DreamGrow Social Media

Social media for car dealers

Social media marketing becomes an everyday part of car dealers marketing. Companies should dedicate resources and harness social media to find out how to use social channels for the brand.

The communication is different now and should include combination of marketing, public relations, brand and product knowledge. The tone should be personal and you should speak with both authority and enthusiasm. This helps you to break through barriers, become brand ambassadors and personally influence those who are important for your business.

Think about your sales and marketing. How do you reach your target audience (true fans, enthusiasts, owners, prospects and industry watchers). What makes prospects into buyers? What social tools could be used to help people through different stages of consideration, evaluation and purchase decisions. Find out what works best for you building awareness, helping to make a decision, converting people who consider competitors, provide services to owners post-purchase?

Always ask yourself “why” are you doing something before “what”. This way you can concentrate on bottom line and real business value.

Here are some tips, examples and links to articles that will help you to get you social media activities going.

Examples and cases

Jeep Community

Jeep combines different social media tools to tie together the community of fans. Twitter, Facebook, user images and featured content help users to interact with the brand and share it with their friends.

BMW of Minnetonka

is a really great example on how a local dealership can use Facebook. This car dealer integrated their entire lot to a Facebook fan page so you can can browse all the cars without leaving Facebook. BMW of Minnetonka have created a visually appealing landing page for people who are not yet fans and they have an active wall interacting with their fans.

Social success for Toyota GB’s iQ

During 2008-09 iCrossing UK, a global digital marketing agency, ran a programme of social media activity for Toyota GB to help raise awareness of its iQ city car. This initiative was based on a core blog and a series of activities designed to create word-of-mouth referrals that drove traffic to the blog and generated interest in the car itself. Download the iCrossing case study (PDF).

Volkswagen have been searching for The People’s Reviewer

Not a professional reviewer or a journalist but a real consumer who could give honest reviews and thoughts on Volkswagen’s small compact 4×4 the Tiguan. The reviews were then released online to help people see personal reviews and opinions on how this car performs in real life.

Ford Social Marketing+Auto Industry

Presentations from Scott Monty. He is the head of social media for Ford Motor Company.

Car Dealer Social Media Basics: Blogging

If I could pick one type of site that is a “must have” for car dealers wanting to get started in social media, what would it be? My answer, hands down, is a dealership blog. Before Facebook, Twitter, or any of the others, a blog is the best place to get started.

30 Social Media Marketing Tips for Car Dealers and Automotive Marketing Professionals…

The list of 30 Social Media action items come together to form a sound strategy for most dealerships. These 30 strategy and tactic descriptions were graciously supplied by Inc. Magazine. They were originally prepared as part of a comprehensive social media “cheat sheet” for the time-challenged business owner or entrepreneur. Here is a link to the Inc. Magazine Business Owner Social media Toolkit. I really like what April Joyner put together in the following list because each item listed is described in a way that quickly communicates the strategy, tactical execution requirements and the promised payoff!

Whitepaper: Navigating Social Media in the Automotive Industry

This whitepaper will provide a brief description of social media, its importance and insights on how dealerships can integrate social media into their marketing strategies.

Creating Value in Social Media

Create unique content every day

Unique content is what people are looking for and Google knows that. Fresh and original content is more valued and you gain better ran in Google which brings you more visitors. Creating great content every day is not hard. Point to other resources, share your experiences, help and give value to customers. Not everyone knows what to do when you got a flat tire or need to jump star a car.

Share your content

If you create valuable content then other want to use it too. Leverage that! Find other sites that are interested in your content and gain more visitors. Which sites might find your blog posts, images and videos interesting and find out if they are interested on publishing your content. This can bring you free traffic and you gain much valued link power that will boost you Google rankings.

Let others know you are creating content

Post links to your material in relevant online communities, social media channels, forums, Facebook, Twitter and so on. It can make dramatic difference if you spread the word. Others will pick up and pas your links on. Search engines find those links and the authority of your web properties goes up

Open comments

The main goal of the social media efforts is to engage people. This is a must! So, everything you put up in the social web should be open to comments, ratings, and sharing. This will help you to tie people to your site as they feel that their contributions are being valued and responded to. Open interaction will give you many benefits, such as being your online focus group and sounding board, getting expert opinions from other specialists, showing an human face, etc.

Less advertising, more value

Social media is not another channel to spam with your banners and self serving salesy news items.

