Social media is a way to connect with and develop a community around both the brand of the dealership, and the personal brand of the people that make up the dealership. It's important to note that the biggest difference between traditional marketing and social marketing is that traditional marketing is all about marketing of the business, but social marketing is all about marketing the people OF the business.

I want you to keep that in mind, that social media is all about the marketing of people. It's about building relationships and influencing word of mouth. It's about caring for your customers in such a way that they feel the desire to spread your good word. Social media is all about connecting the people of your community, to the people of the dealership. The true power of social media lies in the bond created between dealership employees and the community.

Success in social media boils down to 3 different ideals, and they are:

1. The Development Of Relationships,
2. The Creation Of High Touch, Emotion Based Connections, and
3. Customer Enchantment (think customer service to the Nth degree).

The Development Of Relationships

In a recent study conducted by the Journal Of Consumer Research it was found that consumers don't buy into the idea that they are in "relationships" with sales people, at least not the same kind of relationship they share with family and friends. The study goes on to say that buyers slip into the normal script of trying to behave as if the sellers interactions are real relationships just to be polite, when in fact, it can have a negative effect if the seller tries too hard to build a real relationship, during the sale.

In part three of the Three Ideals For Social Marketing Success we will talk about replacing relationship building tactics, during the selling process, with customer enchantment techniques. After all, the whole idea behind social marketing is to create brand loyalty and influence word-of-mouth and THAT starts at the point of sale.

Building relationships through the genuine use of social networks will go a long way to building a lasting interpersonal relationship with your customers, thus influencing both brand loyalty and influencing word-of-mouth.

Engagement Is A Precursor For Brand Advocacy

In order to create brand advocacy you must first engage your community, in other words, converse with people, if you ever hope to influence word-of-mouth. Big, national brands, have the ability to create communities around the power of their brand alone but local businesses have something even more powerful... the community.

Up until very recently sociologists thought race was the strongest predictor of whether two people will socialize, but in a recent study it was found that where you live and your social class prove to be stronger proponents of lasting friendship. Why is that important? It tells us that because we live in the same geographical area, we have a strong precursor for the development of relationships. So, in order to create relationships with your community, and satisfy the first ideal of social marketing success, it's important to note that you must keep things local. Talk about local news and sporting events, charities that help the local community and any awards that local people may have won. In other words, show that you are part of the community, by engaging the community surrounding local happenings. Consider searching out a social cause, something that the community is passionate about and connect around that, the ideas really are endless.

Connecting On A Personal Level

Be you, not a brick and mortar business. Each one of us are special in our own unique way and if you ever hope to build the kind of relationship with your community that creates brand advocacy then you must be personal. I'm not talking about bringing up sexual orientation, religion, or politics but I am talking about sharing what you and your family did over the weekend or your thoughts on the popular movie that just opened. You can even give your opinions on who will win the big game or the outfit Jessica Alba wore on the red carpet, again, the ideas are endless. Get real, be real, and connect on the same level you do with your real friends.

David Johnson
Social Media Nut
PersuasiveConcepts.com

A lot of people will tell you that there is no way to track the ROI of social media, I'm here to tell you that they're wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong! But why are they wrong? I have a few ideas on that, the biggest of which is that they don't know what they're doing. Another reason could be that they think it's too hard and instead of admitted that, say it's impossible. Other reasons, I'll keep to myself, but I think you get the point!

If you take a look at the traditional formula for ROI you will see that it's rather simple:

ROI = [(return – investment) / investment ] *100

So, for instance, let's say that your investment was the $1,000 you spent on a radio buy, but it netted you a return of $3,000. All you would have to do is plug into the formula, like so:

ROI=[($3,000 -$1,000)/ $1,000]*100
ROI= 200%

Using the same formula we can covert it for use with social media, it would look something like:

SM ROI=[(sm return - sm investment)/ sm investment]*100

First, let's take a look at your social media investment. The investment can include everything from the cost of giveaways and social management tools to employee compensation and any IT related expenses. Yes, your social media investment should be pretty straight forward, it's in the social media return that some work needs to be done.

Before you can ever hope to calculate an ROI you must first decide what your social media return will be. Your return will fall into one of three categories, as the book, The Now Revolution, points out:

• Awareness
• Sales
• Loyalty

Keep in mind that you can, and should, track metrics for all three, it will give you a much better idea of what your actual return might be. So, pick a different return goal for each ROI category listed above.

Once you have the goal (your return) decided upon, now it's time to assign a metric to it. How will you track your return? What do you have, or are going to put in place to alert you when your goal is reached? For instance, if your goal is to drive more traffic to your website then it's just a matter of looking at your website analytics for social network referrers.

Using the example of website traffic, now it's time to decide what each of those are worth to you. That is, how much is each visit worth? To figure that out, take a look at the total number of sales income you had the previous 6 months from your social traffic (you can try fewer months but 6 will give you a more accurate number) and divide it by the total number of unique social media traffic. That number will help you to establish how much each visit to your website is. I would urge you though, that if you are using website visits as a goal, then you should reevaluate the worth of social visits about every 3 months or so because as you start to use social media the right way, you will notice that leads from your social networks will close higher and higher, thus increasing the worth of a social visit.

