Social Media Etiquette for Vendors

[Eric Miltsch]

Alex,

Of course, nicely put together.

Ironically, I wrote my post before seeing yours - and having seen several other SM optimization articles recently, there's 1 item that is consistently left out...Listening to your clients, listening to industry peers and anyone else willing to bend your ear...

http://whatdidericsay.com/2010/04/1-missing-socia...

 

[Mike Keesee]

How to be relevent to the "eyes" that are reading what you post is sometimes hard to do, but if you really step back and like Alex said, "Think about what is in it for the reader?" I'm glad you guys are back from Digital Dealer now I get to hear all the good stuff. I was unable to make it.

 

[Alex Snyder (blog)]

Juan - there is always going to be a certain level of frustration with our vendors, no matter how good they are. When it comes to digital marketing, our vendors hold the keys to the kingdom. Most of the dealers you are following are the more proactive. These dealers will get the basics right and push vendors to do more, and this is where their frustration will mostly stem from. Unfortunately, this is maybe 15% of the dealers out there. The other 85% just don't understand what vendors are doing for them on the more advanced levels. So, their frustration is more with themselves.

On a second note to this, Rob makes a good point in saying that most vendors were once dealers. They may not fully understand everything themselves and that is where this article comes into play. I heard a lot of bad advice being given at DD8 and have seen some stuff happen on DealerRefresh - this is where the frustration you're reading in this article comes from.

Eric - good point. I was hoping that part would go without saying, but you're right - I need to make things more obvious.

 

[Juan Lulli]

Alex -- thanks so much for replying! As you know I am interested in transitioning into the "digital dealer" market from the vendor side, your reference to the 85%/15% mix astonishes me. Makes me even more convinced of the tremendous opportunity for me to do my fair share in advancing automotive retailing, sharing and explaining the value of what the new & traditional marketing offer -- for the sake of owners, consumers, and vendors. And thank you and your community for showing the way.

 

[Eric Miltsch]

@alex,

Point #4 is the end result of listening; some may simply not make the time to do so - or perhaps not even know how to do so efficiently...

Imagine a feature that, for the first 30 days of signing up on a social site, limited your ability to post anything. All you can do is just watch & listen.

 

[Joe Turner (blog)]

Great Post and will follow the advice given.

 

[Stan Sher (blog)]

A lot of very valid points. I enjoy the conference and the speakers. There were some great presentations of social media but bery few. The only issue that I have with this is that we are getting so ahead of ourselves. Social media became the most important thing. Yes it is great for relationship building, reputation management, and keeping your name out there. However, we have not seen trackable ROI as of yet. We stopped talking about the basics. We stopped talking about the important of handling the pones properly or handling your leads properly. We stopped talking about things an effective internet sales manager should be doing and how they should be doing them. We talk about technology and how should be used. We over talk about social media. It is ridiculous and at this point very annoying. Let's talk about social media but let us not forget that people coming to these sessions what to know how to not only better position themselves in the digital space but also how to sell more cars effectively. Another interesting thing that I saw was that I had an idea about a year ago to do something but I questioned the success of it and how it will operate. Well now I see about eight other ideas exactly like mine competing for dealer business by selling social media services. Well I would like to wish these company a lot of luck because it is interesting to see how they progress and what they can do for automotive dealers.

 

[Brad (blog)]

How to be relevent to the "eyes" that are reading what you post is sometimes hard to do, but if you really step back and like Alex said, "Think about what is in it for the reader?" I'm glad you guys are back from Digital Dealer now I get to hear all the good stuff. I was unable to make it.

 

[Todd Smith]

Nice post Alex. I can't agree with you more. In fact when I still had my dealership and Google started to really become popular and every vendor in the world started selling SEM marketing in some form or another I like most people became confused so I decided to become informed. I went and became Google Adword Certified. Now this might be extreme but really that upfront work educating myself paid off big when vendors came to my store selling vaporware. If I didn't take the time I might have bought useless crap without knowing any better and wasted a boat load of money chasing the dream.

I feel Social Media is at the same point as SEM was a couple of years ago. Sounds great on paper but we are all still waiting on the execution to see what happens and who can deliver. I can say their are a lot of great resources and knowledgeable people out there. Though most are outside the auto space. My suggestion is roll up your sleeves, educate yourself then start small.

As professionals we must continually educate ourselves for our ability to learn faster than our competitors is our only real competitive advantage in the age of the Internet.

 

[Mike Myers]

Excellent post. I have to agree with Stan above. Social Media has its place, but it can not be the only connection to customers. People who come into internet sales and think they can sit on a computer all day and never make some kind of personal interaction with people are sorely mistaken. Internet sales really rely on taking the tools that the internet gives you and using them to create real connections with people over the phone and *gasp* in person to make the sale. Social media is just a piece of the great puzzle and is a wonderful way to supplement what should already be in place if you are a great salesperson.