Here is a list of Automotive Social Media Services being offered currently.

Here, we will discuss automotive social media and how it can be used by car dealers, vendors, and OEMs to promote their products the right way (with spamming!).

The article below was originally posted as a Google Knol. If you find value in it, feel free to contact me: JD Rucker.

Automotive Social Media Basics

By JD Rucker

Learning to utilize social media in the automotive industry without being a spammer.

As social media continues to emerge as a valid venue for most types of businesses to engage with their customers, car dealers and others in the automotive industry are going to take advantage of it. Social media is a different animal than other forms of marketing, as direct advertising through social media is ineffective. Here, I will detail the basic steps for getting involved in a way that will prevent spamming and encourage actual engagement along the road to achieving the goals.

Article rating:

0 Ratings

---

The world has gone Web 2.0. It has been heading in that direction for years, but the automotive industry is often a half-step behind when it comes to emerging forms of engagement and marketing. It isn’t their fault – the vendors in the industry are often slow in bringing forth the latest and greatest on the Internet and delivering them to car dealers in an effective manner.

This is Part I of a general walk-through of automotive social media.

What is Web 2.0 and Social Media?

Before being able to participate, one must understand the terrain. According to Wikipedia, “The term ‘Web 2.0′ is commonly associated with web applications which facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web.”

This Wikipedia entry on Social Media tells a similar tale. Which is right?

The answer is, “Yes”.

Web 2.0 and social media are for all intents and purposes the same thing. While social media was happening before Web 2.0, they became inherent aspects of the same things. They are interchangeable. For the purposes of this Knol, we will stick with Social Media to describe it.

Automotive Social Media – An Overview

As Chris Brogan so eloquently described at the Driving Sales Executive Summit in Las Vegas, October 2009, advertising directly through social media sites like Twitter and Facebook before understanding and interacting with the community “is like walking up to someone with their hand out to shake and then sticking your tongue in their mouth.”

Simply put, you can’t start a relationship so strongly. Social media is about relationships. Relationships require trust before they can go beyond the handshake. Trust comes from interacting and engaging with the communities in ways that aren’t completely self-serving.

In other words, going on Twitter and Facebook, creating profiles, and starting by spamming inventory items will not start the conversation and relationship off well.

Listen First

Everyone has heard about why we have 2 ears and 1 mouth. The same is true in social media. There is no way to know how to interact with the community until you start listening to how the community is interacting itself.

Search the sites. Read through what people are saying and how they are saying it. Know what similar people (perhaps other car dealers) are saying and see how successful or unsuccessful they are at getting their message out there.

Ask Questions

There are plenty of people who understand social media. You can always contact me, JD Rucker, if you have any questions. More importantly, use the communities themselves to get a feeling for how to interact. There’s nothing wrong with joining Twitter, making some friends, and asking people questions. If you are unfamiliar with the proper use of a Hashtag on Twitter, for example, find people who are using them and ask what it means.

Search and Engage

Use the search features on sites to find people talking about things that interest you. If you’re an Orange County Toyota Dealer, you can search for “Orange County” or “Toyota” and see dozens of discussions that have been happening in the last few minutes. If you have something to add to the conversation, join in. The worst that can happen is that they don’t reply to you. If they do, you are engaging. Time to sell them a car? Of course not! Listen, talk, discuss, and let the conversation happen naturally.

Where to Start

There are always companies that can help you to get started or help to grow your current profiles. This Knol is for those who want to understand what they need before they go out and get it or build it themselves.

Currently, there are 100 trillion social media websites out there (at least it feels like there are that many). Where does a car dealer interested in automotive social media start?

Automotive Blogs

Every car dealership in the world should have a blog. Having an active, engaging venue to post everything from recent employees of the month to local community events and sponsorships to the barbecue tent sale event this weekend is the first step to “humanizing” a dealership.  At a Toyota Dealer in Boston, they constantly blog about topics that aren’t necessarily automotive related but what readers might find interesting. 

Facebook Fan Pages

Once a blog is established, Facebook is the next step. Offering your current a future customers a place to post their feelings publicly about you will help you to manage your reputation and gain the trust of those considering buying from you. Those who choose not to do this because they fear negative comments are not seeing the big picture – if they can’t talk badly about you on a site that you can control and respond to such as your Facebook fan page, they will find someplace else such as RipOffReport to express their feelings.