$175,000 (Total Sales) / 1,500 (Traffic) = $117 Each unique visit

Now that you have a worth associated with your return, it's just a matter of plugging it back into the social media ROI formula to figure out what your rate of return is.

Social Media ROI Example

First, let's chose a return goal from each category:

• Awareness - For this example our awareness goal will be to increase the number of mentions that are being said about us online, using a reputation management package such as SocialMention.com (free) or BrandsEye.com & UberVu.com(not).
  
  We've decided, through research, that a favorable social mention is worth around $50. While we understand that a blog post (and the creators reach) is worth more than a Tweet, we are only figuring averages here and a little on the low side.
   
• Sales- Our sales goal is pretty straight forward and if you are a car dealerships it's when you sell a car, part or service. In fact, we know the exact return here so there is no need to figure out what each will be worth.
  
  Even the metrics we need to track it are already in place, what business doesn't know when they make a sale?How do we know when a sale is a social media sales? Simple, we ask, 100% of the time. No exception. If it's from a lead on the website, we make sure that each lead is sourced correctly so that we can pinpoint which leads sold and where they came from.
   
• Loyalty - Our loyalty goal will be to increase the number of people that return to buy from us again and again. We do this by tracking a lifetime value impact and can attribute this to social media because we strive to connect all of our customer with our social initiative, that way we can build positive relationships with them that go beyond the sale. To figure out a return, we will take the average lifetime value before we started using social media and subtract if from the post social media figure. We can figure it even further by breaking it down per month, which will help us to figure out our ROI below. (While I'm not using it in this example, the Net Promoter Score is a great way to gauge your customers loyalty)

Now that we have goals (return) for each category, it's time to plug the variables into the social media ROI formula. Before we do that though, it's important to figure out how we are going to figure out how our total investment is going to be split up, among the three ROI categories. Once you do that, let's take out the calculator and figure this thing out!

The Numbers Below Are Monthly Numbers

• Awareness Social Media ROI = [($5,000 - $2,250)/$2,250]*100
  Awareness Social Media ROI = 122%
   
• Sales Social Media ROI = [($25,000 - $5,250)/$5,250]*100
  Sales Social Media ROI = 376%
   
• Loyalty Social Media ROI = [($15,000 - $3,980)/$3,980]*100
  Loyalty Social Media ROI = 277%

Now you can put them all together, if you'd like:

Total Social Media ROI = [($45,000 - $11,480)/$11,480]*100
Total Social Media ROI = 292%

So there you have it, tracking social media ROI! There are others ways that this can be accomplished and other things to consider when tracking social media, so this is just one tool you should be using when deciding if what you're doing with social is giving you the results you have been looking for. Please keep in mind that the ROI ratio I've shown you here is a top level metric, what that means is that it will give you the bottom line but won't show you were you are going wrong, or where you are going right, but that's for another blog post.

David Johnson

Social Media Strategist
Upcoming Workshops
PersuasiveConcepts.com

That's what it's all about isn't it? To get people to talk about and recommend you to others? So how are you doing? All this work you've been doing with social media and building community, is it working? That is, are you developing the kinds of relationships with people that influences them to want to tell others about you?

No, I'm not talking about having thousands of "likes" on Facebook or thousands of "followers" on Twitter, those don't help you gauge the effectiveness of your campaigns above and beyond your ability to attract people, I'm talking about your ability to influence positive word-of-mouth. And yes, there is a difference between attracting people and influencing them to talk about and refer others to you. Where do you stand on that? I know that you can probably name a few customers, or a few people that are connected with you on Facebook, that would probably recommend you, but what about the overall feelings of your community towards you... would they recommend you to their friends and family?

I know that's a tough question to answer and one even harder to quantify but what if there was an easy to understand metric that you could use to gauge the effectiveness of your relationship marketing campaigns?

Enter the Net Promoter Score

The Net Promoter Score is a customer loyalty metric developed by Fred Reicheld, which was introduced in 2003 in his Harvard Business Review Article, The One Number You Need To Grow. From NetPromoter.com

NPS is based on the fundamental perspective that every company's customers can be divided into three categories: Promoters, Passives, and Detractors. By asking one simple question — How likely is it that you would recommend [Company X] to a friend or colleague? — you can track these groups and get a clear measure of your company's performance through its customers' eyes. Customers respond on a 0-to-10 point rating scale and are categorized as follows:

• Promoters (score 9-10) are loyal enthusiasts who will keep buying and refer others, fueling growth.
• Passives (score 7-8) are satisfied but unenthusiastic customers who are vulnerable to competitive offerings.
• Detractors (score 0-6) are unhappy customers who can damage your brand and impede growth through negative word-of-mouth.

To calculate your company's Net Promoter Score (NPS), take the percentage of customers who are Promoters and subtract the percentage who are Detractors.

While there is no one metric that you can use, that will tell you everything there is to know about how influential you are over your online community, the Net Promoter Score gives you a great generalization of how things are going.

