Social Media

If you’ve ever experienced birds chirping, singing, calling or screeching at night, you were probably annoyed by it. Today, businesses including your dealership must be aware of birds chirping into the early hours of the morning. The “birds” are the consumers of our modern, or some would say, post-modern era and they don’t always sing during business hours.

Twitter and Facebook offer us the opportunity to say whatever we want, whenever we want and that presents challenges for most dealers. Contrast the Twitter, Facebook and Instagram realm with how difficult it was to praise or shame a business in 1995. BIG difference. If you’re a little young to remember life at that time, it’s important to know that less that 5% of Americans were using the internet before 1995. Unlike today, where 87% of adults in the USA are on the internet and the percentage grows to almost 100% among those living in households earning $75,000 or more. BOOM!

You have a voice that can be amplified online more than any other time in human history, but… so does every single person that visits your website, sees your advertising efforts, calls your dealership, buys a car from you, services their car with you and so on…

What’s your social media strategy look like right now? Are you one of the many dealerships that have scaled back believing that the effort yields nothing in return? Many dealers started running the social media race primarily focused on capitalizing on a new way to sell cars. Unfortunately, none of us knew exactly how to approach the sales side of social media and totally missed the communication importance offered by social media. Yes, you can and should be selling some cars through social media, but you are unlikely to sell any if you aren’t watching, listening, engaging and answering when the birds start chirping.

One way to be sure you hear the birds is by using social media tools like Mention.  Mention is specifically a listening tool that allows you to hear what’s being said about your business on the web. They recently released an infographic based on Twitter data they’ve assembled and crunched. Along with the data, they gathered opinions on the information from a handful of social media experts. I highly recommend checking it out.

Here are some takeaways:

• 271 million people are active on Twitter every month
• Some of them are talking to you, some of them are talking about you
• Almost 31% of tweets containing a company name do NOT include their twitter handle
• 60% of company mentions on Twitter are posted when you’re NOT in the office

If you’re looking for a simple way to make sure you never miss a thing. Check out Mention here and download their mobile app to make sure you always hear the birds chirping.

Until next time, may you find yourself and your business more attractive, attentive and aware.

#birdschirpatnight

Your dealership probably has at least one review portal that your marketing efforts are focused on…Google? Facebook? Yelp? DealerRater? Which portal works best for your car dealership? Is your focus in line with the portal your customers prefer to use?

Mike Blumenthals, a local search and Google Places expert, recently created a Google survey to find out where American adult Internet users prefer to leave reviews online. After filtering out the 77.8% of survey takers that self-reported that they never or almost never leave reviews, Blumenthals asked the following question:

When you leave a review online for a local business, which site are you most likely to use?

• Google – 32%
• Facebook – 20.6%
• Yelp – 17.5%

While the margin of error allows for Yelp and FB to be neck and neck, this does show a growth in the desire to leave reviews on Facebook, even though they aren’t necessarily known as a review aggregator.

So, while users prefer to leave their online reviews on Facebook, it’s unfortunate for small businesses like your dealership that Facebook doesn’t highlight business reviews, nor does it really promote them. In fact, it can be downright difficult to find the reviews on your dealership’s business page. What is your dealership to do?

First, continue to focus on Google reviews. They are still the clear leader, and provide the most bang for your marketing buck given their dominance in the search engine market. Having a healthy number of reviews consistently flowing into your Google+ Local page gives your dealership a better chance of a high ranking in Google’s search results.

But don’t sleep on Facebook Reviews. They are a smart company, and they will put more of a focus on business reviews in the future. Given that their platform has almost accidentally become the 2nd biggest consumer review site, it is just a matter of time before business reviews become a highlighted part of Facebook for businesses. Make sure your dealership is ahead of the curve. Spend some time and effort building positive reviews on Facebook, since many consumers are already looking at them, and the number is likely to grow dramatically over time.

As for Yelp, could the recent controversy surrounding the quality and validity of their reviews beginning to discourage consumers from leaving reviews there? If you have shied away from Yelp, one thing you should be aware of is that Google’s recent Pigeon change (which I wrote about last week) has given Yelp reviews MUCH more visibility in Google (see this article by Matt McGee). But, it may just be easier and smarter for the long term to focus on building your dealership’s review volumes on Google and Facebook, since there’s little question about their long-term consumer influence. Has your dealership seen an increase in Facebook reviews?

