Straight answers
Extra Medium is a marketing agency in Roanoke, Virginia, and we run social the way this town actually talks: through people. Our lab builds Magpie, a local creator platform, so our social and influencer work starts with real local voices — the hikers, food folks and shop regulars Roanoke already trusts — not stock content calendars.
Roanoke has always run on who knows whom. Social media did not replace that — it gave it a feed, screenshots and a memory. The content that works here is proof from real life: the trail conditions, the special on the board, the crew on a job site, the regulars who show up every Friday. We build social programs around that proof instead of stock calendars written three time zones away.
Extra Medium Labs builds Magpie, a local creator marketing platform, because we kept seeing the same gap: national influencer marketplaces sell follower counts, while a Roanoke business needs the hiker, the food photographer and the local parent whose followers actually live in the valley. Magpie shows each creator’s local reach before anyone books, so a modest following of real neighbors beats a big following of strangers — the Roanoke math, applied to influencer marketing.
Content planning and production, community management, creator partnerships, and paid social that puts the best organic proof in front of more of the right people — all reported against enquiries, bookings and sales, not likes. The full service list lives on our studio page; the short version is that social here is a sales channel with a personality, and we treat it that way.
Key takeaways
Yes, in the categories where people browse before they buy: food and drink, retail, tourism, events, fitness and home services with visible results. The mechanism is the town’s own — a trusted local face, a real photo, a reason to come this week.
It is paying or hosting local creators — people with genuine followings in your own market — to feature your business. At local level the follower count matters far less than how many of those followers live within driving distance, which is the number our platform Magpie is built to show.
Start on the contact page with a few lines about the business and the crowd you want. We reply in writing within one business day with first ideas and honest expectations.
Let’s talk
Don’t know exactly what you need? Good. That’s our job. Tell us where the business is headed and we’ll tell you honestly whether we can help — and if we can’t, who might.
Usually replies within one business day.