Getting The Score

With the onset of Facebook questions it's easier than ever to poll your Facebook Page. Just ask the question, "How likely is it that you would recommend [Company X] to a friend or colleague?" From there just enter the available answers from 0 to 10 and viola! To figure out what your Net Promoter Score is, just take the percentage of people that answered 9 to 10 (Promoters) and subtract the percentage of people that answered 0 to 6 (Detractors).

Example: 60% Promoters - 25% Detractors = +35% NPS

The Net Promoter Score ranges from -100% to +100% and of course the higher the better. In simple terms the number represents a business's efficiency at creating promoters and detractors. Best case, a business is converting 100% of its customers into promoters, worst case 100% into detractors, where do you stand?

From NetPromoter.com

Companies with the most efficient growth engines operate at NPS efficiency ratings of 50 to 80%. But the average firm sputters along at an NPS efficiency of only 5 to 10%. In other words, Promoters barely outnumber Detractors. Many firms — and some entire industries — have negative Net Promoter Scores, which means that they are creating more Detractors than Promoters day in and day out. These low scores explain why so many companies can't deliver profitable, sustainable growth, no matter how aggressively they spend to acquire new business.

While the Net Promoter Score wasn't initially used to gauge your influence over your online community, and your ability to generate word-of-mouth, it's a great metric to use and a fairly easy one to figure. Keep in mind that if you run this one-sentence-survey too often you will wind up skewing your numbers, instead, run it once a quarter to gauge your promoter growth.

David Johnson
Social Media Workshop

Word-of-mouth is gold and social media is the vessel we use to promote it, but how exactly is it accomplished? As businesses we are always looking for ways to lower the cost of acquiring new customers. It's simple economics, the lower the acquisition cost the more sales (and money) we make...simple right? Not exactly, as with most things it's easier said than done but if you make it part of your daily customer/employee interaction to give your customers something positive to talk about you go a long way to influencing a higher rate of word-of-mouth, let's call it your ROE or Return On Experience.

In this post I'm going to throw out some radical ideas. Radical ideas that, at first, you will discount as being just that, radical. Then these ideas will start to work on you as you mull them over in your mind, more than likely you will talk with your spouse about them or maybe a co-worker asking yourself and them what if? What if you did try what I'm about to suggest, what would happen? Would it produce rapid word-of-mouth, would it reduce your cost per customer, would it create you more sales? The answer to all of those questions, of course, is yes but I understand that there will be a certain amount of skepticism involved but as you will soon find out, the logic is iron clad.

Customer Experience

I've brought this up before but I thought it important enough to bring it up here again and that is: it's the difference between what people expect and the actual level of customer service received that will dictate whether or not a person will talk about how their business with you went. Of course it goes without saying that if you fail to meet those expectations the word-of-mouth will be negative but if you exceed them, well ...all sorts of magical things start to happen, such as repeat and referral business!

The idea is to go so above and beyond what the customer expects that you earn massive amounts of exposure on the level of Return on Experience (ROE) you receive from shocking your customers with your level of customer service. In fact, I don't want you to think about it as "customer service" at all, instead think of it as:

Customer Enchantment

It might just be me but when I think of the term customer service I think about doing all the things that I'm supposed to do such as be helpful and friendly but when I think in terms of customer enchantment I think on a much, MUCH grander scale. In other words I don't want you to think about how you can give good customer service, I want you to think in terms of "how can I enchant my customers?"

Enchantment: (en·chant·ment ) Captivation: a feeling of great liking for something wonderful and unusual.

Before I get into some ideas of what I mean I feel it's important to remind you about the story of the boy and the starfish. You know the one, the one where there are thousands of starfish beached upon the sands where a little boy, one-by-one, is throwing the starfish back into the water. When asked why he's even bothering when there are too many to make a difference, the little boy replied after throwing a starfish back in the water, "It mattered to that one."

I bring up that story because I understand that what I'm about to propose would be impossible to do with every customer, of course you wouldn't want to do what I'm about to propose with every customer anyway because then it would become expected and the whole idea is to go beyond what is expected. Another thing to keep in mind is that you are trying to work your way into your customers social graph (both online and off), or at least become a conversation within it. By influencing your customers to say positive things about you, you in effect create customer that create other customers, thus reducing your customer acquisition cost theoretically in half.

Scenario #1 Let's say you have a customer come in to your dealership to purchase a vehicle for his daughters 16th birthday. He of course is excited but you decide to take things to the next level by getting the car wrapped for him, complete with a big bow on top. But you don't stop there because you really want to enchant your customer so you then give to his daughter a year's worth of free oil changes, 5 complete details and a $150 gas card.

Scenario #2 A customer drops off her car for an oil change and you learn that she is due to give birth to a baby boy in two weeks so you decide to go shopping for her. You buy her some baby related items, maybe a diaper bag and diapers, maybe some baby clothes or baby blankets. While talking with her you learn that she is in need of a car seat or maybe even a stroller so you picked one of those up for her as well and put them in her car for when she comes back to pick it up.