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Image credit Henk L

Social Networks Will Be The Starting Point

TV series and news capture us as we want to have some continuity and consume some familiar stuff every day. This is not new. But in the old media the content, however interesting, was not about us.

Social media is taking the next step. Our friends life feeds contain news and drama that is relevant to us. Familiar, friendly and constantly changing this river of status updates glues us to the social networking sites. What’s more, we can interact and become a part of changing stream and that binds us even stronger.

But what about important things like business, brands, marketing, etc. Well, that is not what people are looking for in the social networking sites. Most of the activity in these sites, most of the social chatter, is just that chatter. Nothing important, just people connecting. It is the background noise of human society. This chatter has been going on forever but only now we are starting to record it. The noise will get even louder as more and more people join in. Additionally we are starting to capture even more of our daily activities until at some point we will be recording our lives nonstop 24 hours a day.

Understanding the social chatter will help companies to see that they have no control. But this will also help the more sensitive ones to find ways how to direct the streams of this force and make it work for them.

So, for the foreseeable future, the sites that help us to connect and get a daily fix of social interaction will be like a pot of honey for us.

Image credit Porter Novelli Global

New Free Social Media eBook

In the closing days of 2009 Pepsi decided against hiring Justin Timberlake, Cindy Crawford or even Britney Spears to speak for them during the 2010 Super Bowl. They would instead take the $20 million budgeted and use it to talk directly — and to listen back — with consumers through the web. It was the final and perhaps the most significant signpost marking 2009 as a year where emerging social media technologies mandated new strategies for anyone who deals with the public.

Download the new ebook released today (Feb 23): Who’s Blogging What About Social Media in 2010 eBook

What’s happening in social meida. The “Who’s Blogging What” ebook brings together the opinions from several bloggers including Ann Handley (MarketingProfs), Mitch Joel (Six Pixels of Separation), Paul Dunay (Buzz Marketing for Technology), and Mike Volpe (HubSpot). Read their thoughts about:

• What to expect in social media in 2010?
• What benchmarks can marketers use to measure social media ROI?
• How do you separate hype from reality in social media marketing?

Best selling social media marketing books

I got cold and some idle time. To pass time I browsed Amazon to check out what’s hot on the social media marketing shelf. Get some of these and you will get new ideas and tactics you can implement right now.

Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk, rating 4.5/5. This book isn’t interested in making unrealistic promises while glossing over the work involved. Making a living by building content around your passion isn’t simple and it doesn’t happen overnight. What it is, however, is fulfilling and in most cases just as profitable, if not more so, than your previous job.

Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (The New Rules of Social Media) by Brian Halligan, Dharmesh Shah, rating 4.9/5. Stop pushing your message out and start pulling your customers in. People are now increasingly turning to Google, social media, and blogs to find products and services. Inbound Marketing helps you take advantage of this change by showing you how to get found by customers online.

The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly by David Meerman Scott, rating 4.6/5. Though it may not yet have affected the value of 30 seconds of Super Bowl advertising, PR insider Scott argues that understanding the growing irrelevance of marketing’s “old rules” is vital to thriving in the new media jungle.

The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success by Lon Safko, David K. Brake, rating 4.7/of 5. The book will show you how to build or transform your business into a social media—enabled enterprise where customers, employees, and prospects connect, collaborate, and champion your products, your services, and your way of doing business.

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li, Josh Bernoff, rating 4.6/5. Two of Forrester Research’s top analysts show you how to turn the force of customers connecting to your own advantage. Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li show how leading companies are gaining insights, generating revenues, saving money, and energizing their own customers.

Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business by Erik Qualman, rating 4.6/5. Social Media isn’t just for the Next Generation – it’s for every generation. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a media professional, a college student or a mom, social media will shape your future. Don’t be overwhelmed by it; read Qualman’s book instead.” – Jane Wooldridge, The Miami Herald

Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin, rating 4.1/5. Tribes will make you think (really think) about the opportunities for leading your fellow employees, customers, investors, believers, hobbyists, readers. . . . It’s not easy, but it’s easier than you probably imagine.

The Social Media Marketing Book by Dan Zarrella, rating 4.8/5. This book guides you through the maze of communities, platforms, and social media tools so you can decide which ones to use, and how to use them most effectively.

Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day by Dave Evans, rating 4.5/5. Put the buzz about your business to work for you. This comprehensive, perfectly paced guide will teach you how to make social media an active part of your marketing plan so that you can turn customer conversations about your brand, product, service, and company into a sustainable competitive advantage.

