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What Defines A Successful Automotive Social Media Strategy

A tough thing to measure...but you can track simple things like Youtube views immediately after linking a video on Facebook for example to see how much interaction you're really getting on your social media. If you have 1000 FB fans and the views of your Youtube linked video you posted go up by 200 within a brief period, I'd say your social media is pretty effective (if the content of the video is worth anything of course!)

This is just a more direct measure of interaction than some of the Facebook Daily user interactive charts they throw at you
 
How do you measure effectiveness?

I've been thinking about Brian's original question "What Defines A Successful Automotive Social Media Strategy?" and reading through responses. I was struck with an additional question, "How do you measure effectiveness?" In my experience, many car dealers would answer the question with a simple answer: Vehicles Sold. But my feeling is it will be very hard to apply that measure to Social Media Marketing.

So I was very happy to read a blog post today from Jay Baer on his Convince & Convert Blog. The title is
6 Critically Undervalued Social Media Success Metrics.

Jay goes into them in-depth, but I'll list them here:

  1. Daily Story Feedback
  2. Klout
  3. PostRank
  4. Share of Voice
  5. Search Volume
  6. Inbound Links
I'd urge everyone to check it out.
 
Joe,
I thought you would like this thread that I started. So now that we have 11 pages of comments, here is why I posted this thread.

If you were to give an award to car dealers based on their social media strategies and investments, how would you setup criteria to evaluate what they did?

This is the second can of worms I'm opening up.....:)
 
I think Joe should give a "Joey" out every year for social marketing achievement in the auto industry.

And the 2011 "Joey" goes to ...


173.jpg
 
Joe,
I thought you would like this thread that I started. So now that we have 11 pages of comments, here is why I posted this thread.

If you were to give an award to car dealers based on their social media strategies and investments, how would you setup criteria to evaluate what they did?

This is the second can of worms I'm opening up.....:)

Brian,

Any store that does Social Media right, has a leader at the top that has their organization in such great condition that Social Media is a natural extention of their daily operations.

Keyword to ponder: Organization.

<rant>Most leaders of dealerships are firefighters, not visionaries, and certainly not risk takers (read: entrepreneurial). Like lemmings, these leaders they follow what others do, blaming the handcuffs they wear on circumstances that surround them.

It's these sea of morons (aka leaders) that mindlessly "follow the pack" into Social Media because everyone else is doing it. To these players, their entire Social Media business model lives on 5 minutes of research and 34 seconds of planning. They don't get it and they wont get it... ever.

Oh... and just wait until the evil twin of Social Media comes out and WACKS them. Dealer Reviews has the potential to be the single greatest threat to Dealer Leadership since Al Gore invented the internet. By this time next year, I see droves of GMs and GSM's in the fetal position, sucking their thumbs wondering how this all got away from them.

I am well known for my dis-taste of Social Media. It's not Social Media that irrates me, it's.... us. Every where I look I see lackadaisical leadership that is so un-prepared for the "Bright Light of Social Media".

I swear the Franchise System (Manufacturer to Dealer) has sucked the balls out of decision makers. It has rewarded GM's that defend it's turf, not those that conquer new ground. Boys.. I hate to tell you.... new ground is coming your way!


  • They say: "I found my high school buddy in Phoenix so it has to work!.. let's get on facebook now!!.".
  • I say: "Becareful what you wish for, you're not prepared and a bandaid wont fix it"

</rant>

Brian,

I haven't had time to read Ed Brook's link to Jay Bayer, clues maybe in there, but, from my seat right now, just like Social Media itself, you may not beable to pigeon hole it into a ranking system. This connects to Rob Fantano's great observation that SM has to be created inhouse because its an extension of the spirit of the stores leadership (see rant above ;-)
 
<rant>Most leaders of dealerships are firefighters, not visionaries, and certainly not risk takers (read: entrepreneurial). Like lemmings, these leaders they follow what others do, blaming the handcuffs they wear on circumstances that surround them.

It's these sea of morons (aka leaders) that mindlessly "follow the pack" into Social Media because everyone else is doing it. To these players, their entire Social Media business model lives on 5 minutes of research and 34 seconds of planning. They don't get it and they wont get it... ever.

Oh... and just wait until the evil twin of Social Media comes out and WACKS them. Dealer Reviews has the potential to be the single greatest threat to Dealer Leadership since Al Gore invented the internet. By this time next year, I see droves of GMs and GSM's in the fetal position, sucking their thumbs wondering how this all got away from them.

I am well known for my dis-taste of Social Media. It's not Social Media that irrates me, it's.... us. Every where I look I see lackadaisical leadership that is so un-prepared for the "Bright Light of Social Media".

I swear the Franchise System (Manufacturer to Dealer) has sucked the balls out of decision makers. It has rewarded GM's that defend it's turf, not those that conquer new ground. Boys.. I hate to tell you.... new ground is coming your way!
</rant>

We have to turn this into a blog article. Fuck yeah Joe :thumbup: