GOSO

By: Chris Garrett Co-Author of Best Seller of ProBlogger, our celebrity blogger, Chris has helped thousands of individuals, non-profits, small businesses and blue chips make the most of the web.

I realise before I say this that it is a controversial statement but here goes.

You are not going to get there on your own.

Some people seem to get by in whichever their goals are by doing everything with seemingly no outside help but they are a very small number. The exception.

Besides, in most cases what looks like an individual effort has many silent supporters quietly assisting.

This goes for any endevour, but it has never been more true than in social media.

You need other people

• To share your stuff
• For conversation and answers to questions
• Sharing news to keep you informed
• As followers
• and to grow your followers

This means instead of using social media tools as a means to getting attention you also should be using it to network.

As well as prospects and customers you need to be connecting with the influencers and media in your geography, market, suppliers and so-on.

The more you strengthen your network and can tap into the network of others, the better your results will be. You will find out vital information first, get in early on opportunities, and your messages will spread further and with greater credibility.

Stop trying to be the Lone Ranger and reach out – it’s worth it!

By: Ryan Riley Marketing Strategy Manager for GOSO. Ryan provides analytical data and departmental support for GOSO. Ryan is an experienced writer and blogs for GOSO, BOALT and other sites.

Social media is all about connecting with your customers. The problem is we focus too much time on our own online world, (our blog, our Twitter account, our Facebook pages, etc.) and not enough time in everyone else’s world.

Confused?

Obviously you’re going to create social media accounts on site’s where your customers frequent. Everyone reading this blog has probably already done that. You’ve hopefully started your Facebook page, and I hope you’re posting on the account and interacting with your fans now. But you’re still expecting your customers will just find you. And they will, but you still have to be able to branch out beyond your comfort zone and interact with them in their world as well.

Where are your customers?

They’re on Twitter. They’re on automotive blogs. They’re on Mashable, YouTube, and Yelp. They’re all over the internet. Honestly, you probably have a better idea than I do of where to find your customers. If you don’t know where they are you have to search for them.

How to find your customers:

1. Read automotive industry blogs and post relevant comments.
2. Find consumer sites and again leave relevant comments to build your reputation and showcase your expertise.
3. Go to twitter.search.com and search for people in your area tweeting about your automotive brand and engage them. If they are complimenting the brand simply say, “thanks”. If they are talking bad about the brand then tell them you’re sorry to hear they’re not satisfied. How can we make it up to you?” It doesn’t matter if you’re not the one that sold them the car. Anything bad said about your brand affects you.

This does not mean go onto an automotive blog and post a comment that says, “Great blog. Come to GOSO Automotive to see our new models!”

That’s never going to make it onto the blog. The spam filters will catch you right away, but do engage the community, and through the course of the conversation allow information to come out about your business organically. Also a lot of comment sections on blogs and website allow you to submit a URL. So, if you’re comments are useful, people will click over to your pages and see what you’re about.

What are some practices you’ve implemented to bring people to your social media sites or website?

By: Chris Garrett Co-Author of Best Seller of ProBlogger, our celebrity blogger, Chris has helped thousands of individuals, non-profits, small businesses and blue chips make the most of the web.

How do you know you are on the right path? Are you getting to where you need to go in your business? Is the stuff you do every day getting you there faster or slower than if you did something else?

I just got through looking at a plan a small company had developed to take their profits into the next level.

The problem, and they were aware of it, was their new approach was their old approach.

If what you do is working for you, that’s great. But how long is it going to keep working for you?

Of course, if your current approach is not working for you, keeping going with it is not going to help!

Much of the time we do things thinking they are right, but really they are just routine, “the way things are done”, or because we are watching someone else.

Instead we have to look at cause and effect.

And to do this you need to be observing the effects in a way that you can compare.

This means

1. Know where you want to go
2. What it will look like when you get there
3. How you will measure progress towards that goal

Most of all listen.