It’s always better to address concerns head on and Facebook is the perfect place to do so.

YouTube

If you aren’t on YouTube, you’re missing out on a major tool in regards to both social media and search engine optimization. While links from YouTube are nofollow and do not count towards you search rankings, the videos themselves have an exceptional opportunity to rank and drive traffic to your primary websites.

Twitter

Much like Facebook, Twitter is a place to establish relationships, allow people to vent (or commend you), and engage with the local community. Everyone from the guy next door to the biggest celebrities and companies have taken to Twitter as a valid resource for communicating their activities.

Building a strong Twitter profile is often difficult, but it doesn’t take very much time to maintain. A couple of “tweets” per day is normally enough to stay active within the community. A Tweet takes less than a minute to do.

MySpace, Flickr, Digg, and the Rest

There are other large social media sites that also offer a nice venue for communication. While they aren’t as strong as the above mentioned 4, these sites have other qualities and values that can help you achieve your goals.

DON’T SPAM

I cannot stress enough that spamming on any of these sites can hurt you and your dealership. It’s more than just losing out on the engagement opportunities. There are many instances that can be detailed where people or businesses use social media sites in an automated fashion or strictly to expand their own agendas. If you intend to spam these sites, it’s better not to join at all.

There are companies out their selling automated services, quick and easy feeds, or “set it and forget it” packages that do nothing other than annoy the communities they target. Do not fall for these as they will do more harm than good.

Automotive Social Media Example

In Parts II and III, we will go into more specifics on how to use social media directly, including tips and tricks, but for now, here is an example of how to put it all together around one single event:

The Scenario:

The dealership is sponsoring a local celebrity softball game to support a local charity this weekend.

The Process:

1. First, a blog post is written detailing the event. It should be 5 paragraphs long or more with quotes from relevant people such as the organizers, the dealership owner or GM, and perhaps the beneficiary charity.
2. Next, the blog post is linked to from the Facebook Fan Page and the MySpace blog. The 5+ paragraphs are broken down into 1 smaller paragraph with a link to the original blog post.
3. A Tweet goes out on Twitter telling of the event and linking to the blog post in 140 characters or less.
4. As the event nears, more tweets and Facebook/MySpace updates go out. The text should be different – not just the same thing repeated every day.
5. The day of the event, videos are made, pictures are taken, and it’s all posted on YouTube and Flickr.
6. The next day, more blog posts are written about how the event went. Some of the videos and images are posted in the blog.
7. Other videos and images are posted on MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter with some linking back to the latest blog posts.
8. Rinse
9. Repeat

Fans of bit.ly, DiggBar, ow.ly, or any of the gazillion URL shorteners out there will object. They will ask, “What makes su.pr so special?”

StumbleUpon has done a great job at putting together the best features that are available on some shorteners and added a few things that that are less common or completely unique.  The only thing they haven’t done yet is properly publicize this amazing package of a URL shortener.

You probably know these things…

• It shortens URLs as small or smaller than anyone else with a 4-character domain
• You can post to Twitter and Facebook like a few of the shorteners, as well as thumbing up and reviewing on StumbleUpon itself
• It has very decent real-time analytics that give separates out clicks from stumbles, shows retweets, and displays accounts that thumbed up the content on SU.
• A Firefox browser bookmarklet is available.

You may not know the following tidbits of information which, at least for us, sealed the deal:

• Bloggers using WordPress can shorten URLs on their own domain.  Joshua Eichorn, who assisted SU on the project, details how things work with the plugin.
• Sites not built on WordPress can also take advantage of short URLs on their own domain.
• Unlike some shorteners, the WordPress plugin for su.pr allows bloggers to create search engine friendly URLs with 301 redirects.
• The presence of an API will allow for more apps to be developed as well as integration with pre-existing services.

With all of this going for it, it’s a wonder that StumbleUpon has been rather shy in its rollout.  Closer examination reveals that su.pr has the features that exceed the capabilities of the other shorteners out there. It can help to generate traffic like Diggbar and Reddit’s shortener, it has the tracking and API capabilities of bit.ly and ow.ly, and it can be integrated with sites very cleanly.

To us, it’s no contest.

* * *

Read more about social media marketing on this blog.

