When Marion Street Cheese Market in Oak Park was featured on Groupon, Assistant General Manager Michelle Dirks thought it would be a good chance to offer discounts to current customers while trying to get a few new ones.

But she didn’t expect the explosion of interest that started Wednesday morning.

“It’s been a little overwhelming,” Dirks said. “Well, wonderfully overwhelming.”

Local businesses are turning to social media and networking more and more as a way to reach out to new customers. While one example is Groupon, a Web site that offers daily discounts if enough people sign on, others are turning to Facebook or local blogs to help drive traffic.

The cheese market was featured as a daily deal on Groupon — pay $20 and get a $40 gift certificate. In order to qualify, at least 200 people needed to sign on. They hit that mark at 7:05 a.m. and surpassed 2,600 by 2 p.m.

The market hasn’t seen much foot traffic yet, but has been taking phone calls non-stop all morning. Dirks expects the coupons to start trickling in the coming days and over the weekend.

“We can give our loyal customers a good deal and generate more traffic,” she said. “And we can use it to get people from the city. The suburbs aren’t scary. We are just off the Green Line.”

The market is the only Oak Park restaurant featured on the site so far, but others are lining up to try to get their own daily deals, said Downtown Oak Park Executive Director Pat Zubak. And it isn’t just for restaurants and retailers either.

The Unity Temple Restoration Foundation was featured on the site to try to get more people in for tours. The foundation offered 50 percent off admission July 14, and like the market, organizers were surprised by the results.

“We needed to sell 200” for the deal to be valid, said Executive Director Emily Roth. “I envisioned a day of constantly hitting refresh on the computer, trying to urge it on.”

But that wasn’t necessary. They surpassed 200 by 7:45 a.m. and sold 1,349 the entire day. About 100 have been redeemed to far.

“It’s not like a restaurant, where you are going to get a huge rush the first week,” said Roth, who expects the coupons to be cashed in over the year. “But we did notice that people were buying the tickets in groups of four.”

On Aug. 3, the Book Table in Oak Park was featured on Groupon. The popular discount site is hardly the only avenue for social networking, though. Many businesses set up Facebook pages that customers can use and get information about sales and discounts. Local blogs are also a good tool for spreading the word.

Downtown Oak Park, for example, just used local blog livehereoakpark.com and gave all the users $1 off beer for the Mid-Week Market, a new Wednesday event the business group is trying to expand.

“We absolutely believe in (social marketing),” Zubak said. “It doesn’t always work, but it can be great for some small businesses.”

And for the Marion Street Cheese Market, it has been a success worth repeating. Dirks said they will look into doing more other discounts and ventures in the future.

“We will look at how it goes over the next couple of months and look at doing other forms of social marketing,” she said. “But I’m not sure what that would be just yet.”