Secrets of Social Media Marketing: How to Use Online Conversations and Customer Communities to Turbo-Charge Your Business! by Paul Gillin, rating 4.6/5. A handbook for marketers and business owners to use in deciding how to employ the new social media for online marketing.

Image credit Zsuzsanna Kilian

Seven Actionable Marketing Trends

Excellent! A collection of insights and ideas in relation to each of the before published seven actionable marketing trends.

Social Media Weekend: Measurability, Top Blogs, Resources, Trends

How-to: Do Almost Anything Online in 2010. If you’re looking to improve your life in 2010, we hope you’ll find these 40+ How-To guides useful. You can find even more How-To guides and tips in the How-To section of this site.

CMOs Plan for Higher Social Media Measurability in 2010. How do CMOs link social marketing with real, bottom-line results? 120+ CMOs shared their biggest challenges, plans, and expectations for social marketing in this 2009 survey by The CMO Club and Bazaarvoice.

Social Media Blogs Top 200. This is the real thing. The best list of social media blogs in the world. Why is this the best list?

Social Media as the ‘Last Mile’ – The Internal War. First up is the internal war. This is what I originally said: 1. Jealousy from the existing marketing teams towards the ‘new’ social media team. This results in internal political battles that cripple both sides.

Top 10 Resources for Keeping Up with Social Media. You need to know what’s developing, what are the best practices, what are the trends. Everyone has their favorites, but here are some must reads. Sign up for their newsletters or feeds so you don’t have to go chasing around the web to keep up with them.

22 Social Media Marketing Trends for 2010. Here’s our own social media trend prediction presentation for this year. We were really amazed how much feedback we got from it.

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Image credit Sanja Gjenero

Social media weekend: Seth Godin, relationships, marketing is dead

Another collection of articles for people who want to stay up to date in all things social. Seth GOdin has released agreat free ebook. Marketing will die. What is a relationship and 50 tactics for social media. Share and enjoy.

What Matters Now: get the free ebook from Seth Godin. Now, more than ever, we need to shake things up. Now, more than ever, we need a different way of thinking, a useful way to focus and the energy to turn the game around. Seth’s new ebook will get you started on that path. A page from 60 great thinkers. (Download PDF now).

Be of service. Always. Excellence! Never an exception! If not Excellence, what? — Tom Peters in the ebook

50 Social Media Tactics for Nonprofits

2010: The Year Marketing Dies… (Subtitled) Or at Least Marketing as We Know It! If marketing burns to the ground in 2010, a new and more powerful marketing will rise from the ashes. The role of the new marketer:

• Won’t be merely to imagine creative messages but to fashion programs that are seamless with the actual product and service experience,
• Won’t be to plan bursts of communication on a yearlong calendar but to respond to and be part of the ever-changing dialog with consumers,
• Won’t be merely to talk at consumers but to listen and engage one to one,
• Won’t be to build campaigns but relationships…

Clay Shirky: How social media can make history While news from Iran streams to the world, Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics. The same change is taking place in advertising and marketing. Control is an illusion.

Social media-powered show to hit Web. From creator of ‘American Idol’ comes ‘If I Can Dream,’ a social media approach to entertainment. If I Can Dream. Ehh… I had similar idea with my friend. Interaction, between characters across all social media in real-time. In addition to that regular TV appearances that are backed by YouTube and Hulu. This project seems to bypass regular TV. Ideas cost nothing, innovation is in doing…

Relationships Aren’t Universal. You, as a business, may have all the best intentions to forge a relationship with me, meaning that you want to talk with me, interact with me, get to know me better, understand my motivations and my personality and demonstrate that you value me as a customer, and hopefully give me lots of reasons to adore you and express that adoration publicly. I, however, may just want to get a discount, buy your thing because it suits my needs, and move on.

Weekend social media reading

Social Media in the 2009 Inc. 500: New Tools & New Trends
The study compares adoption of social media over three years (2007, 2008 and 2009) by the Inc. 500, a list of the fastest-growing private U.S. companies. Regardless of the particular technology, social media matters and is here to stay. Forty-three percent of the 2009 Inc. 500 reported social media was “very important” to their business/marketing strategy. And an incredible 91% of the Inc. 500 is using at least one social media tool in 2009 (up from 77% in 2008).

