bar developed.  Also, Maribel laughs, “I thought I’d work less.”

Caracas’ first location was an extremely small, full service restaurant housed in what is now their take-out restaurant on 7^th street. Three years later, in 2006, Maribel and Aristides moved the restaurant down the street to a slightly bigger location.  In 2008, they opened their third Caracas in Brooklyn. “That’s the story, so far,” Maribel says, and it’s enticing to think about the meaning behind “so far”.

While Maribel doesn’t have an ‘official’ background in computers, she shared with me that she’s always been interested in technology and is adept at using it.  As twitter and Facebook grew in popularity, she began using the platforms for her restaurants.

Q: When Caracas first opened, twitter and Facebook didn’t exist. When did you start using them?

M.A.: I started with a Facebook group.  The group was started by my niece.  We started with that and then I switched over to my page.  [This was] right when we opened [the Brooklyn location], maybe a little before that.  It was basically just running by itself and then we started having one person that was trying to contact us for something and we paid attention to that.  And then twitter came along.  Active and consistently I have been using for a good year.  When I found Postling, it was like ‘wow, this is so cool!’.  I can manage everything from [Postling] and I was very much into it.  I was very happy to have all of the tracking features.

To Maribel, using twitter, Facebook, and Yelp is simply part of being a successful small business.  Her only regret with social media is that the tools weren’t around when her restaurant first opened!  Managing Caracas’ online presence is a very important part of her job. Right now she estimates that she spends 3 hours a week managing her restaurants’ online interactions.

These hours are spent replying to every review Caracas receives, every day.  She estimates that they receive 3-4 reviews a day for the East Village location and 1 a day for the Brooklyn location.  When the reviews are good, Maribel simply thanks them.  When they’re less than stellar, Maribel starts a dialogue with the customer.  She recognizes that the customer wants to know what action she’s taken.  She’s even had a customer take down a bad review.

Q: Why do you think it’s necessary to respond to everyone? 

M.A.: It’s the most efficient way to get in people’s minds.  We live by word of mouth, not out of advertisements, like a full page ad in Time Out [that could cost us] $6,000.  We’ve never done traditional advertising. The most we’ve done is smaller, local magazines.  For me to get back what I’m putting into a full color ad, I would have to sell a lot of arepas!

(While it will take a few more months to fully understand the impact, Maribel told me that ever since she started responding to customers on a daily basis, Caracas’ Yelp reviews and Foursquare check-ins have been consistently more than usual: up to 30% more.)

Q: It seems like online interactions are pretty natural for you.  What kind of advice would you give to someone looking to start or understand social media?

M.A.: Get into a routine of doing social media for an hour a week.  Integration is key.  Compare yourself to [other similar businesses] to see what kind of postings the other businesses are doing.  Understand the difference between twitter and Facebook.  You have to be smart about it and think about what you’re going to tweet.  I don’t want to clutter other people’s accounts.  I’ll tweet if it’s a beautiful day and we have a super nice cocktail.  Planting a little seed.

Stay tuned for more profiles of small businesses who are using social media in exciting ways.  And if you have a business you’d like to see featured, send us a note!