Scenario #3 You learn that one of your customers has had a death in the family so you send a big bunch of flowers to their house, along with a gift certificate for a free house cleaning and yard maintenance with a hand written card that says, "It's always tough losing a loved one and we understand that there are always too many things to worry about during times like these. Attached you will find a gift certificate for free house cleaning and yard maintenance, two less things that you have to worry about. We truly are sorry for your loss."

Do you get what I mean when I say customer enchantment? I sure hope so because by doing things such as the three scenarios above you go a long way to influencing word-of-mouth. Think about what will happen once the word gets out about the things you are doing for your customers and it will get out. In fact your customers will find a way to bring up the amazing things you did both in person and all over Facebook (and Twitter, MySpace, and others) any and every chance they get. They will happily do this because you made a difference in their lives and did something they would NEVER have expected. You now have a customer and a word-of-mouth generating machine for life.

Another Crazy idea

What if you empowered your employees to do this sort of thing. Maybe create an enchantment budget, think of it as advertisement if you have to but by allowing your employees to get creative with customer enchantment and then giving them the means by which to do so you are creating an environment that creates rampant word-of-mouth.

What ideas do you have when it comes to creating customer enchantment, how can you increase your ROE?

That all elusive holy grail of marketing, word-of-mouth, is right up there with Big Foot and the Loch Ness Monster in that we hear reports that their real, but most of us have our doubts. The biggest reason why this is, is because most businesses fail to plan for it. Like anything else, if it's worth doing its worth planning for, below I will show you 5 powerful ways to get your customers to talk about you, in their online social graph.

Up, Up And Away - Going Way Beyond

One of the best ways to get people talking is to give them more than they expect. I know that can come across as 101 but it's the basis of word-of-mouth, let's face it if you don't give your customers something to talk about, they won't.

Each one of us, when we make a purchase, expect a certain level of customer service but it's the difference between what's expected and the actual level of customer service received that will influence your customers to want to talk about you. Of course that can be a double edged sword in that if you fail to meet those expectations the word-of-mouth received will be negative. But, if you take a look at all of your customer touch points and ensure that each one over delivers you will go a long way to producing positive word of mouth. Never let a moment to over deliver pass you by if you want to enchant your customers into talking about you.

Sam Walton said it best when he said, "The goal of a company is to have customer service that is not just the best but legendary."

Achieve legendary status in the customer service department and you'll be a legend in the ROI department.

Don't Go Faceless - Show Your Personality

What is the personality of you dealership or other business? That is, who are the people that make it up? What are their stories and what makes them unique? Answer those questions and make sure to put it out there for people to see. Have employees create videos about why they work there, let them tell their story and the story of the dealership. It's okay to get personal because that's what you want, you want their personality to shine.

The idea is to create a voice that people can relate to, that people want to be part of. Think of personality as a magnet, what kind of people do you want to attract?

Correcting Mistakes - Listening To What They Are Saying

It's okay to make mistakes, we all do and nobody is under the illusions that you are going to be perfect, it's just not in our DNA, things will always crop up! Just remember that it's in how you fix those mistakes that will differentiate you from the competition and get people talking.

The first rule of thumb is to not let the negative stuff people may say about you get you down, look at it as a way to improve, as a way to stand out and better meet your customers needs. Remember, people won't always come to you and let you know what they think about your customer service but you better believe they are out there talking about it, which is why it's so important that you set up a social mention listening station. Don't stop there, make sure that you take to heart what other are saying and make a change, integrate the negatives, turn them into positives and make them part of your day to day processes to ensure that it doesn't happen again (The Most Powerful part of Social Media that You're NOT Using).

Making Connections - Staying Connected

Connect with your customers online, go to where they are and get to know them. By building relationships that go beyond the transaction you are better able to influence people to talk about you and your dealership. Relationships, by their very nature, are influential and working to become part of your customers social graph will go a long ways to creating word-of-mouth, increasing repeat business and boosting the number of referrals you receive.

Give, Give, Give - Working Philanthropy Into The Budget

Every business should be doing this. As part of your monthly budget you should include charitable donations, keep in mind that not all charity means that you have to donate money. What do you think would happen to word-of-mouth if once a month employees got together and mowed grass for the elderly, picked up trash on the highway or covered over some graffiti? That's right, it would go through the roof!

Plan For Word-Of-Mouth

Include it as part of your strategy, plan for it, otherwise word-of-mouth will continue to allude you and you will never find your way into your customers social graph. Take a look at your processes and integrate the information in this post into them. Make sure that it's the goal of EVERY employee to enchant your customers by creating exceptional customer service, developing their personality, correcting mistakes, connecting with their customers online and being philanthropic. Word-of-mouth isn't as elusive as you think, as long as you know how to coax it out... are you ready to start coaxing?

David Johnson
Social Media Strategist
PersuasiveConcepts.com

Before I get into what this blog is about I think it might be better to tell you what this blog isn't. First, I won't be discussing why you should be blogging, I'll take the fact that you are reading this as a sign that you already know you should. Second, it won't be a technical how -to-manual of setting up and maintaining blogging software. In this post I will take it for granted that you have already decided to blog, and that you already have blogging software, whether it's hosted or self-hosted. Now that we have gotten that covered let's get right into the meat of this post.