If you’re new to Twitter, let me be the first one to welcome you to 2007. Actually, Twitter officially launched in the summer of 2006, and has steadily grown into a social network with 255 million active monthly users. Twitter’s mission is to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers. Think about that.

Don’t underestimate the power Twitter provides its users.

• 500 million tweets are sent every day
• 78% of active Twitter users are on a mobile device
• 585 gallons of coffee are consumed every week at Twitter’s HQ

Invitation, Encouragement, Recommendation

I’m a big fan of experience, so I want to invite and encourage you to experience Twitter. You should experiment with how to “Tweet” and “Follow” people and businesses, but I think you’ll see true value for your dealership with one of my favorite Twitter features. Search. Real time information at your fingertips. If you’ve never used this feature, jump online and go to search.twitter.com. It should look like this:

Twitter Search Operators

You may want to briefly study these Twitter Search Operators. They will help you find very specific information. I know some of you literally just gave up because it sounds like homework and you don’t care to make the effort. Can I encourage you? This is how the “experts” in the automotive industry become experts. They find the information, they immerse themselves and they gain experience by using, testing, learning and doing it over and over again. Become an expert yourself and cut some of your dependency on the “experts”.

Still Skeptical?

It took me a few years to warm up to Twitter, so I can appreciate those of you who are skeptical. Maybe you’re one of the people that don’t really know how Twitter works or how to use it. If you’re in need of Twitter 101, the best place learn is directly from Twitter.

For the Twitter basics, visit https://support.twitter.com/articles/215585. You’ll find-out what Twitter is, how to use it, tips and tricks, the official Twitter glossary and a lot more. Twitter’s support actually has tons of excellent insight and information. You can become a Twitter expert in the quietness of your home or office without feeling embarrassed or shy to ask some self-made automotive Twitter expert a single question. How’s that for a slice of fried gold? Explore, learn, enjoy and thank me later.

Will It Help Me Sell More Cars?

You had to ask, didn’t you? Well, in case you don’t find it easily during your first visit to support.twitter.com, you’ll want to check out this case study https://business.twitter.com/success-stories/zender-ford. If you’d like more automotive specific Twitter examples, you can find them here https://business.twitter.com/success-stories/industry/automotive.

So Tweet it up and have fun.

If you liked this article, “Follow” me @shaunraines and let me know.

Yelp has been making a lot of news recently.  Yesterday they announced that they have rolled out a new feature that alerts a business when Yelp detects that their company is receiving multiple reviews from the same IP address (for instance the IP at your dealership).  Just to remind everyone, Yelp’s official stance from their blog is “we encourage businesses to take a hands off approach when it comes to receiving reviews”.

Historically, dealers have not had the greatest experience with Yelp.  You don’t have to search long to find real-life stories about problems dealers have had working with the review service.  In the dealership world, Yelp is often talked about, rarely praised (see here, here, and here).

Last week, Johnson & Weaver, a shareholder rights firm, announced that they are launching an investigation into Yelp’s business practices, specifically focusing on the validity and authenticity of the reviews of local businesses that Yelp displays on its site, mobile site, and mobile app.  This announcement comes just a few weeks after the Wall Street Journal reported that Yelp has received over 2,000 FTC complaints in the last 6 years.

Perhaps in response to some of the recent publicity, Yelp announced Tuesday, using their official blog, that they are looking for help from small business owners – new members for the Yelp Small Business Advisory Council (YSBAC). Created in 2010, this panel gets to:

• Participate in an annual summit at Yelp HQ
• Provide input on products under development
• Brainstorm new ideas for Yelp executives to consider
• Serve as a resource for other business owners who have questions about the services and tools on Yelp

According to Yelp, the YSBAC has had a hand in the following improvements:

• “Yelp Metrics” being launched to help business owners track customer leads
• Business owner review comments being visible on mobile
• Development of the free “Revenue Estimate” tool to calculate the value of leads from Yelp
• The “Activity Feed” to track when and how Yelp drives customers to businesses

I think that we’re all fairly skeptical of Yelp’s intentions in reaching out to local business owners, given the challenges I’ve described above.   Regardless of our industry’s recent experiences with Yelp, they are a multi-billion dollar company that remains the leading local business review website.  So if you’re interested in participating in their YSBAC to influence and shape Yelp’s treatment and relationship with local businesses in the future, there is a simple, 9 question form, that you can complete.  Last year, 26 small business owners were chosen from the over 1,000 business owners that applied to participate.

Would you like to share your dealership’s experiences with Yelp?