Thank you Ryan!
Wow, this is a great thread with a ton of great information in it and if you pardon a newbie (to this forum) I'd love to add to it. For those of you that are familiar with me I will apologize in advance because what I'm about to say you have heard me say it before! LOL
All social media is, is a new way to use an old business tool. That's it, the only thing new about it is the technology and if you use social media how it was meant to be used (being social) then you will begin to see that it's nothing more than networking. Networking on steroids, but networking none the less.
There are as many different ideas on how to "network" using social media as there are social media experts out there (too many if you ask me and I'm no guru and don't claim to be). In my opinion the best way to use social media is by aligning yourself with a social cause. Contests are all good and well and they have their place but after you stop doing the promotions engagement stops.
If you want organic growth, the kind of growth that gets people talking then align yourself with a cause that's bigger than the dealership and the community. Create a..
Purpose Driven Community
As an example let's talk about Metro Honda of Union County and their recent initiative to help fight hunger in their community. Wal-Mart, during their Fighting Hunger campaign, put up $1.5 Million to be donated among the top 6 communities with the most support. $1 Million to number 1 and $100,000 to the next five communities. During that time Metro Honda created videos, sent out emails and engaged their Facebook fans in order to get them to "like" their community. During this time they saw a tremendous increase in their post views, and daily active users.
A lot of dealerships fall into the trap of looking at their "likes" as a gauge as to how well their doing on Facebook, when the best stat to look at is their daily and monthly active users. During the Fighting Hunger campaign Metro Honda saw an increase in their Daily Active Users (people consuming their content) from an average of about 200 per day to over 1000, with their daily post views going from around 5,000 per day to upwards of 25,000! Now that the campaign is over they are still seeing double the number of daily active users and post views than was the case before the campaign begun. That's the power of a purpose-driven community.
Thank you for allowing me to join in the conversation, I've learned a lot from this thread and I hope that in some small way I was able to add to it.