It's important to note that when I refer to establishing a corporate blog, I am referring to blog that is written by multiple people within the business, not just one person whose job it is. Always remember, a business that blogs together, thrives together (more tongue-in-cheek but you get the point!).

Step One - Establishing A Goal

What is going to be the goal of your blog? I know that your end goal is going to be to generate leads but how will you accomplish that? Are you going to use it as a pass through to another site, such as a dealerships retail site or are you going to use it to generate leads right on the blog? Here are a few questions to ask yourself when establishing the goals of your blog:

• Are you trying to create brand awareness?
• Are you trying to build an email list?
• Are you trying to increase the conversion rate of your website (thing about a dealerships retail site) by creating trust and influence through the creation of valuable content?
• Do you want to connect with other leaders in your market, in hopes that they will refer others to you?
• Do you want to spread the corporate culture so that your readers can get to know you know you on a more personal level?

Here are a few more goals to keep in mind, while you're establishing them:

• How many posts per month do you want published? Once a day is best, but that's not always feasible, at a bare minimum if you can publish 2 or 3 a week you are doing good.
• Which departments will be included? I'd prefer all, but you know your business better than I.
• Who will be in charge of editing and publishing the posts? It's good to have one person that collects, formats and edits all posts.
• How will leads be handled? Who will leads go to, will it go to the blog author or to a single person (or persons)?
• Who's job is it to respond to comments? Yes, you must reply to EVERYBODY that comments on a post, even if it's a thank you. Will it be the blog author or somebody else?

You could even drill down your goals further and set traffic goals, click-throughs to your website or even conversion rate (readers vs. the number of people that perform an action such as submit a lead or sign up for your newsletter). Always remember that when you set goals to make them specific, realistic and timely.

Step 2 - Develop A Set of Keywords

Traffic is important. Wow, that was an understatement, but is the reason for step number 2. In order to get the kind of traffic that will equal sales (buying cars, service, or parts if you're a dealership) you must write for the audience that you are seeking. In order to do that look no further than the questions that your customers ask of you and take a close look at what interests them. Once you do that take a look at Google's Keyword Tool, it will tell you how many people are searching for a specific keyword, it will even let you know what the competition level is on specific words.

Step 3 - Map Out Specific Topics and Create An Editorial Calendar

Now that you have established a set of keywords, both long and short it's time to create topics out of them. For instance if you found that "auto repair in Denver" had over 4,000 searches per month (it does I looked) then you might consider writing a blog post titled something like, "5 Things You Need To Consider BEFORE Searching for Auto Repair in Denver."

Make your list of post topics as long as possible before you start writing, always adding to it so that you never run out of things to write about, thinking about things to write about, here are a few places you can go to find topics:

• Your Customers, just ask them what interests them.
• Twitter Search.
• Yahoo Answers.
• Industry Magazines.
• Your own life experiences, don't be ALL professional write about what is going on in the lives of employees.
• What other places can you think of?

After you have your list of topics it's time to put a date to them and schedule when each topic will be posted, this will serve as your editorial calendar.

Step 4 - Pick Blog Authors

Now that you have an editorial calendar along with a list of topics it's time to choose who is the best to write them. Using the example post title above, and if you're a dealership or an auto repair shop, who would be best suited to write it? A service adviser maybe? How about the service manager or even a service tech? On your editorial calendar put the name of the person writing the post next to each topic.

Step 5 - Set Writing Guidelines and Stick To Your Editorial Calendar

At the onset its import to put certain writing guidelines in place such as length. While it's hard to say how long a post should be, because if you ask me I will say as long as it needs to be to get the point across I will say that you should probably keep your posts to a 300 word minimum. As always, spelling and grammar is important and as I mentioned above its good to have one person in charge, don't worry grammar doesn't have to be college English level good but it should be well written. Along with length also talk font type and size, it's important that the formatting remain consistent. A few other things to think about.

• Whenever possible use bullets, they are easy to read and is less intimidating than long paragraphs.
• Use short paragraphs.
• It's okay to use links to outside content, make sure that the content linked to isn't scandalous in anyway.
• Use powerful headlines that will make people want to read the rest.
• While you do want to use your keywords, don't go overboard with them.
• Use images to spruce up the look of the post.
• Use sub headlines whenever possible.
• Let everybody know that plagiarizing is NOT acceptable in any way, shape or form.
• No profanity of any kind.
• What other criteria can you think of, use the comment section below.

Following this simple 5 step process you can have a corporate blog up and running in no time that will create word-of-mouth, increase repeat customers and generate you more traffic than you ever thought possible. Your blog is the center to your social media strategy and is a very important part of any online marketing strategy.

What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

The rose, the symbol of love, beauty and romance can teach us a thing or five about social media. I bet you never looked at a rose and thought, wow rose that's deep. But in this post I am going to share with you five insights that the rose has taught me about social media, what can you add?

