The communication is different now and should include combination of marketing, public relations, brand and product knowledge. The tone should be personal and you should speak with both authority and enthusiasm. This helps you to break through barriers, become brand ambassadors and personally influence those who are important for your business.

Think about your sales and marketing. How do you reach your target audience (true fans, enthusiasts, owners, prospects and industry watchers). What makes prospects into buyers? What social tools could be used to help people through different stages of consideration, evaluation and purchase decisions. Find out what works best for you building awareness, helping to make a decision, converting people who consider competitors, provide services to owners post-purchase?

Always ask yourself “why” are you doing something before “what”. This way you can concentrate on bottom line and real business value.

Here are some tips, examples and links to articles that will help you to get you social media activities going.

Examples and cases

Jeep Community

Jeep combines different social media tools to tie together the community of fans. Twitter, Facebook, user images and featured content help users to interact with the brand and share it with their friends.

BMW of Minnetonka

is a really great example on how a local dealership can use Facebook. This car dealer integrated their entire lot to a Facebook fan page so you can can browse all the cars without leaving Facebook. BMW of Minnetonka have created a visually appealing landing page for people who are not yet fans and they have an active wall interacting with their fans.

Social success for Toyota GB’s iQ

During 2008-09 iCrossing UK, a global digital marketing agency, ran a programme of social media activity for Toyota GB to help raise awareness of its iQ city car. This initiative was based on a core blog and a series of activities designed to create word-of-mouth referrals that drove traffic to the blog and generated interest in the car itself. Download the iCrossing case study (PDF).

Volkswagen have been searching for The People’s Reviewer

Not a professional reviewer or a journalist but a real consumer who could give honest reviews and thoughts on Volkswagen’s small compact 4×4 the Tiguan. The reviews were then released online to help people see personal reviews and opinions on how this car performs in real life.

Ford Social Marketing+Auto Industry

Presentations from Scott Monty. He is the head of social media for Ford Motor Company.

Car Dealer Social Media Basics: Blogging

If I could pick one type of site that is a “must have” for car dealers wanting to get started in social media, what would it be? My answer, hands down, is a dealership blog. Before Facebook, Twitter, or any of the others, a blog is the best place to get started.

30 Social Media Marketing Tips for Car Dealers and Automotive Marketing Professionals…

The list of 30 Social Media action items come together to form a sound strategy for most dealerships. These 30 strategy and tactic descriptions were graciously supplied by Inc. Magazine. They were originally prepared as part of a comprehensive social media “cheat sheet” for the time-challenged business owner or entrepreneur. Here is a link to the Inc. Magazine Business Owner Social media Toolkit. I really like what April Joyner put together in the following list because each item listed is described in a way that quickly communicates the strategy, tactical execution requirements and the promised payoff!

Whitepaper: Navigating Social Media in the Automotive Industry

This whitepaper will provide a brief description of social media, its importance and insights on how dealerships can integrate social media into their marketing strategies.

Creating Value in Social Media

Create unique content every day

Unique content is what people are looking for and Google knows that. Fresh and original content is more valued and you gain better ran in Google which brings you more visitors. Creating great content every day is not hard. Point to other resources, share your experiences, help and give value to customers. Not everyone knows what to do when you got a flat tire or need to jump star a car.

Share your content

If you create valuable content then other want to use it too. Leverage that! Find other sites that are interested in your content and gain more visitors. Which sites might find your blog posts, images and videos interesting and find out if they are interested on publishing your content. This can bring you free traffic and you gain much valued link power that will boost you Google rankings.

Let others know you are creating content

Post links to your material in relevant online communities, social media channels, forums, Facebook, Twitter and so on. It can make dramatic difference if you spread the word. Others will pick up and pas your links on. Search engines find those links and the authority of your web properties goes up

Open comments

The main goal of the social media efforts is to engage people. This is a must! So, everything you put up in the social web should be open to comments, ratings, and sharing. This will help you to tie people to your site as they feel that their contributions are being valued and responded to. Open interaction will give you many benefits, such as being your online focus group and sounding board, getting expert opinions from other specialists, showing an human face, etc.

Less advertising, more value

Social media is not another channel to spam with your banners and self serving salesy news items.

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Image credit Henk L

Social media for car dealers is a post from: DreamGrow Social Media

The following table contains the names of over 100 companies and organization that have published their Employee Social Media Policies or Guidelines online… The left side column is the name of the organization, and it is linked to their organizational or corporate home page. The right side column displays a link to the actual document of policy web page for you to either download or review.

