Leave it to Chrysler to have another social media flare up.  After enlisting mommy bloggers to write about occupying children while road tripping, Chrysler’s efforts resulted in a botched attempt at a social media contest.  But where did they go wrong?  Let’s take a look at four key areas to consider when putting together a social media contest and what we can learn from Chrysler’s mistakes:

Purpose

What is the purpose of your contest?  Is it to capture leads, drive traffic, or make connections?  There are dozens of reasons you might want to have a contest, but be sure the calls to action are sufficient.  Whatever their original goals were, Chrysler’s “click-for-attention-for-an-iPad-for-a-trip” premise, as stated by Jalopnik, fell short on the social media scale.  Define the purpose of your contest and ensure the calls to action are appropriate and effective.

Rules

For Heaven’s sake, understand your own contest rules!  The confusion created by the lack of knowledge on their own contest forced Chrysler to disqualify one of their contestants for participating outside of the box.  Know your rules or have confidence that the company you are enlisting to drive the contest understands the implications and potential loopholes. 

Contestants

This is one domain that Chrysler had a good jump on.  Contrary to Jalopnik’s oversimplified description of mommy bloggers as any mother with an Internet connection, mommy bloggers are over 50% more likely to have graduated college or received a post-graduate degree compared to their non-blogging counterparts.  Selecting this type of audience that holds a majority of the purchase power in many families and “wields more influence than Twitter” was a good move.  Know the audience you want to target and how effectively your contestants can disseminate your message to them. 

Follow Through

It’s not enough to organize a contest, push play, and let it ride.  Even if you have another company organizing the effort for you, you must maintain a level of interaction or know-how throughout the contest.  Bottom line:  you can’t have people calling your contestants skanks.  Following up and getting involved in the process will help you participate in your brand, manage outbursts, and step in or even block inappropriate content when necessary.  After all, it’s your name on the line.

Social Media contests are awesome and highly useful in engaging your community, but simply jumping into it can be detrimental to its operation and effectiveness.  Make sure you have a strategy that touches on each of these areas and that your brand is prepared for the contest launch as well as the follow through.

Leave it to Chrysler to have another social media flare up.  After enlisting mommy bloggers to write about occupying children while road tripping, Chrysler’s efforts resulted in a botched attempt at a social media contest.  But where did they go wrong?  Let’s take a look at four key areas to consider when putting together a social media contest and what we can learn from Chrysler’s mistakes:

Purpose

What is the purpose of your contest?  Is it to capture leads, drive traffic, or make connections?  There are dozens of reasons you might want to have a contest, but be sure the calls to action are sufficient.  Whatever their original goals were, Chrysler’s “click-for-attention-for-an-iPad-for-a-trip” premise, as stated by Jalopnik, fell short on the social media scale.  Define the purpose of your contest and ensure the calls to action are appropriate and effective.

Rules

For Heaven’s sake, understand your own contest rules!  The confusion created by the lack of knowledge on their own contest forced Chrysler to disqualify one of their contestants for participating outside of the box.  Know your rules or have confidence that the company you are enlisting to drive the contest understands the implications and potential loopholes. 

Contestants

This is one domain that Chrysler had a good jump on.  Contrary to Jalopnik’s oversimplified description of mommy bloggers as any mother with an Internet connection, mommy bloggers are over 50% more likely to have graduated college or received a post-graduate degree compared to their non-blogging counterparts.  Selecting this type of audience that holds a majority of the purchase power in many families and “wields more influence than Twitter” was a good move.  Know the audience you want to target and how effectively your contestants can disseminate your message to them. 

Follow Through

It’s not enough to organize a contest, push play, and let it ride.  Even if you have another company organizing the effort for you, you must maintain a level of interaction or know-how throughout the contest.  Bottom line:  you can’t have people calling your contestants skanks.  Following up and getting involved in the process will help you participate in your brand, manage outbursts, and step in or even block inappropriate content when necessary.  After all, it’s your name on the line.

Social Media contests are awesome and highly useful in engaging your community, but simply jumping into it can be detrimental to its operation and effectiveness.  Make sure you have a strategy that touches on each of these areas and that your brand is prepared for the contest launch as well as the follow through.

Imagine your worst boss ever.  Oh, they were terrible!  Mean and degrading; apathetic to your achievements and work, but angry and intimidating when it wasn’t done yet.  I shudder to even think about that person and how miserable of an employee I was under them.  As organizational psychologist Dr. Nicole Lipkin says, “When people suck, we just kind of suck back.”  Under our worst management teams, we failed to learn, grow, and produce in the ways we know we’re capable.  Now, think back to the best boss or manager you ever had.  Encouraging, supportive, and constantly challenging you to be the best you could be. 

Are you challenging your team to be the best they can be?

If you think about it, you know how to be a good boss because you’ve most likely had one, and most likely had a miserable boss that you know not to imitate.  Our own experiences will tell us how to do it; we just have to be open to them. 

