In Dealership Marketing Manager?

Is Twitter really where I should be?

Does Facebook have value for your business?

Do I need a Blog?

The answer is YES. That's the easy part.

The hard part is figuring out how to manage all of these social media outlets.

Most dealerships I have been too have computers for salespeople. And that's great - you've come a long way. The problem is, dealers have these computers so locked down that internet access is usually only allowed to access the dealerships website.

Sales people are one the most underutilized resources in a dealership for social media / alternative marketing. Imagine if 50% of your sales floor had twitter and facebook accounts and used these avenues to work for them to help sell more product?

There has not been a single dealer who has given me a valid reason why they block these sites. Most dealers tell me "I don't want them sitting around all day surfing the internet". Um.... HELLO ?!?!? This leaves me speechless....

88% of the people that walk through your front door started their shopping online. You need to leverage this.

With all these sites and marketing possibilities, you might want to start thinking about a new position at the dealership. Alternative Marketing Manager or the like.

A person responsible for not only your SEO / VSEO (and all the things that come with that... way too many to list here - call me) but social networking and managing your online identity.

It appears dealers have no problem spending BIG BUCKS to buy ineffective third party leads (when they don't have the capacity to even handle them properly) yet that money may be better spent on a full time dedicated marketing manager.

Whens he last time you searched twitter for anything related to your dealership or your product in your area? Twitter is full of people reaching out. Its a tremendous opportunity to not only speak to the masses but to speak to a single person while the masses watch.

And that's HUGE.

RETHINK EVERYTHING Read more!

Social Networking

First - hop on over to Facebook.com and search for toyotanyr

Now...

A quick stop over at wikipedia.org gives us the following definition of Social Networking Sites:

"A social network service focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most social network services are web based and provide a variety of ways for users to interact, such as e-mail and instant messaging services.

Social networking has created new ways to communicate and share information. Social networking websites are being used regularly by millions of people, and it now seems that social networking will be an enduring part of everyday life. The main types of social networking services are those which contain directories of some categories (such as former classmates), means to connect with friends (usually with self-description pages), and recommender systems linked to trust. Popular methods now combine many of these, with MySpace and Facebook being the most widely used in North America;[1] Nexopia (mostly in Canada);[2] Bebo,[3] Facebook, Hi5, MySpace, Tagged, Xing;[4] and Skyrock in parts of Europe;[5] Orkut and Hi5 in South America and Central America;[6] and Friendster, Orkut, Xiaonei and Cyworld in Asia and the Pacific Islands."

Now on to the point. People LOVE cars. They want to know all about them. Why cant you be one of the sources of the information they are seeking?

What a great outlet to not only stay in front of the user but also to be a source of CORRECT information about the topic.

Oh and guess what? This is all FREE.

Yes. I said FREE.

If someone from the NY Times walked into your dealership and said they want to give away placement in their paper, for free, no strings attached, would you sign up or send them walking?

Yeah, me to.

Then why doesn't every dealer have a Facebook page? A Myspace page? A blog?

If it was me, I'd have a "page" on every social networking site I possibly could.

Just having the pages doesn't do too much though. The pages must be updated and filled with appropriate content regularly.

Having links to your dealerships website on these pages helps in two incredible ways. First it allows a user to click to your site directly. Second, it creates higher relevancy to search engines so your SEO improves.

You see, the more sites that link to you, the more important search engines think that linked to URL is....

So get out there and start social networking your store. TODAY.

RETHINK EVERYTHING! Read more!