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How Should I Work with Dealer Rating Sites? 
If I Tell More, Will I Sell More 
As the saying goes, an elephant never forgets, neither does the internet. Everything said, everything posted, every video created and image uploaded is there for the world to see. People are forming opinions about your dealership without ever having to be a customer, of course this could be good or bad, it just depends on the opinions being formed.
It’s becoming increasingly more important to monitor your employees and how they interact on the internet. In a transparent world it’s easy to connect what a person says to where they work, that can be a problem if one of your employees lacks integrity, and is posting defamatory, pornographic, proprietary or libelous material about the dealership, employees, customers or even the competitors. In fact, they don’t even have to mention anything that relates to the car business but through association can have an impact on the public opinion about your dealership.
After careful research (and borrowing) I put together the following policy to get you started creating your own social media policy. Keep in mind that I am not a lawyer and the following policy should only be used as guide and is not a stand-in for legal advice. I encourage you to download it, take a look at it and draft your own policy.
Social media can be a powerful supplement to any marketing campaign but it can be a double edge sword, use it wisely and make sure that you know what your employees are saying, it could be the different between positive word of mouth and negative word of mouth. As we all know, negative word of mouth can spread like wildfire and before you know it , it can engulf the whole dealership. Be vigilant.
The following policy is saved in an RTF format, it can be opened with most word-processing programs on both PC’s and Macs.
Automotive Social Media Policy
David Johnson is the Digital Marketing Director at PersuasiveConcepts.com and Next Generation Dealer Services.
Tags: social media policy
David:
Many people (including myself) is excited about the possibilities social media offers the automotive industry, including individual dealerships.
I recently put together a blog on 8 simple rules for participation in social media (http://automotivedirectmarketing.blogspot.com/2010/02/8-simple-rules-for-navigating-social.html) in hopes of helping dealers navigate these “new waters”. I think that your article and download are great resources for dealers wishing to use social media. I think it’s important for dealers to outline guidelines of acceptable behavior and where certain responsibilities lie.
Social marketing is fun and exciting but it also has a downside. In fact, everything that makes it great can also harm the dealerships reputation. Social media is a great way to promote word of mouth but a dealership has to make sure that what they are promoting is the way it actually is. For instance, if a “fan” on Facebook comes in to buy a car because of the way the dealership portrayed themselves online, but finds something totally different when they actually arrive to the store, the dealership is in for a rude awakening.
That’s part of the reason for this post and the download, to make dealers and their employees more aware that the mark they leave online, will reflect in what people feel about them offline.
Thank you for the comment.