Shaking Up the Feed – 2026 Digital Beacon Awards

Newton’s True Value in Cherryvale, Kansas, turns a trending joke into a showcase for the people and personality behind the century-old hardware store.

One by one, the employees of Newton’s True Value happily walk out the front door of the store and disappear into an oversized coffee thermos sitting in the foreground. The caption on the screen reads: “How it feels leaving work on a Friday.”

Then somebody gives the cup a shake and employees tumble onto the floor, accompanied by the words: “When you realize we’re open Saturdays!!!”

The short video earned Newton’s the 2026 Digital Beacon Award for Best Individual Social Media Post, but its appeal goes beyond a well-executed visual gag. For owner Megan Menzer, it represents something Newton’s has increasingly tried to accomplish online: Give customers another way to get to know the people behind the business.

“They can shop anywhere,” Menzer says. “They choose to shop with us because of who we are.”

That philosophy carries particular weight at a business whose relationship with its hometown stretches back more than a century.

Four Generations in Cherryvale

Hardware Connection Century Club retailer Newton’s True Value traces its roots to 1924, when Menzer’s great-grandparents, Earl and Grace Newton, opened an appliance and contracting business in Cherryvale. Grace ran the appliance side of the operation, beginning a family-business tradition that would eventually pass through four generations.

Menzer’s father, Joe Long, joined True Value hardware in 1976, and Menzer grew up around the store, started working there in fifth grade and returned after graduating from nearby Pittsburg State University.

Today, the fourth-generation owner faces a challenge her great-grandparents could hardly have imagined: making sure a local business remains visible in a world where customers increasingly encounter companies first through a phone screen.

Newton’s has been on Facebook since the platform’s relatively early days, but its approach has evolved past solely posting products and promotions. Social media, Menzer says, has become another key part of business operations.

She once handled the store’s content herself. As its presence grew, she recognized the value of putting someone creative in charge who genuinely enjoyed social media. That role now belongs to Newton’s store manager, Alura Simmons.

Catching the Moment

Simmons keeps an eye on trends circulating online and considers whether they can be translated into something that feels natural for Newton’s.

That can require moving quickly. A trend that works today might disappear from customers’ feeds a month later, making social media difficult to manage alongside the daily demands of a retail store.

The filter is authenticity. Simmons looks for trends involving retail, work or everyday situations that can be narrowed to something specific to hardware. The resulting videos frequently draw on things the Newton’s staff actually experiences.

Even when the primary objective is a laugh, Menzer and Simmons want the store itself to be part of the picture: They’ll film an employee holding a specific product, or a department or display will be visible behind the action.

“We try to make every post practical,” Menzer says.

The winning video takes that approach in another direction. Rather than featuring a particular product, the entire Newton’s crew—and the idea that the store is open on Saturdays—become the content.

Customers noticed.

Menzer says people have mentioned the post while shopping in the store and around Cherryvale, including encounters at the grocery store. Some customers have even begun asking when they can appear in a Newton’s video themselves.

For Digital Beacon judge Kathryn Emery, home improvement and lifestyle expert and creator of BeTheBestHome.com, the post captured what effective social media can accomplish.

“Social media is about engaging people in a trending, relevant way and standing out in a funny or sincere way,” Emery says. “People remember the way your post made them feel, and this post was trending, funny and included the whole store.”

Emery also saw something happening on the other side of the camera: Bringing the entire staff into the production can build internal camaraderie and give employees another reason to feel proud of their workplace.

Participation buy-in is important to Menzer as well. Featuring a variety of employees enables different personalities to emerge and makes the store more relatable to customers who may know those same people from elsewhere in the community.

It also helps Newton’s reach beyond the generations of customers who already know the business.

“We live and work in a really small town,” Menzer says.

Humor, she adds, provides a way to reach an audience the store might not connect with through a conventional product post.

After more than 100 years in Cherryvale, Newton’s has accumulated plenty of history. Its social media gives customers a chance to see the people writing the current chapter—and sometimes that means stuffing the whole crew into a coffee thermos and shaking them out onto the floor.