“Every blog should have its own Twitter account.”

WHOA! Slow down.  If EVERY blog had a Twitter account, the site would be “over capacity” constantly.  Some web hosts claim 99.99% uptime.  Twitter would be at 99.99% downtime considering there’s more blogs on the Internet than atoms in the known universe.

With that out of the way, let’s first say that “every” to me clears out spam blogs, boring blogs, worthless blogs, and blogs about bacon or politics.  Hopefully, this blog doesn’t fall into any of those categories other than the occasional bacon post.  Assuming there are a couple of hundred thousand quality blogs in the world right now, that wouldn’t be too hard for even the Twitter servers to handle.

Where does it all fit in and how can Twitter and blogging work together? We’ll get to that, but first…

Setting Up Your Twitter for Your Blog

For research purposes (and, of course, to be a blog of action and not just theory) I created a Twitter account for Soshable. This is separate from my personal Twitter account, but as long as Twitter doesn’t mind having them, I don’t mind managing them.  I created the account with the name of the blog. Some use the term dotcom at the end either because their blog name was already taken or because they wanted to get an extra push for visitors by publicizing the web aspect of their account.

Once registered, you can import contacts.  Sadly, Twitter doesn’t give you the option of emailing them to announce your intentions for this account, but if they’re real contacts, they’ll get the picture.

Go straight to Settings and fill out your information.

The avatar was easy – I used my logo.  Sadly, I was too lazy to build a nice, professional background or a witty tiled-image, but it works for me. For those who want quick and easy Twitter designs, they can use…

• MyTweetSpace – Free Twitter Backgrounds

Final step: tweet.  It’s easy.  Say hi to the Twitterverse.  In 140 characters or less, tell anyone who may check out your updates what your intentions are with the account.  If your intentions are strictly marketing or sales oriented, you might want to avoid going straight into the pitch immediately.  In fact, you may not want to create the Twitter account at all, as that kind of stuff doesn’t fly well.  Perhaps I should have mentioned that in the beginning.  Hopefully, I didn’t waste too much of anyone’s time.

With your new Twitter account in had and ready to roll, it’s time to get your blog ready…

Setting Up Your Blog for Your Twitter

If you’re blog is going to have a Twitter account of its own, we’ll assume that this account will tweet new posts.  There are tools, such as…

• WordPress Twitter Tools

…that help to integrate your blogging activities with the twitter account.  Some love them, as automation makes things easier.  For this blog, despite an upcoming ramp-up of posts with a new writer hired, automating the tweets isn’t worth it.  I can tweet by hand.  The 140 characters will only take me a few seconds to type.

Just as you want Twitter to send visitors to your blog, you’ll want your blog to send visitors to your tweets.  I found…

• TwitterButtons

… that has a nice selection of badges as well as an extremely easy interface to get a quality badge up on your blog very quickly.  I liked these better than some of the generic ones out there because they are, well, not generic.  Different colors (I get tired of the Twitter baby blue sometimes), different birds, different sizes, easy to adjust sizes – perfect for non-design-oriented bloggers such as myself.  Once you have an acceptable badge, you can put it in the sidebar or, for more exposure, add it to your posts directly.  The Digg button is out (or at least moved to the bottom for most quality blogs).  It’s Twittertime!

There are a couple of other things you can do.  A short post doesn’t hurt, one with a simple headline like “(this blog) is Now Tweeting!”  You can create a Twitter page.  One urge they I would recommend fighting is the one that says to put a…

• Twidget – Twitter Stream Widget

…into your sidebar.  For one thing, it could keep people from visiting your Twitter account directly.  For another thing, it might be redundant, as it may have links to your posts at any particular time.  Putting your personal Twitter widget in there wouldn’t really hurt if you don’t mind the association, but it may be confusing to have two accounts represented on the sidebar.

Once you’ve got your Twitter and your blog set up, you’re ready to get involved.  Here are some…

Quick Twitter Blog Account Tips

Now, the question at hand is, “Should every blog have a Twitter account?”  With the absolute explosion that Twitter has seen in the past 3 months, the obvious answer would be an affirmative.  Just as bloggers look to social media, search engines, and all of the other possible traffic-driving techniques they can think of or read about to drive traffic to their blog, why not include a little self-serving Twitter love?

