Automotive Social Media, Explained (briefly)

Unlike most forms of marketing, Social Media stands alone as a debatable venue. Many believe it is the future of marketing and advertising and that those who take advantage of it now will be able to grow in their presence more quickly. Others see it as a fad, a questionable arena where there are more risks than rewards.

At TK Carsites, we believe that it isn’t a question of whether or not social media is a good or bad marketing venue. The question that truly needs an answer is:

Are you willing to do the right things for your company and its components to use social media to your advantage?

For car dealers, the potential is tremendous and the risks are equally ominous. It all depends on how it is initiated, monitored, and supported.

What Social Media CAN and CANNOT do for Car Dealers

Social Media CAN

• Become a point of connection between dealerships and their local customers in a venue that the customers visit regularly and enjoy using
• Offer “Web 2.0 Credibility” to a society that is increasingly more public with their views and opinions
• Allow for a quick exchange of sales information through home, office, and mobile devices
• Extend the brand of both the dealership and the manufacturer
• Generate buzz through viral marketing campaigns

Social Media CANNOT

• Become a venue through which to sell more cars directly
• Replace primary dealer websites (yet)
• Run itself on autopilot

As with all marketing, there are tiers through which social media campaigns are initiated. The challenge with social media is in making sure that the right messages are sent out that do not conflict with each other.

Social media is about engagement. A clear line must be established that lets customers know which messages are coming from the top and which ones are coming from the local level. In a properly managed social media campaign, there is a distinct symbiosis between the messages that will enhance in both directions. In other words, the dealers’ message on social media reinforces the corporate message which reinforces the dealers’ message.

Co-management of accounts on social media is a tricky endeavor because of the way that social media websites handle information. With the right tools, the messages can be unified and propagated in a way that makes sense. With the help of TK Carsites, dealers can maintain their own individual “social media personality” while still getting corporate message across in the right way at the right time.

This is an extremely challenging and risky endeavor – perhaps the biggest risk in a top-down approach to social media marketing – but it’s also the method that would reap the greatest benefits for the dealers.

Because social media works as an exponential entity when it comes to buzz, there is always a tremendous gap between failure and success, but the difference in initiation between a failed and a successful campaign is usually something very minuscule.

At any level, monitoring is an extremely important component that is often left out of social media initiatives. Dealers must monitor their employees to make sure they aren’t doing or saying the wrong things through social media.

What to Monitor

Searching for the term “Honda” on social media sites will give different results. On some sites, the conversation is ongoing with hundreds of occurrences per hour. On others, there are fewer mentions, but the mentions can hold more weight.

The way the message is received and the ways to respond differ between each:

Social Networks

• Facebook – Updates themselves from individuals can often require a response from local dealers as well as potentially from corporate. Individual dealer fan pages must also be monitored as the good and the bad posted on these pages usually require a swift response.

• Twitter – For something so easy (typing 140 characters) so many dealers are doing it wrong, feeding their inventory or specials into a stream where people do not want to see “spam”. More importantly there is a tremendous amount of data and conversation occurring on Twitter outside of interactions with dealers that can lead to enhanced engagement.

• MySpace – Like Facebook, MySpace is a similar venue that requires monitoring as well as interaction. While the focus is much lower than Facebook, there are still opportunities and requirements for monitoring that any social media campaign must consider.

• Fading Social Networks – With sites like Bebo and Hi5 either moving away from the American market or fading in relevance, they are often forgotten because of lack of buzz. This is a mistake as there are still a large amount of people who are active and passionate about these networks, and while it wouldn’t be required to establish a dealership or corporate presence on them, not monitoring them would be foolish.

• Emerging Social Networks – Social media is in a constant state of growth and change. New sites are popping up weekly with the potential to be “the next big thing.” It’s important for a social media campaign to understand this and to be aware of what is growing as early adoption of the right platforms will often lead to greater relevance and power within these networks.

Social Content

• YouTube – Most dealers are getting into YouTube and other video content sites, posting testimonials, ads, instructional videos… if it can be recorded, dealers are putting it on their channels. Most dealers are not maximizing their exposure and require monitoring and assistance on how to make the most of their video presence.

• Flickr – Every week, another image hosting site starts. While these always have the potential to be important, Flickr remains the champion in this field with no signs of slowing. It ranks well on search engines and can be a valuable tool for controlling branding and awareness. With that said, it too must be monitored to make certain the right images are being posted.

Social News

• Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon – While there is much less exposure for the conversations going on through these sites, the mass exposure of news is tremendous. There are many examples of stories that make their rounds on these social media sites that will receive hundreds of thousands of unique visitors as a result of “going popular”.

• Blogs – As the blogosphere continues to grow and in many ways replace traditional media as a source for news and trusted opinions, monitoring and responding to the buzz is something that must be done 24/7. Controlling what is happening on the blogosphere is impossible, but steering it in the right direction is our specialty.

What’s next?

The best thing a dealer can do is to arm themselves with knowledge. If you are interested in learning more about how to take advantage of social media, feel free to email me (jrucker@tkcarsites.com) and I will happily send you a White Paper on the topic. This is currently updated monthly, and while it is not a “newsletter”, it does offer the ability for you to get ongoing knowledge as the industry (both automotive and social media) changes.

* * *

Read more about TK Carsites on this blog.