Read the original post.

In a hurry? Use The Social media Policy Tool to get your social media policy in minutes. Answer a series of questions and instantly generate a draft policy customized to your business. PolicyTool policies provide a comprehensive and informed framework for your legal counsel to quickly create a binding policy.

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Image credit Michal Zacharzewski

Social Media Employee Policy Examples from Over 100 Companies and Organizations is a post from: DreamGrow Social Media

One thing that I noticed was the problem of moving email lists from provider to provider. I have similar problem. My current provider doesn’t have the functionality I need and I need to transfere the list. The outlook to lose 80% of the list is not very good.

So, I came up with this solution. Don’t move the list, ask them to go to a new list. We think we move the list from provider to provider but actually we create a new list where people have to opt in. So do not kill the old list. Just remove the people who joined the new list. Use two lists at the same time and give the members of the old list reasons to join the new list.

1. Set up new provider.
2. Move the list to new provider that sends out opt in notices.
3. Remove those who opted in to a new list from old one.
4. Start sending incentives to old list that make them join the new list.

This way you can retain people who say no to a simple confimation notice but are actually interested in what you are offering. The people who will not join the new list will be eventually dropped. But don’t worry they weren’t important for you anyways.

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Image credit: ilker

How to Switch Email Marketing Provider is a post from: DreamGrow Social Media

A much less used tactic today is using the same fan pages, but two of them. By that I mean creating the first fan page for the generic field itself. So lets say that you are in the yoghurt business. What is the wider field connected to that? There are probably more than one, but the main one would be milk (I am in no way connected to the “Milk” fan page in Facebook, I’m just using it as an example). This is the first thing you should do – create a fan page for the generic field. Why? Because if people will like Momma Jane’s yoghurt better than Pappa Jay’s, they will still like dairy products. People may not be familiar to your own brand, but they may very well be fans of the overall field. This is your main advantage – with a generic page, you will now have a group of people interested in your product field. So get that generic page living, generating discussions and content.

However you should consider that Rules for Facebook Page Usernames state: Generic words such as “flowers” or “pizza” are not available as usernames.

The second step would be to create the fan page for your product (Pappa Jay’s). Use that fan page as you normally would, but now you have one more extra channel to market it in – the generic Milk page. Just keep it light – flooding the generic page with Pappa Jay’s will decrease the credibility of the Milk page to zero. You can advertise your own product in the sidebar, or sometimes give away your product as prizes. Just don’t get into the habit of doing it weekly What will you get from it? A well-segmented group of people to market your product to. If people will already like milk, they might be interested in your yoghurt brand as well. Slowly directing them towards your brand is an effective way to go.

This strategy is getting increasingly more difficult to use, at least when your’e trying to make it happen in English – most of the generic fields have already been taken in Facebook (you may reach a deal with the generic page’s owner, though). There is, however, plenty of room for this strategy among smaller languages. So go for it, just keep in mind to have a good product aswell

Reaching out to customers without direct branding – the Facebook way is a post from: DreamGrow Social Media

Some key findings from the report:

1. Inbound Marketing Channels Continue to Deliver Dramatically Lower Cost Per Lead Than Outbound Channels Do Businesses spending 50% or more of their marketing budget on inbound marketing activities spent 60% less per lead, than businesses spending 50% or more of their marketing on outbound channels. Inbound marketing channels are clearly maintaining their low-cost advantage.
2. Social Media and Blogs Are the Most Rapidly Expanding Category In The Overall Marketing Budget Social media and blogs are becoming marketing powerhouses. They are the fastest growing category in lead generation budgets and they continue to be ranked as the lowest cost lead-generation channel.
3. Businesses Are Generating Real Customers With Social Media and Blogs Are potential customers really reading twitter? Does Facebook do anything more than build brand awareness? The answer is “Yes!”. Over 40% of respondents who used social media channels like Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, acquired a customer through each of those channels. Social media is not just for brand awareness – it can be used to directly generate leads that translate into customers.

The difference in Cost Per Lead between inbound and outbound marketing:

The difference between the Cost Per Lead of inbound/outbound marketing has been clearly understood by marketers aswell. When compared to the average 2009 Lead Generation Budget, the 2010 budgets for inbound marketing have been increasing, while the overall budgets for outbound channels have been steadily decreasing (down 5% in one year). Businesses rate every inbound lead generation channel as being more important than any outbound channel. This trend will clearly be continued in years to come and agencies offering only outbound marketing services have been steadily losing their clientele.