As long as you DON’T SPAM with it, you should be able to give and receive value.  That’s the real key to Twitter.  If you give, you can get.  Now, those tips I promised…

• Give your Twitter blog account a personality.  It can be your personality, a skewed extention of your personality, or something completely different.  Think from the perspective of “I’m a blog. I am words, images, and videos. What do I want to Tweet today?” Weird? Yes.  Cool if done right? Yes.
• Don’t use it as a post hog for updates. CNN can get 70K followers based upon the news they report.  You… won’t.  Do more than just tweet about your newest post.
• Keep it real.  Reply to DMs and @you tweets.  Read what people are saying around you.  If it’s interesting or relevant to the topic of your blog, jump in and converse.
• DON’T SPAM! Regardless of how amazing your work-at-home opportunity may be to you, it’s not going to be appealing to most of your followers.
• Follow people, but not too many.  It’s easy to see people with followers in the thousands and tens of thousands and think, “If I add 1000 people a day, some of them will follow me back.”  Take it slow.  Make sure your account is not completely lopsided by following a lot more than are following you.  Does it work to follow a bunch?  For some, yes.  Fight the temptation.  Did I mention “take it slow?”
• Find people in the niche that your blog covers.  Sites like Twellow categorize people based upon interests and geography.  Find those who may benefit from your blog and with whom you can engage in interesting Twitter conversations.
• If you have multiple accounts, Matt can help.  It makes managing your personal account and your blog accounts much easier.
• Post interesting stuff about your posts in Twitter.  Create interaction.  For example, you can Tweet something like, “Comment of the Day came from John Q. on (Post URL)” and then follow it up with “Here’s the CotD: I got picked on a lot in school, but at least I knew how to get everything to work on 1 remote control. Oh and I make…”
• Dual-stream your media. If you have a great image on your blog, the urge is to entice people to visit the blog with a teaser post such as “You’ve got to check out this great picture of bacon… (link)”.  Believe it or not, if you post the picture using services like TwitPic you actually have as good if not better chance for people to click through to the blog.  If they like what they see there, they’ll want to know or see more.

That’s it.  I’m pooped.  To much tweeting and blogging today.  Get ready to meet our newest writer next week!

(Did I mention DON’T SPAM?)

* * *

Read more about Social Media on Soshable.

It’s been forever since we posted. For that, I am sorry, but I assure you, it was for a good reason.

Soshable has picked up corporate sponsorship and will be adding some authors. The usual suspects are still on board, but there will also be an infusion of fresh perspectives added to this blog. Rather than welcome them here, I will let them post directly themselves so as to not “spoil the fun”.

With corporate sponsorship comes room for added talent as well. If you have an understanding of social media, social networking, marketing, or anything on the Internet in general, please feel free to drop us a line. We are excited to get as much quality content as possible to fill our hallowed pages.

I will be posting my first formal post in almost a month this weekend, so keep watching! You will also be able to find us on popFAIL, Noozeez, and Social News Watch.

The first post, a guest post by Social Media expert Mark Dykeman. 

Beginnings are the hardest part.  Getting started, going from nothing to something, can be difficult, and it is no small feat.   Let’s think about this in the context of social media with a couple of analogies:

1. You and your family move to a new city.  In addition to all of the work that you did to move to the city, you’ve got lots of work to do to settle in.   You’ve got to identify all of your service suppliers; get your kids into school and after school activities; hook up your cable, telephone, Internet; assimilate into a new job…  it can be a lot.  You really need other people to help you with your assimilation into a new environment.
2. What if you not only move to a new town, but in addition to all of the above, you also start a new business, like a book store, a convenience store, or a restaurant.  In addition to what I described above, you’ve got to start developing a clientele and a supply chain to feed your business.  Meanwhile, you’ve got to get noticed amongst all of the existing businesses.  Again, people are the key ingredient.

Starting a new blog is like starting a new business in a strange place.  Maybe you are lucky and you’ll set up shop in a fertile market where you are delivering a product or service that no one else is providing.  Or maybe you are headed into an ultra-competitive market where you will have to fight for every dollar of business.

I don’t know exactly where this blog will end up, but I’m happy to see someone else recognize the power of social news.   I’m interested to see what will develop.  Good luck to us all!

* * *

Soshable strives to keep on top of the latest in Social Media.  Please visit often.