Influence Word-of-Mouth, BE The Reason Why

In order to flourish, reproduce and keep its genetic code alive the rose must rely on others, such as the bumblebee, to help with fertilization. In fact the rose, like most other flowers, have only one purpose -- to reproduce the plant. In other words, the only reason the rose exists in the first place is to attract attention, which is does through the production of pollen, its sweet smell and beautiful color.

What does that teach you about social media? As an example think of your company blog, its only in existence to attract people, maybe it doesn't smell all that great but it has other things going for it, like valuable content, specific keywords and calls to action. If done correctly others will link to it and spread what you share around (think bumblebee) so that others will become influenced by it and either keep sharing or make a purchase from you.

Bring Forth Great Discoveries, BE A Thought Leader

Columbus’ crew picked a rose branch out of the ocean on October 11, 1492. This signaled the presence of land. The very next day, Columbus discovered America.

Be a thought leader. Showcase your expertise and professionalism by bringing ideas to the market that others don't. By proving you're the expert and always staying ahead of your competition you go a long way to developing a strong personal brand. And of course a strong personal brand goes a long way to creating inbound leads.

Protect Yourself Online, Manage Your Reputation

Mythology says that roses grew thorns when Cupid accidentally shot an arrow into a rose garden.

People say things, sometimes mean things online, about their business with you, about how they were treated or about the deal they got, are you listening? I'm not saying that you should grow thorns and fight back but you should do something about it, don't just sit around acting like it isn't happening. Do what it takes to monitor what is being said and take the steps necessary to correct it and make sure that processes are put into place to ensure that it doesn't happen again. Keep in mind that what is being said, especially the bad, is a great way to make your customer experiences even better!

Be Likable

In a recent survey it was found that the rose is the favorite flower of 85% of the Americans. Be like the rose, be likable.

Let people get to know you so that they can get to liking you. The main different between traditional marketing and social marketing is that traditional marketing is all about marketing the business while social marketing is all about marketing the people OF the business.

Without showing your personality and letting people know you, then you aren't utilizing social media the way it was meant to be. Don't be all business, get a little personal and let people know the real you.

Stay Relevant

The world's oldest living rose is believed to be 1,000 years old and it grows on the wall of the Cathedral of Hildesheim in Germany. Think about that a moment, over a 1,000 years old... a rose! That means generation after generation of people had to find that rose plant relevant enough to just let it grow, century after century.

The technology behind social media is always changing, in fact its only constant is the fact that it changes! Be sure that you stay up to date with what your customers want, don't let their desires or the technology pass you by. The auto industry is a notoriously late adopter of any new technology, they like to take the wait and see approach and while that isn't always a bad thing take a close look at what's going on and decide if it costs more to do nothing that it does to do something. Be like the rose, always stay relevant no matter what happens around you.

David Johnson
Digital Marketing Strategist
PersuasiveConcepts.com

With the increasing number of ways that both social networks and email providers are working to help their users receive less noise, it's time that you stop producing so much of it. Take a look at your content, whether it's a status update on Facebook or an email newsletter it's important to note that just because you put it out there doesn't mean people will want to consume it. It may be time to quiet the noise and think really hard about the kind of content that you are putting out there.

With the onset of Gmails' Smart Folders that strip out all bulk email messages and Facebooks' EdgeRank algorithm that greatly reduces the amount of status updates it's users are subjected to, it's more important than ever to focus on quality engagement over "like" or email acquisition.

We've all heard it before, "think before you speak," the same could be said this way:

• "Think before you tweet."
• "Think before you press send."
• "Think before you click share."

The important word is think, think like the people you are targeting, ask yourself these three questions:

1. What reaction am I trying to create? (will people unsubscribe or click unlike)
2. What action do I want people to take? (Blog comment, click through, like...etc)
3. Do people really care about this? (is it only interesting to me, or will others find it interesting as well)

What noise are you producing now that isn't necessary, that people aren't engaging with and isn't producing the desired result? The answer to that question will let you know what you need to eliminate...and the sooner the better.

What are your thoughts?

David Johnson
Digital Marketing Strategist
PersuasiveConcepts.com

Creating an opt-in email list is as foreign to the auto industry as driving on the left side of the road but there is a place for it and in this post I'm going to share with you both the why and the how. On your dealer site the end goal is to turn surfers into leads, to get some sort of contact information whether it be an email address, a phone number or both. But, as we all know it's a fairly small percentage of people that do just that and the reason is simple... you. Now, don't take that personally, by you I mean the car business, car salespeople in particular and because of that the general public doesn't have a high level of trust for our kind (yes, I'm one the you). Of course the reasons are much deeper than just the trust level involved... but that's for another post.

There are a number of reasons why you should work to capture email addresses, outside of collecting for leads that is, and while there are more than we are going to talk about here I want to point out a few of the important ones.

It's Pure Permission Marketing

Permission marketing, a term coined by Seth Godin, is when a prospective client has given you permission to market to them. In other words, because they have opted-in to your email list to receive your newsletter or to download a whitepaper or ebook or even an auto responder series (more on all of these later) they have given you permission to send them more information. The undesirable inverse of permission marketing is interruption marketing, marketing in which your prospects are interrupted from what they are already doing to hear your marketing message, just think TV commercials. By giving people valid (and desirable) reasons for them to give you their email address you are better able to nurture your leads, build trust, and convert them into buyers (more on lead nurturing later).