The trend to focus more in inbound marketing rather than outbound, is especially seen in smaller companies. With not much to spend on TV advertising, they have no choice but to turn more of their attention to social media, Facebook being the most popular from the group.

Customer acquisition through blogs is directly related to frequency of blog posts

Although it has been a common knowledge for a while, the survey gives statistical evidence that the more you blog, the better are your chances of attracting that necessary customer. We have also seen the same trend among our own clients. If they have taken blogging seriously and devoted some time for it, then it has paid off. An interesting finding from the survey is, that almost all companies blogging multiple times a day, have acquired clients through their blog. But daily blogging isn’t your only way of attracting customers. Over 50% of companies blogging only once a week have still acquired customers through their blogs. Not bad for an hour a week. And what the data tells us, the frequency of blogging once a week is also the most common approach among companies.

Traditional outbound marketing techniques have been clearly losing their effectiveness. People are spending increasingly more of their time in social networks, so these are the places to go to. Shouting out and hoping people will hear you, is not working anymore. What works is initiating a real conversation with your client and hearing what they have to say. Whether you do that through giving out good advice or something else, is yours to decide.

Download the full report here

Businesses spending 60% less per lead in social media is a post from: DreamGrow Social Media

You can also help to reduce spam on Twitter:

To help us battle spam, you can click the “report for spam” link on any suspicious profile page. This action alerts us about the account and blocks the account from following or replying to you. If you like, you can also send a tweet to @spam.

Additional information and picture credit: Twitter fanpage in Facebook

Twitter Reduced The Rate Of Spam Tweets Ten Times. is a post from: DreamGrow Social Media

Sunday, March 21  marks Twitter’s fourth birthday.

Happy Birthday! But does Twitter have what it takes to continue its growth? I have some doubts.

Twitter is not that special anymore. Facebook is replacing so many functions that made Twitter popular in the first place: Most of the socially active people can be followed in Facebook just as easily. You can respond to them privately or publicly and its even easier to share pictures and videos.

Active Twitter users might not be that active inside Twitter after all. You can post 1+ tweets a day, but it does not require your presence anymore. Status updates can be automated, scheduled and links to articles require only few clicks from the blogs. Most of the tweets are links to articles anyway.

Twitter is losing the genuine interaction between users. Twitter is not that exiting to regular people anymore. I hope, that in the future Twitter wouldn’t be just a playground for social media fanatics. To avoid this, Twitter has improve. Here is my selection of Loic Le  Meur speculations, that may help to save Twitter from its slow death, IF they will be realized.

• Twitter will still be dominant in status updates  - it’s the motherboard on which we plug in.
• We won’t be updating Twitter all manually
• Twitter will replace  SMS for millions of people

-it is portable and archives across devices

-you don’t need to remember a phone number

-you are not tied to a mobile operator

• Location will be one of the most widespread status update
• Talking to shops and restaurants via Twitter will become standard and will get opt in coupons as we enter a shop, based on location
• There will be more devices publishing updates than humans  WiFi  scale, planes, trains, cars all posting updates
• Hyper-local news sites with Twitter geotagging  feature

Also, Twitter has an enormous potential to be the fastest news channel. Most news will reach Twitter before they reach the News anyway.

Lets cross our fingers and see, what we have to say about Twitter on its 5th anniversary.

Twitter. Its Glory Days Are Over. Or Are They? is a post from: DreamGrow Social Media

Set Goals is a post from: DreamGrow Social Media

10 Reasons Why Now Is The Perfect Time To Get Serious About the Mobile Web is a post from: DreamGrow Social Media

When Virgin America’s plane had to make an unplanned landing due to weather, passengers were left trapped inside the grounded airplane for hours. David Martin, one of the passengers on plane, decided to record the whole incident and share it with others on his social media account.

After the first announcements of an unplanned landing, he sent out the first messages. Soon after that, he started recording the incident with a cell phone, capturing the growing nervousness even among the flight crew.

His video has been spiraling on the web for five days now, gaining over 70 000 views since uploading. No doubt that it will be a headache for Virgin in months to come, since videos like that will usually stay circulating for a long time. Taking out fires in social media is something they didn’t teach us at school, but it’s certainly something worth knowing now.

In today’s world of ever-expanding social media, a reputation that took years to build, can be destroyed buy the guy in front with a video camera. So paying good attention to your front line will certainly pay dividends in the long run.

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How one video in Youtube can cause millions in brand damage is a post from: DreamGrow Social Media