Engaging Customers through Social Media w/ JD Rucker #bootcamp

[Jeff Kershner]

Engaging Customers through Social Media

Instructor: JD Rucker



It’s no secret that social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and blogs can be effective elements of a car dealer’s online marketing strategy.

In this class, JD Rucker demonstrated hands-on how dealers can build a strong presence in social media that translates into leads, branding, and reputation management without spending hours a day doing it.

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Key Notes:

What are your goals for Social Media? - In order of importance

1. Engagement
2. Reputation Management
3. Branding
4. SEO - Dominating Search
5. Driving Traffic

You need to be a human, NOT a business to start a facebook “PROFILEâ€. Dealers - be sure to build a fanpage for your dealership and and NOT a profile page.

I have a feeling the session was driven off the original topic that JD intended, but that was OK..the topics of conversation that came about had everyone thinking and conversing.


Question that came about -

Do you really need to be on Flikr?
Ok it might have some value for SEO - Google Page One Management (GPOM) but does it have any value in driving valuable traffic to your website...eh.

How does Social fit into your dealers marketing mix?

Should everybody at the dealership engage in Social Media on behalf of your dealers brand?

This is a touchy subject but ultimately there is no way to truly manage this - instead, I believe dealers should train OR provide training for their employees on how to be "social" -- how to represent themselves on social media from a personal and professional level.

Track your Social BUZZ using Radian6

Myspace still ranks very well on Google and can still be a part of your online reputation management.

How do you increase Facebook fans? - we sort of wrapped up the session before we really getting into different ideas for this... SO, lets continue here...How do you increase Facebook fans?

Overall, I thought this was a good session with plenty of engagement from everyone attending. What did you think?

If you have anymore questions, comments or opinions on this session, PLEASE SHARE!

 

[Jerry Thibeau]

How do you increase Facebook fans?

You have all your salespeople on facebook as individuals. Every time you build a relationship with the customer (sold & unsold), you tell them you're going to send them a friend invite on facebook. Then you tell them that once they've become your friend, you'll be sending them an invite to the dealership fan page. Then you give them a reason to do it. That reason is, "Every now and then we'll put specials on our fan page, so once you're a fan, you'll find opportunities to save money."

In order to do this properly, you'll need to give the salespeople admin permission on the fan page. You'll be able to do this once they themselves become fans. They then go in once a week and invite their friends to become fans.