It Builds Familiarity

If done correctly that is. I'm always remind of the scene in the movie Fight Club when I explain familiarity, the part when Edward Nortins character talks about being a single serving friend, yeah don't be one! What I mean by that is it takes more than visiting with somebody once, whether it's in person or on the web, if you plan on creating any semblance of a relationship with them.

By creating a newsletter... you know before I finish that thought I feel that it's important to mention that, just as on social networks, to keep in mind that the less you pitch the more you sell. The reason I say that is because when you are trying to build any kind of email list it's important to keep attrition rate in mind and pay particular attention to how many people are unsubscribing and why their doing it. You will notice that if you spend more time doing email blasts than you do lead (or email) nurturing your attrition rate will increase, and that's a bad thing.

So, by creating a newsletter that engages your readers in such a way that they want to hear more from you, you are better able to build relationships and create influence through increased familiarity. Remember, don't be a single serving friend.

It Builds Authority

Much like blogging creates authority, so does maintaining an email list as long as you're not just maintaining it but actively engaging with your subscribers. In society we hold those that are authoritative in high regard because we perceive those with authority to have high levels of knowledge and wisdom. By showcasing, through well written, helpful articles that you are the authority then when the time comes for your subscribers to make a decision to buy you will be one step closer to earning their business.

It Builds Top of Mind

We all know that if you want to be remembered then you have to stay in front of your prospect until they decide that they want to buy or you convince them too, whichever comes first. By sending out periodic newsletters you position yourself to become top of mind, always remember the less you pitch the more you sell.

Managing an Email List

There are a ton of software-as-service companies available that will help you manage your email list a quick Google search will net you plenty of reviews on any one of them, below find three that I recommend.

• Mail Chimp - I use Mail Chimp and they are very easy to use, powerful and cost effective. They even have a forever free option where you can have up to 2000 emails addresses and send out 6000 emails per month.
• Aweber - Aweber has a ton of features but is a little more advanced than MailChimp. That can be good or bad, just depends on your level knowledge of such things.
• Constant Contact - Constant Contact has been around for a long time, since 1996 and another great option for email list needs.

Any of the above will give you any kind of support you need with training videos and support forums that will be able to answer any of your questions. All three are as easy as naming your list, defining what fields you want in your sign-up form and then embedding (copy and paste) a bit of code where you want it to show up.

Note: Check with your CRM provider, a few of them have this type of functionality already built it.

Growing Your List

Again, there are many ways that you can grow your email list, below are but a few.

Maintaining A Newsletter

There are a few companies out there, dedicated to the auto industry, that will create and send out a monthly newsletter on your behalf, they can be pricey but can all be done in-house if you have the bandwidth to get it done. Maintaining a newsletter can be an attractive reason for people to want to opt-in to receive it.

In your newsletter make sure to include employee spotlights that link to both video and images so that your readers get a better feeling for who the people of the dealership really are. Also, include articles for car care and DIY maintenances such as oil changes, air filter installation and wiper blade replacement. You can even include articles on credit repair, the value of service contracts and what the heck gap insurance is. The idea is to become the expert by giving actionable advice that will actually help your subscribers while at the same time letting them to get to know you and other dealership personnel on a more personal basis.

eBook Creation

By creating an eBook you once again have a vessel with which to create authority, but if used correctly it's great bait to capture email addresses as well. I think that by giving you a few title examples you will get a better idea of what I mean:

• 10 Things You Must Know About Reconditioning Before You Buy Used
• 5 Ways To Increase The Value Of Your Car At Trade In Time
• Don't Buy ANY Finance Products Before Reading This
• 7 Ways NOT To Get Ripped Off When Buying A Vehicle

I know what you're thinking, I can't write and I have no desire to write a 10-15 page eBook! Don't worry, you don't have to, in fact you can do a quick Google search and find ghostwriters at just about any price range, go ahead try it.

Auto Responder Series

Sounds more complicated than it is, but setting up an auto responder series is very easy and once you set it you can forget all about it as it does its thing. Just use one of the eBook title ideas above (or your own) and create an auto responder series out of it, all that means is break it down into 5-10 different email that will be sent out over a predefined period of time.

As an example let's say that you wanted to create a course titled 5 Ways To Increase The Value Of Your Car At Trade In Time, you would set up your email course like this:

• Email 1 - Goes out immediately after sign up
• Email 2 - Goes out 1 days after sign up
• Email 3 - Goes out 2 days after sign up
• Email 4 - Goes out 3 days after sign up
• Email 5 - Goes out 4 days after sign up

A series like this is very easy to set up and each of the aforementioned email list companies makes this dead simple to do and once it's done, it's done. Imagine if you put a sign up form for a series like this on your trade in page, what would happen? Also, each of the emails should have a small call to action such as value your trade here (with a link to your trade in form), if you have any questions contact our used-car manager here (again put in a link), or any number of things as long as it's not a hard call to action and it comes after the content, not before. You don't want to people thinking that the only reason you are giving them great info is to get their email address to market to them, even if that is what you are doing!