Listen to your customers, colleagues and your gut.

It does not need to be business as usual!

By: Ryan Riley Marketing Strategy Manager for GOSO. Ryan provides analytical data and departmental support for GOSO. Ryan is an experienced writer and blogs for GOSO, BOALT and other sites.

I’ve been splitting a lot of my time lately between Washington, DC, and Orange County, CA. Due to the amount of time I spend in Orange County, I need a car.

So, I’ve been shopping around, trying to find the best deal for my money. I’ve been to several dealerships, and when I leave I take a card. I take it because I’ll follow up if the right car or deal comes along. The problem with every card I get is that it doesn’t have the information I want on it.

Sure, I get a name. I get a phone number. I even get a website, but none of these cards have Twitter or Facebook account information. For me, that would be perfect. I could come home and quickly start following each of their feeds. Then when I check Twitter, as I do daily, I’ll see who is having a deal, what’s going on at which dealership, and whether I want to go back. And it’s all in one place.

A lot of dealers have taken the first step in the social media world: They’ve opened accounts. The second step is they post information. The next step is telling your customers you’re out there. Your social media presence should be a part of your marketing plan from now on.

I went to Subway the other day, don’t judge, and they had a sticker right on the glass above the bell peppers that read, “Follow Us On Twitter,” and gave the address.

So where are the stickers at automotive dealers?

I wanted to title today’s blog: The Business Card of the Future, but then I realized that this card is meant for today. If a customer comes to your dealership and for some reason you don’t sell them a car, you always give them a card or try for a number in case something changes that will suit their needs. However, with the card, you’re expecting the customer to make the next move, but very few customers will follow through with a call to a dealer.

If you have your social media information on the card, the customer has a no hassle way of checking in at your dealership.

Some may argue that your website should be sufficient. Unfortunately websites aren’t as current as they can be. I went to two different dealerships in search of a particular car I had seen on a website and they had both been sold a few days before. Social media sites are the best way to keep customers up-to-the-minute on what’s happening at your dealership.

What should you do?

1. Add social media information onto all dealer business cards.
2. Make posters or stickers and place them around the showroom.
3. Make your social media icons more prominent on your website.

Most importantly where are all of the Orange County, CA car dealerships? I need a car and a great deal. (I have no shame, I’ll take advantage of this blog to get a deal. I like to think of the blog as my social network.)

What kind of things have you implemented at your dealership to get the word out about your social media presence?

By: Chris Garrett Co-Author of Best Seller of ProBlogger, our celebrity blogger, Chris has helped thousands of individuals, non-profits, small businesses and blue chips make the most of the web.

More and more businesses are turning to Social Media as a promotional tactic. This is fine, and it can be an effective part of your strategy for attracting new prospects and getting better known.

The problem is with fixation, seeing Social Media purely as a means to attract attention.

There are two aspects of this that are important to think about:

1. If you only ever focus on getting new people to notice you then you overlook the people who you have already attracted and who want to be kept informed. It is like continually buying advertising but not asking for contact details when people make an enquiry. You wouldn’t do that, so why would you use Social Media only as a source of traffic without encouraging and asking people to stay in touch?
2. Social Media is conversational, it is not just for putting messages out, which means that social media users expect you to be accessible, and for you to join a conversation with them. If you only use your communication channels one way then you are going to either not be successful or at worst actually damage your brand. It is not a good idea to set up an expectation and then not even come close to fulfilling it. When someone has a problem, finds a social media account, but feels ignored, do you think they are going to be better disposed towards your company or feel even worse?

Yes, social media can provide you tons more new visitors to your online and brick and mortar sites, but if you leave your thinking there then you could be making more of a problem than an asset.

Gaining attention is just one part of your marketing strategy.

After attracting visitors you need to have a plan for how you are going to keep them sticking around. This sticky strategy requires you to provide an ongoing connection, but also be responsive to questions, concerns and queries.

