With the NADA Convention in Orlando happening this weekend, TK Carsites is proud to be putting on 5 social media related workshops. KPA and TK Carsites will be hosting them at the NADA exhibit hall in room W102A (one level down from the expo floor).
Social Media is the “hot topic” in automotive marketing right now. Millions of people are using sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and blogs to engage with businesses and individuals and the automotive industry is ripe to get involved. As with most trends, there are vendors selling “hype over quality” and as a result, TK Carsites is offering these educational (NO PITCHING INVOLVED) 30-minute workshops to help dealers navigate through the bad parts of social media to find the true benefits and rewards.
So, you have a small- or medium-sized business. You’ve heard of social media, but you aren’t sure where to put your money.
This infographic by the good folks over at Flowtown has all of the answers you need as far as where other businesses are spending. Are they spending their money right? That’s another post altogether.
As I prepare to do the Social Media Boot Camp and seminars at the NADA Convention in Orlando, I have been looking for clear, concise, informative resources to spark ideas. One in particular, the video below, blew my mind. It isn’t that the video is super-amazing-awesome – it’s excellent, but there are better videos out there. The thing about this one: it’s message holds so true today and the video was made in early 2008!
Take a peek and you’ll probably see what I see, which is that the folks over at CommonCraft knew back then what so many know now, that properly handled social media can be more effective than any form of advertising, dollar for dollar.
Recently, a debate has been brewing within Corporate America regarding social media. How active should a corporation with franchise locations be with helping in local social media initiatives?
Using automotive social media as the example, many would say that the manufacturers should avoid working with their dealers in their social media activities as it would taint the local “flare” of a dealership and potentially hamper their efforts. Others would argue that franchise dealers are extensions of the brand and therefore should be not only monitored but controlled to make certain they are putting the best message out in the potentially volatile world of social media.
The best answer (in our opinion) lies somewhere in the middle. It’s not a cop-out answer, either. There’s no diplomacy involved here. It’s just a simple statement (of our perception) of facts.
There are three camps into which every company in the world falls:
Those who don’t know or don’t care about social media
Those who care about social media and think it can be useful
Those who think social media can be the backbone of the company
If you were to break it down by percentages, the “Social Media is the Backbone” camp would most likely be the smallest. While business owners are starting to agree that social media has a place in their business, few would be willing to bet the farm on it. They are prudent, thoughtful, and wise.
Then again, many of them (depending on the type of company) would be incorrect.
It can be argued that those of us who tweet links to content on the web are the most annoying of Twitter users. That is the “category” that I fit in, so it makes sense that I would exclude my personal type from this list.
Otherwise, there are probably dozens of other types that are just as annoying. This is, of course, a partial list, but we’ll be expanding the post once more annoying Twitter types come to light. In the meantime, here’s the first 14. Post any that we missed in the comments or tweet at us with your suggestions.
1. The FOREX Spammer
With as much money as people are apparently making on FOREX, it’s amazing that they have time to work their Twitter accounts.
I have the honor and privilege of participating in two batches of automotive social media seminars in Orlando this year. One, the Automotive Marketing Boot Camp, will be more of a training-class setting that includes 5 trainers offering their insights for nearly 4 hours each on different aspects of marketing. I am doing the classes on social media itself.
Even though 4 hours seems to be a long time, believe it or not you could double that time and still have more to cover in the realm of social media for car dealers. The opportunities are endless, the risks are many, but regardless of what a dealer does or doesn’t want to do in social media, they need to understand that having a presence in some form or fashion is required, even if just as a defensive stance against those who would go after their name.
This event is not for those people. It’s for people who are ready to take their marketing to the next level. Hands-on, extremely informative, with small classroom settings geared to give everyone a one-on-one feel and to be able to take away tremendous value from the event.
One of the most talked about topics of 2009’s was the real time web. Even as 2010 has begun, more and more articles are written about the real time web and more and more startups have launched. Even Google has begun mixing in real time results into their search engine through the “Latest Results Box” that shows up for many information based searches.
With all the noise and hype surrounding the real time web – it should be that users can greatly benefit from all of these new technologies. However, it seems that many internet users still aren’t using these tools to benefit from the real time web. You don’t have to use Twitter, Facebook, or any other social media service to be able to take advantage of the tools that are out there. Below, we have reviewed several of the things you can do today – to become better informed about what is going on.
One of the coolest aspects to the real time web is to learn about the latest trends. When a bunch of people discuss what is going on in the real time web, these topics are tracked to see which is being mentioned the most. Many sites offer the latest trends, and often, these trends can show you breaking news before it is picked up by traditional sources. What The Trend is the early leader in the trend space as they not only show the latest trends but also they show you reasons why each trend is popular right now.
Social Media is the “hot topic” in automotive marketing right now. Millions of people are using sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and blogs to engage with businesses and individuals and the automotive industry is ripe to get involved. As with most trends, there are vendors selling “hype over quality” and as a result, TK Carsites is offering these educational (NO PITCHING INVOLVED) 30-minute workshops to help dealers navigate through the bad parts of social media to find the true benefits and rewards.