Put Sign-Up Forms Everywhere

You can put sign-up forms on your website, blog, Facebook Page, Twitter Profile and any other number of places, be creative and get it in front of as many people as possible... without being pushy of course.

Lead Nurturing

Lead nurturing, I used the term a few times in this post and I thought it about time I dig into exactly what I mean by it. Lead nurturing is the process of building relationships by creating an informative dialogue that helps prospects that are not yes sales-ready.

I would encourage you to even create your CRM auto responder series in such a way as to nurture your leads instead of just bombarding them with email after email saying that you can't get a hold of them. There is evidence that suggests that prospects who were nurtured buy more, require less discounting and have a much shorter sales cycle than one who was bombarded with call attempts and get a hold of me emails.

Forester Research did a study about lead nurturing and found out that companies that excel in lead nurturing:

• Decreased the percentage of leads that are ignored by sales from 25-80%
• Increased win rates on generated leads by 7% points (out of 100 leads, that's 7 more sales!)
• Increase the number of sales reps that make quota, with a slower ramp up time for new recruits.

I know what you're thinking, why lead nurturing ? What's in it for me? In a study done by Rain Today they found that right off the bat 25% of leads are disqualified for whatever reason, another 25% is ready to buy and a whopping 50% isn't ready to talk to a sales person. In a nutshell lead nurturing is about building relations and creating dialogue with the 50% that aren't ready.

I want you to keep in mind that I don't want you to think of only leads in the general sense but also the email addresses that you collect from other places than just you dealer website. While the study by Rain Today mentioned that 50% of leads that are market-generated aren't ready to buy, closer to 100% of the people that sign up for your newsletter, eBook, or auto responder aren't ready, so take the time to build a dialogue and create relationships, you will reap the benefit sooner than you think.

2010 brought with it main stream social media for the auto industry, some embraced it and ran with it while others (most) knocked their head against the wall wondering what they were doing wrong. 2010 was more or less a trial, a yearlong test in the field of relationship marketing, what did you learn from it? If you're like a lot of dealers you pushed social media to the side as a failed experiment and went back to what worked, more or less.

Social media has evolved and will continue to evolve, its only constant is change and if you take the time to learn it before you tackle it then you will be behind the moment you start. But, if you harness the human element of social media and stop trying so hard to learn the ever evolving tools, then you are well on your way to building a true social business, one that even the oldest school car dealer can get behind, grasp and run with.

In the beginning social media was seen as an extension of traditional advertising, as a way to get your marketing message heard by even more people, but that quickly fizzled out as you learned that people considered what you were doing as spam and only served to hurt your dealerships reputation. As time progressed you learned that the less you pitch, the more you sell. You learned that in order to build a social following that you needed to engage your online community in other ways, besides just your inventory.

Building A Purpose-Driven Community

Building an online community around the dealerships brand will often lead to failure, as participation is mainly driven by advertising dollars and costly promotions. I'm not taking anything away from this type of "community marketing" because it's often the best way to get things moving along in the right direction, but what happens if you stop doing promotions ? That's right, participation stops as well.

By anchoring your social initiatives in something larger than your brand, a higher calling, you drive community participation through passion. By building a purpose-driven community you create a common bonding point between the dealership and it's community, this is the surest way for community growth, participation, and an increase in ROI (return on influence).

The appeal to a higher calling builds organic growth that unites employees and communities behind a common cause that's larger than both the dealership and its community members. The higher calling can be a shared passion, a way of life or a cause, as long as it's something that people can rally behind and feel like their part of.

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.

Finding Your Purpose

It's important when finding a purpose that it's aligned with who or what the dealership is. It's important that the cause be the focus and that community members don't start to think that the only reason you are pushing that specific cause, way or life or passion is because you are trying to earn more business. While that is most certainly the case, don't approach it with that thought in mind. Instead just give, promote and grow the higher calling. I know that sounds counterintuitive, especially since marketing is all about pushing the dealerships agenda but if you spend your resources pushing fighting hunger, as an example, then you create a bonding point between the dealership and the community. It's that bonding point that will spur organic growth and create good will.

Going forward, 2011 will see the rise of the human business and dealerships will be wise to approach social media this way or they run the risk of going by the way of the dinosaur. We are in the midst of a relationship economy and more and more people are putting emphasis on what others are saying, what others are thinking and what businesses are part of. Keep in mind that there is more to a dealership than the brick and mortar building, the lot, and the inventory, there are also people, people that make up the business and its the connection between those people and the community that will drive the dealership to new heights in the new year.

Starting today it's time to redeveloped the core message of your dealership. Make it something community oriented, something that people can rally behind and become part of, something bigger and more grand than all of those involved, an ideal that goes beyond selling cars, beyond selling service and F&I products and becomes part of what people are passionate about.

David Johnson is the Digital Marketing Strategist for Next Generation Dealer Services and authot of PersuasiceConcepts.com