Stickiness can actually boost your profits more than getting more brand new customers. The lifetime value of a loyal, repeat customer can often exceed any profit you would make by just making one more sale. Consider how much money a happy customer is going to spend with you through services, add-on purchases, and upgrades. Then there is the free marketing they do for you in the form of referrals, advocacy and recommendations.

If a happy customer will regularly service and maintain their car with you then come back for their new model after three years, as well as tell friends and family to come to you, then that small amount of loyalty effort will pay off handsomly.

Your customer must experience the very best you can offer, from the first time they hear about you all the way through to their latest repeat purchase. This means having ALL your channels and touch points working together with a unified strategy, and making sure all your colleagues are aware of how much impact the smallest connection can have.

Or you could treat social media as an add-on traffic tactic. Good luck with that!

By: Ryan Riley Marketing Strategy Manager for GOSO. Ryan provides analytical data and departmental support for GOSO. Ryan is an experienced writer and blogs for GOSO, BOALT and other sites.

Let me start off by stating that I’m not very active on Twitter. I read it all day but rarely do I respond or post something myself. We’ll say it’s because I’m the strong silent type.

However, despite my limited use, I do know how it should be used. Plus I’m surrounded by a room of experts and they concur that the following blog is accurate. In fact this topic is based on common mistakes found by our Dealer Evangelist.

Now that I’ve bored all of you, let’s move on.

The key to using Twitter well is moderation and useful tweets. If you over-tweet, you’re likely to be unfollowed real quick. Your followers don’t want to be inundated with your Tweets. It’s like having a conversation with someone at a wedding or other social gathering. If you do all of the talking they’ll be looking for the exit.

If you can’t say too much, what kind of things can you say?

Well you can say anything but that doesn’t mean you should. As you get to know your followers you’ll understand better what does and what does not work. Until then here are some keys to making your tweets compelling:

Promotional Specials

In my last post I referenced a study from Morpace, Inc. The study focused on Facebook but I can guarantee you that a lot of the same findings will carry over to Twitter.

The study found that 37% of people who become fans of a particular brand are searching for coupons and discount offers. I can’t tell you an exact percentage of your Twitter followers that are looking for a coupon or other promotional offer, but I’m confident it’s high.

So send out those promos. That is definitely something that will get a response. However, just like everything else, do it in moderation.

Many dealerships open their Twitter account and immediately start blasting their feeds with promos. Followers will have a promo overload and unfollow you.  You also run the risk of devaluing your promos the more you create. Have one or two promos at a time and get the most you can out of them, then move on to another one.

Inside News

Hopefully a lot of your followers have already bought a car from you. So they look to your Twitter feed for information about the brand they just forked over a lot of money to.

They need recall information or even information on new features in next year’s model. Give it to them. Tell them everything they need to know about their car and even stuff they don’t need but would like to hear. Cultivate their brand loyalty by making them feel like part of the company.

The same goes for new customers. There are several luxury brands who have faithful Facebook and Twitter followers that have never owned the brand, but they really hope to one day. These brands continue to wow their fans with insider news highlighting what the company is doing and where it’s going.

Call to Action

This is just online advertising 101. When you give your followers information tell them what to do with it.

• Read this…
• Come down and see us!
• Check out this…

Okay, so maybe those calls to action were weak but you get the idea. Use social media to make your followers more active. Tell them what to do. Well, don’t order them around but get them moving.

What do you recommend for writing compelling tweets?

By: Chris Garrett Co-Author of Best Seller of ProBlogger, our celebrity blogger, Chris has helped thousands of individuals, non-profits, small businesses and blue chips make the most of the web.

I am in the fortunate position that I can do my work from pretty much anywhere with a cell signal and enough battery power. Yes, I have some lovely face to face clients, and I have been known to go out of my way to find reasons for human contact on occassion, heh. Most of the time though my work is bits and bytes floating over the interwebs. My office is more often a Starbucks (or a Tim Hortons where available).

