Are You Aware How Graph Search Will Impact Your Dealership?
By Eric Miltsch on Jan 19, 2013
Social marketing is so much more than just getting someone to "Like" your content now. If you're posting content simply to drive a like, you're stuck in an old-school tactical mentality. You're also missing out on how to leverage the next wave of optimization techniques within Facebook - and yes, I'm talking about how to prepare your strategy for Graph Search. (Get ready to hear a lot more about this subject because it isn't a passing fad)
Now keep in mind, Graph Search still hasn't rolled out to everyone. So, here's yet another opportunity to prepare yourself and your dealership for another new wave of activity and performance improvement. Over the years I've talked about other early adopter initiatives such as local search, location based marketing and Google+ well before they became mainstream concepts - I feel the same is about to happen with Graph Search.
Think of Graph Search as the next generation of Earned Media Exposure. This is such a valuable element of your digital marketing efforts due to how much consumers trust this type of messaging. This is genuine and real. Consumers trust this info so much more that messages from brands directly; they also trust it more than anonymous ratings and reviews.
Facebook's Open Graph allows progressive dealerships the opportunity to create external applications that allow potential buyers to "recommend" or "review" a vehicle - this is classified as creating an interaction that's contextually relevant. A dealership can let users to "want" a new sedan or "own" new sports car. Now we'll start to see the development of connections between consumers based on their language rather than the typical corporate marketing messaging which so often doesn't speak to the consumer or make a connection.
When these interactions occur, whether it's on a dealership's website or blog, they are delivered via Facebook to the user's Timeline. (And of course, within their friend's News Feed)
Now, with all of these relevant activities logged, they can be easily referenced with a simple search, such as "Women who have Reviewed Frank Myers Auto Maxx in North Carolina" - Imagine being able to discover reviews from people you know, or that you may be connected with through your friends. These are valuable interactions for the consumer - and you the dealer.
This will ultimately drive a new awareness around the value of the interaction and help it become a measurable activity with regards to ROI instead of simply measuring how many Likes you have received. (Or even worse, how many bogus Likes were received from an inefficient paid campaign)
Going even deeper, this all points back to an even bigger question: "What are you doing to ensure your dealership's process and structure are in place to proivide an amazing dealership experience?" You're already aware of how your dealership's experience can be comunicated online - this just made it even easier to find. Think about that.
Stay tuned as I cover more ways to prepare your dealership for this new wave of search behavior within Facebook.
Do you have questions about Graph Search?
Comments
Social media is now acting like blood for the businesses. Small businesses especially are heavily benefited. Not sure what exactly a graph search can do to the businesses, but surely it will give business some more flexibility.
January 21st
Eric, I hope that dealerships will start to embrace social media and realize the tremendous reach that it has. It's been my experience that most dealerships don't take social media seriously and even go so far as to block facebook, twitter and youtube on the company network so that their employees won't be wasting their time on company computers. Graph search is word of mouth advertising on steroids...it's time old school sales tactics go the way of the dinosaur. Thanks for sharing.
January 21st
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