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Social Media Success Video 
I was compelled to write a politically correct article about SEO and Social Media “sales” in response to an email I received from a prospect that I met at the 7th Digital Dealer Conference in Nashville.
Out of professional respect, I have omitted the direct party names in this article.
My prospect that was interested in the services that my company offered. This week they balked at signing a contract because their OEM encouraged them to sign with “Company X”. The OEM applied some pressure to my prospect through their relationship, which is not uncommon in the automotive industry.
The the end result was that my prospect was very confused at what to do. They asked for help.
When I received an email saying that they were considering “Company X” for SEO and Social Media I was taken back for a minute. I never heard about ”Company X” in the past nor have I seen them at a recent trade show.
My prospect asked that I give him my opinion on the company. It’s hard to be objective in this case, but I decided to try.
So, I Googled the name of “Company X” and smiled. There were no social media accounts showing on Google page one or two. There were no press releases promoting “Company X”. There were no blog posts on SEO or Social Media strategies. Their SEO tags on their own websites were incomplete and lacked insight into how the search engines worked. Their website had a Google PageRank of Zero.
So I shared these basic facts with my prospect and revealed that the “King Had No Clothes“.
I am writing about this experience because in the past few days I have heard a number of stories that are very sad. In effect, the “automotive industry” has allowed dealers to be scammed by companies that don’t practice what they preach.
Can a company with 200 followers on Twittter claim to be social media experts? Is setting up a Facebook account qualify someone as a Social Media expert?
In fact today I was told a story from one social media vendor that sold a “bill of goods” to a company to manage their Facebook and Twitter accounts. When my associate asked the company executive “Who is going to respond to any questions on Facebook?” the executive responded, “Why do we need to do that?”.
It looks like some companies are selling “shiny objects’ and not explaining the commitment that social media engagement entails.
The point of this post is that it seems that many companies have become “Social Media” experts in addition to “Internet Marketing” experts overnight.
Before you engage with any company, I urge you to make sure that they practice what they preach. Take the time to see what real experience they have and what Google shows as their track record.
I’m a content SEO advocate and I write about five articles a week on automotive marketing. I practice what I preach. I use SEO for lead generation for my company and spend very little on paid advertising and have more work coming in each week organically. I practice what I preach.
As new media outlets and consultants pop up on the radar, just make sure that they practice what they preach. I welcome competent competition.
I have no idea why this OEM would support a company that had “no clothes”. I can only imagine that they did not know how to inspect their claims.
Just don’t fall into the same trap.
What a great way to finish off the week! Perfect article Brian. Over the past few weeks, I’ve also heard stories of ’social media’ companies shooting out $3,000+ a month proposals to “manage” the social presence of dealerships in which they sell on the premise of being able to work independently of the dealer.
Like your example above, how can you do that when someone wants to communicate with the store? Wants to ask a question? Heck, what if they want to be ’social’ with the store?
Worse yet, going ahead with a strategy of auto-follow- auto-tweet, auto-retweet garbage. A dealership with 20,000 followers? Sorry, you ARE NOT that compelling, engaging or desired. $199 a month lease tweets and $500 off invoice going out 20 times a day means absolutely nothing. Period.
Social media is definitely the flavor of the week right now. And not for the wrong reasons. But definitely BY all the wrong reasons. The prevailing question in the market is still “are you Tweeting?”. Followed by “Are you on Facebook?”
It’s not about being in social media. It’s about creating your own media, brand, awareness and arenas to communicate (start with listening) to your public. Funny enough, that’s where websites were for dealers about 12+ years ago.
And they we sit around and wonder why we continue to be behind other industries. And I’m not even talking about trust…(let’s not go there!)
You’ve stuck the bulls eye with the tip of your arrow again. Can you follow it up and split the first arrow??????
Gary May
IM@CS
p.s. That’s not a challenge! LOL…
Brian,
3 things I would like to say:
1. You took the words right out of my mouth. Guy Kawasaki wrote late last month about the use of such terms as: GURU or EXPERT. Be weary…very weary. I tell people that I am an enthusiastic student of Social Media and SEO/SEM.
2. It’s possible that the OEM had pictures of this Dealer with live animals or something and using it as blackmail. heh. All kidding aside…who knows why? All speculation, hence the extreme hyperbole.
3. Practicing what you preach is right on the money! All Social Media “experts” and SEO/SEM folks should be writing at least once a week, if not everyday!
Again…people another great article from Brian and NO comments yet? What the heck is going on here? Granted it’s only been 3 hours, but come on.
Gary,
Great comment! Barry Brodsky was right about you. You’re analysis is always spot on and succinct! I’ll let Barry know when I speak to him tomorrow.
I definitely agree about the “flavor of the week” aspect.
Social Media is here to stay, but with the Internet rapidly…and I mean RAPIDLY changing around us, it will evolve into Web 3.0: the ability to actually virtually interact with your client in almost a 3D type of environment. Think of these movies without the dystopic messages of human failure and laziness…Matrix, Surrogates, Avatar.
We’re probably about 3-5 years from that point…but according to Moore’s Law of technology ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore’s_law )…I would say less than that.
Great post Brian. If a company wants to jump into social media, they need to be dedicated and sincere about it. There are no silver bullets and I really hope dealers learn that soon.
The problem with anything new is that there are plenty of people that will take advantage of the unsuspecting. On the other hand, social media has been around long enough that a dealership should be able to do a little homework to see who is the real deal and who is not.
Thanks for sharing that story Brian.
I’ve found that a large number of the self-proclaimed “Social Media Experts/Gurus” are acutally just in between jobs.
The rest of the vendors, firms and agencies trying to make headway into this segment don’t realize how tight the automotive vendor community is…if the three horsemen (Pasch, Rucker & Rushing) haven’t heard of you, they will let the community know.
Shame on any company for not doing their research and making their decision based on facts rather than comments made by an OEM.
Although, from a purely competitive standpoint, I can only hope (more) dealers are distracted by the shiny objects.
Thanks Brian,
Unfortunately this is all too common when it comes to SEO and social media, and not just in the car business. So many business owners know nothing about either and anybody that comes along with any kind of knowledge, no matter how mediocre, can come across as an expert.
Taking a broader look at things this is bigger than SEO and Social Media, it’s that way with many different product and service providers to the automotive industry. Too many car dealers jump without looking, but what’s worse than is that too many people know that and like to take advantage.
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by automotiveseo: The Social Media King Had No Clothes http://www.drivingsales.com/blogs/paschconsulting/2009/11/20/the-social-media-king-had-no-clothes/...
Wow, Brian. Sad indeed. I agree that you have to be weary of anyone referring to themselves as a social media expert. There is no such thing with regard to social media. It’s too vast and moves far too quickly for that term, or anything like it.
I tend to think things like this are proliferated due to a combination of shortcuts on dealers parts (i.e. looking not to expend too much time on their part) and those looking for an easy buck.
Sad but true.