When you live and work like me Social Media is a no-brainer. I engage and good stuff happens.

Unfortunately nobody has worked out how to send a car down a DSL line. While you can do a good amount with online tools and ecommerce, when selling automobiles there is a lot to be said for the new car smell and an experienced sales person.

How can you have all the good stuff that social media provides, but get those folks into your dealership?

Good news, there is an answer!

First … Talk to the right people

A word of warning. There is no use trying this if you are talking to the wrong people or doing the follower boosting tricks like following random people in the hope they will follow you right back. Get out there in social media talking to people who match your target market, match your geography. Use Search.Twitter.com to find people in your catchment area who are talking about your brand or keywords like “looking for a new car”! Use well targeted Facebook advertising to attract your most wanted fans and friends.

Give them a reason!

Once you have attracted the right people to listen to you, all you have to do is give them a reason.

• Test drive something cool – Rather than getting people in to take out something standard, get in something exciting that everyone would dream about, and talk about! A monster truck, a movie prop, NASCAR, a tank …
• Special deals – Bribe them!
• Come see … – Get a celebrity, hold a networking event or workshop, movie screening …
• Do X, get Y – Every test drive gets a cool gift, donation to charity, massage …
• Have fun – Bouncy castle? Laser tag? What would be so awesome people would talk about it for a year?

Then tweet it, create Facebook events, blog posts, promo videos for YouTube, retweet and promote the heck out of it.

The key is to get people talking, then get people into your dealership and in the proximity of all your lovely inventory … I am sure you know what to do once they are there!

By: Chris Garrett Co-Author of Best Seller of ProBlogger, our celebrity blogger, Chris has helped thousands of individuals, non-profits, small businesses and blue chips make the most of the web.

Anyone who has read modern marketing advice will know that the old top down models are out of favor and companies are being implored to connect with prospects on a personal level. Rather than stiff, corporate suit type communication, show some personality and humanity. All good, right?

A recent example showed the risks, and the challenges, that are involved in the current state of social media.

The Blog World and New Media Expo is one of my favorite internet conferences, and is my #1 large conference of any kind. If you have not been, then you need to be at the next one in October. It rocks.

Unfortunately, some people got upset with what the @blogworld Twitter account put out recently. Mac fans were offended by a Tweet implying less than complimentary things in relation to iPad purchases, but even more so because it seemed to be the official line of the conference rather than the personal opinion of one of the founders.

What was said and what was heard are not important. It’s the situation that really needs to be understood.

Rick, one of the founders, uses @BlogWorld as his personal Twitter account AND as a venue for discussing Blog World news.

Had Rick used a @Rick account, people might have been upset, but would not have attached the opinions necessarily to the company or event. Rick does not see that this means he should split off his personal account from his company account as he and the company are already linked in people’s minds.

What conclusions can we draw?

• It’s not what you say, it is what people hear that counts.
• What you say using a company name is going to get attributed to that company, and might as well be an official announcement.
• Sometimes it is worth apologising even if you don’t think you have anything to apologise for.
• You might think your sense of humor is hilarious, but understand that you are a sample of one!
• If you don’t have anything nice to say, and you must say it anyway, say it under your own name.

Personally, as a Mac fanboy, I don’t see what all the fuss was about … but it certainly made for an interesting social media case study

What do you think?

By: Chris Garrett Co-Author of Best Seller of ProBlogger, our celebrity blogger, Chris has helped thousands of individuals, non-profits, small businesses and blue chips make the most of the web.

When I tell anyone about this blog I always get asked two questions in reply:

1. Do you get to test drive cool new cars?
2. What? People sell cars with social media??

Obviously the answer to the first one is “yes, a new supercar every day. Tomorrow is a nice Aston Martin number”.

The answer to number #2 depends on how much time I have and who is asking.