Online Video Advertising: Doubles Engagement, Boosts ROI (PDF)
Adding video to your online campaign can significantly improve your marketing results. Marketers are responding in kind with a larger slice of their advertising budgets. What makes online video advertising so successful? What can make your video campaign even better? In this in-depth bulletin, based on the knowledge accumulated at Eyeblaster from serving a large portion of the online video campaigns worldwide, we share our insights.

Consumers Open to Marketing Messages on Social Media Sites
Forty-six percent of respondents say they would talk about or recommend a product on Facebook. The survey of more than 3,000 U.S. consumers comprised 100+ questions to determine how various segments of consumers use social networks in their daily lives, specifically in regard to finding out about different types of products and in relation to other media channels. The study found that marketers who embrace the medium and communicate relevant messages in consumers’ language and on their terms could gain customers and grow sales.

Do Fortune 100 companies need a Twitter-vention?
With more than 20 million people on Twitter in the U.S. (50 million worldwide), there are ample opportunities for audiences to engage with corporations and brands. Weber Shandwick conducted research to evaluate how effectively Fortune 100 companies used Twitter to its full potential as an engagement platform. The results provide key learnings for companies who want to make sure their party is one that’s buzzing. Think of Twitter as the über corporate cocktail party. Your influential guests will stay only if the conversation is entertaining, valuable and interesting.

FEED: The 2009 Razorfish Digital Brand Experience Report

FEED is Razorfish’s annual study charting how technology is changing the way consumers engage with brands. The report, and the blog, are written by Garrick Schmitt, Group Vice President, Experience Planning. Get the PDF.

Social Media Campaigns are a Waste of Money!

Social media is a place where people interact with each other and, if you are luck, this may include your brand. This is engagement. Everybody wants it, but to achieve that you have to think long term not one off campaigns. We have seen politicians do that a lot. The last tweet or blog post has the same date as the election day. A few months before next election they come out of hibernation and try to engage you again.

You may have “friends” who turn to you only when they need something. This is the same thing as a campaign in social media. So, don’t do social media campaigns! I took the last sentence from Brendan Hughes who dug deeper into the matter of campaigns versus engagement in social media:

What’s wrong with a campaign then? In a campaign approach, you’re missing the essence of the nature (and thus the opportunity) of social media. It’s about relationships, and to draw a parallel, a social media campaign is a bit like a one night stand. Everyone had a bit of fun, but ultimately I feel a bit used.

In our work we meet a lot of agency people. What strikes me as odd is that if they go into all that trouble to make and launch a campaign, why wouldn’t they go one step further and make it a long term program? This campaign mentality seems to be a rule rather than exception. You should take that last step and really connect with people.

Social media statistics and data for the weekend

New empirical data for SEO and social media marketing strategies – measuring is he key to widespread corporate adoption. Really great post.
Without units of measurement it’s hard to experiment, and without experiments it’s hard to have data to drive conclusions. This is a sucky situation for the scientist in me. Recently, however, I’ve come across several sources of empirical, experimentally-sound data sources that do tell us how to be awesome at both SEO and social media.

Retailers use social media to advertise Black Friday deals
One in five shoppers plans to use social sites in their holiday shopping this season, according to Deloitte Research. Hundreds of Black Friday bargains from retailers such as diverse as OfficeMax and Old Navy already are being leaked on deal sites, even though the big sales blitz is still a couple weeks away.

Gen Y women share product and brand secrets via social media
Gen Y women actually are less likely to try something mentioned in a blog by professionals or subject experts (22%) vs. the 28% of a blog by someone they consider their peer. Gen X women appear to give them the same credit, 16% likely to try something new whether hearing from subject expert or random blogger. The original survey is here (“Why Y Women http://media.onsugar.com/static/imgs/WhyYWomen.pdf PDF)

Social Media Users Open to Branding, Marketing
After seeing an ad on a social media site, 34% of respondents have used a search engine to find information on a product, service, or brand; 30% say they have learned about a new product, service, or brand from a social media site.
Among Facebook users who have connected with a brand on the site:

• 46% say they are likely to talk about or recommend a product.
• 44% say they are likely to purchase a product.
• 37% say they are likely to link to an ad for a product.
• 27% say they are likely to post an ad for a product.

Business.com’s 2009 Business Social Media Benchmarking Study
Nearly 65% of respondents reported using social media as part of their normal work routine,including reading blogs, visiting business profiles on sites like Facebook or LinkedIn or using Twitter to find information and/or communicate about business-related matters.