[KoreyB]

Just curious how many of you have a Twitter account?

What do you use Twitter for? Research your brand? Have you had a successful sale result from Twitter?

[VJnator]

Hello Korey:
Twitter was (when I was still as eCommerce Director in charge) an important piece of my puzzle, playing the Social media "game" for my dealer group. I saw Twitter more likely as a trend tool on what, who and when somebody was talking about my brand I sold. It further helped me enormous to monitor my competition and of course reputation in combination with my other social media tools. You have some inteesting facts about the vehicles you sell (crash test ratings, insurance classifiactions, new models to come, consumer awards), then write about it with your 140 characters and include a link, which will guide the interested reader to your dealer homepage and or blog, exposing more of your edited content.

I can determine that we sold out of our social media efforts (community channels, enthusiast sites, facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter, etc.) approx. 2 - 7 cars/months, without pushing any sales message or feeding any onventory into the streams. Most efficient were the car enthusiasts websites like bimmerfest.com, acurazine, etc.

I still see, when visiting dealer principal during my new assignment, that the perception still is "we need to be on Social Media and when we do it how many cars can we sell out of it". Please keep in mind that we are trying to get possible consumers and existing customers with us engaged - no hard sell and NO soft sell, but much more starting a conversation. Who we are, why we are serving our community and what else we are able to do for our "fans and friends"...and I don't talk about the good old slogan "we are beating any price of the competition.

[Jeff Kershner]

VJ has it. Twitter is a piece of your social pie. But if you are not going to give your social initiatives 100% then don't even waste your time. Focus on your 101's instead..meet and greet, phone skills, response time and quality of response..the stuff that sells you cars "this month".

I highly doubt you will EVER have a customer come in and say "Hey I'm buying this car because you tweeted it"

"we need to be on Social Media and when we do it how many cars can we sell out of it" - ahh I hear this question a lot. "Jeff, will it sell me cars this MONTH?"

Dealers forget about Branding and Residual...it's all about the month.

"Social media is a process NOT a event" - Seth Godon

[KoreyB]

@VJnator Agreed, I think the key to your statement is "starting a conversation". Twitter is a tool to get out there and shake hands. What many people are doing is like roving a party handing out business cards as fast as you can...not getting to know anyone.

[Dominic Belfiori]

Here at the Agency we use Twitter to promote exclusive content and actively monitor customer feedback.

[Alex Snyder]

Couldn't agree more with what is being said here already

Twitter has not sold us a single car by itself. I would define it as "value added" advertising. It is just something that comes along with your more predominate advertising efforts....it is a compliment to those efforts.

[ghen]

We're only on twitter to help with SEO and brand recognition. Even then, we wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't part of the package we got with our website company LOL.