Why? Because the simple answer is “yes”. Yes you can sell cars with social media:

• By engaging an target profile you understand your prospects and customers better, and what appeals to them
• By being available you can address and counteract any customer service issues, turning upset into loyalty
• By growing your traffic and audience you put your deals in front of a larger audience
• By targeting a specific market with focused content you can carve out a niche or geographical area as your own
• By seeding out deals, events and campaigns you can go viral
• By incorporating loyalty approaches you can keep yourself top of mind and keep customers coming back for more

BUT (and you knew there was a “but”, right?) that does not mean every dealer is going to achieve this. It is not just about the tools, though they help, but the strategy, along with the attitude, intention and engagement of the people working the strategy.

All too often in every market or niche of social media there are people who go into full on “reap” mode before trying to “sow”. Establishing a social media prescence is not an instant win, and a lot of people try to bolt on social media tactics without impacting their company culture and without any real strategy, then wonder why their cash register isn’t overheating!

Yes there are some semi-immediate benefits, not least having real contact with your market and some search result benefits, but the real big benefits are through a long-term dedication to a well planned strategy. As you can imagine, not many people are happy to hear that.

For those who do go into social media prepared to integrate the approaches into their whole business, from customer service through to sales, there are huge gains to be made. All I am saying is the investment has to come before the rewards.

By: Chris Garrett Co-Author of Best Seller of ProBlogger, our celebrity blogger, Chris has helped thousands of individuals, non-profits, small businesses and blue chips make the most of the web.

I had the pleasure of many in depth conversations about social media during my short stay in Austin for the SXSW conference. Not only is Austin’s premiere music conference/festival/party a huge draw, but geeks like myself converge on the city for ‘SXSW Interactive’ like we are returning to the nerd mothership.

One of the conversations most relevant to the discussion here was why some sectors just do not get social media. Situations like Adam’s experience with his mum trying to change her car were unfortunately the norm rather than the exception.

During a house party I did a back of a napkin calculation for the reach the people in just that one small room had. It was around a million people, give or take, that combined we could jointly influence. That is first degree connections, so given a good pass-along rate the total reach could be exponentially more.

Consider how fast stories travel on the internet and how few people you need to start a viral fire. Think a million or so could start a big fire?

Companies with bad customer service are in a dangerous position now. The arrogance and lack of empathy would in the past only impact those it directly hurt, and their small circle of friends and family. People did not have much of a choice, especially if they had their heart set on a certain brand. That has changed, and while the customer service has not always improved, the options available to disgruntled customers has.

Really what we are seeing is a clash of cultures. Social media folks are used to the idea of building long term relationships based on mutual like and trust. The person is more important than the sale. Crazy, I know.

When we visit an auto dealer with a sales team who is only out for the ‘kill’, prioritising that short term goal of getting a sale at any cost, even at the expense of a long term relationship and damage to their brand, we get confused, frustrated and angry.

Why are these dealers so short-sighted? The answer is obvious. There is no incentive to act in anything but the salespersons own best interest at the expense of the customer, and by extension the organisation. What you measure you get more of.

If the person dealing with you does not care what you think, does not care who you tell, and is never going to consider the fact that you might want to return to buy something else, what are they going to do?

In the social media world we recommend companies build long-term loyalty, positive word of mouth, and to encourage referrals. We have the goal of a customer for life and as big a share of that customer as possible. We want not only happy and profitable customers, we want them to bring along friends too!

All along we have always known it is better to go by the golden rule. You know, treat others as you would like to be treated. In the race to get sales today and to heck with tomorrow a lot of companies have been burning up their own future, but the customer had little power to respond. Now the tide is shifting in the consumers favor but the dealers do not realise the change has happened already.

Personally, the wise move seems to be to start focusing on the customer and get the worst offenders in your team re-educated. Or you could go through some painful publicity and costly brand damage limitation later. Either is fine, just do not say you were never warned …