Getting started with social media marketing
November 27, 2007 by admin
Social media marketing is a new form of marketing quickly appearing on the automotive front. There is an overwhelming number of social media sites that can be leveraged by car dealers to assist with their strategy, so many in fact that it is not realistic to utilize them all. So how should car dealers discern which ones are best for them? Success in social media marketing is not an overnight thing so you want to be sure to choose your tools wisely so as to avoid wasting months of time and money.
A post was made recently on Search Engine Land that is meant to serve as a getting started guide of sorts, some of which we have re-iterated here for you with an automotive spin.
1. The first thing to consider is the functionality of the site. While most social sites offer similar features, how they are applied and the result they produce can vary. For instance, digg and del.icio.us are both social bookmarking sites, but the utility is drastically different. We use digg to network with other diggers and promote articles, but we use del.icio.us to help manage out content creation and management process with our writers.
2. What are your intentions? Car dealers want to sell cars. Service managers want to fix them. Both want to make money. If you enter into a social media site intent on your sole purpose then you will quickly become an isolated cat. Therefore when take part in a network, make sure it is an environment complimentary to your dealership and those at your dealership participating. You are going to spend a lot of time on these sites so they need to be ones that genuinely appeal to you and your team.
3. Be mindful of your network audience. You are there to promote your dealership by engaging with the interests of others. If you do not meet their core interest levels then you will have a hard time getting them to meet yours.
4. Be there because you care, not for the sake of being there. If you log on to social sites, set up your profile and then occasionally chime in to see what’s new then you can not expect to see much success. You have to really get involved with the community and get to know the audience and this take time and genuine interest in learning about others.
As a car dealer, it can be difficult to look at something like this as beneficial to your dealership. The reality is, social media marketing is going to be a challenging form of marketing for car dealers. Which is why it is important to know what you are up against before plunging in.
Earlier this month we posted a series of segments about specific uses and benefits of social media marketing. These included things such as the SEO benefits and online brand awareness. Our approach to social media marketing at web2ologies is to help auto dealers realize these benefits as a type of search engine brand marketing.
There is a form of engineering involved for your dealership to be fruitful in these things and the more you can apply these aforementioned guidelines in your strategy then the more impacting will be your results.
[tags]car dealer marketing, dealership website marketing, brand marketing, search marketing, social marketing, social media, Search Engine Land[/tags]
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