In a presentation given by the keynote speaker at the Women Dealers Breakfast at NADA, Dr. Nicole Lipkin defined ways to use our leadership to grow and retain our teams.  These are my takeaways:

Outline Expectations:  Define the expectations of the position and what you expect that person to provide within that role.  Also clarify what your employee can expect from you as a manager and mentor.

Knowledge Transfer:  Take all the knowledge that’s up in your brain that you’ve spent years developing and learning, and pass it on.  There’s no point letting all those lessons leave with you while the younger generation is left to reinvent the wheel. 

Don’t Forget Rewards and Recognition:  Make sure your team knows you see them and recognize their achievements.  There’s not a person on this Earth that doesn’t like to be told they’ve done a good job.  When it’s appropriate, tell them.

Hold Them Accountable:  Ask them how they want to further their own success.  You can be a mentor, but you can’t do the work for them, nor should you.  Place the accountability in their hands and they will be much more prepared to make the best use of the knowledge, skills, and mentorship that you’re sharing with them.

Keep Challenging Them:  Never stop demanding progress and growth.  You’re not a babysitter, you’re a boss!  Create the best environment for them to grow by continually challenging them to take their own game to the next level. 

The right setting for a team can power them to be engaged with their work, loyal to their company, and do great things.  In fact, people who are engaged with their work give 25% more discretionary effort.  That’s a quarter more effort that they don’t have to give, but do.  A good leader can foster and generate these strengths, their teams, and more revenue.  Empower your team by being the best leader you know how to be.

Imagine your worst boss ever.  Oh, they were terrible!  Mean and degrading; apathetic to your achievements and work, but angry and intimidating when it wasn’t done yet.  I shudder to even think about that person and how miserable of an employee I was under them.  As organizational psychologist Dr. Nicole Lipkin says, “When people suck, we just kind of suck back.”  Under our worst management teams, we failed to learn, grow, and produce in the ways we know we’re capable.  Now, think back to the best boss or manager you ever had.  Encouraging, supportive, and constantly challenging you to be the best you could be. 

Are you challenging your team to be the best they can be?

If you think about it, you know how to be a good boss because you’ve most likely had one, and most likely had a miserable boss that you know not to imitate.  Our own experiences will tell us how to do it; we just have to be open to them. 

In a presentation given by the keynote speaker at the Women Dealers Breakfast at NADA, Dr. Nicole Lipkin defined ways to use our leadership to grow and retain our teams.  These are my takeaways:

Outline Expectations:  Define the expectations of the position and what you expect that person to provide within that role.  Also clarify what your employee can expect from you as a manager and mentor.

Knowledge Transfer:  Take all the knowledge that’s up in your brain that you’ve spent years developing and learning, and pass it on.  There’s no point letting all those lessons leave with you while the younger generation is left to reinvent the wheel. 

Don’t Forget Rewards and Recognition:  Make sure your team knows you see them and recognize their achievements.  There’s not a person on this Earth that doesn’t like to be told they’ve done a good job.  When it’s appropriate, tell them.

Hold Them Accountable:  Ask them how they want to further their own success.  You can be a mentor, but you can’t do the work for them, nor should you.  Place the accountability in their hands and they will be much more prepared to make the best use of the knowledge, skills, and mentorship that you’re sharing with them.

Keep Challenging Them:  Never stop demanding progress and growth.  You’re not a babysitter, you’re a boss!  Create the best environment for them to grow by continually challenging them to take their own game to the next level. 

The right setting for a team can power them to be engaged with their work, loyal to their company, and do great things.  In fact, people who are engaged with their work give 25% more discretionary effort.  That’s a quarter more effort that they don’t have to give, but do.  A good leader can foster and generate these strengths, their teams, and more revenue.  Empower your team by being the best leader you know how to be.

A BMW driver takes his car into the dealership to get a warning light checked out and left with no service – customer or mechanical.  Steve Rock, owner of a Certified Pre-Owned BMW 335i, took his car into the BMW North Scottsdale dealership because he had warning lights flashing at him; the service technician told him it was merely an emissions alert, disengaged the code, and sent him on his way.  A few days later, when his steering failed on the middle of the highway, he found himself crashed off the side of the road.  Oops.

Rock did what many people do these days and took his incident to the web.  No, he didn’t blast the dealership or smear their brand all over his favorite social sites.  He simply logged on to his BMW-enthusiast forum and posed the scenario to his virtual acquaintances – has anyone else had this problem, or something similar?  After reading feedback suggesting that the warning lights were definitely not indicators of an emissions reminder, Rock contacted the GM of the BMW dealership.

The GM didn’t take responsibility and didn’t even offer an apology.  I’m starting to wonder if the man even asked Rock if he was okay (which he was, thankfully).  The GM wanted Rock to bring the car back to the dealership to be looked at – a feeble attempt to make nice, maybe?  Rock tried to express his understandable concerns of fading trust in the dealership’s diagnostic ability, to which the GM replied, “Then you shouldn’t even be in my office wasting my time.” 

Yes, my eyebrows went up and mouth dropped when I read the original article on Jalopnik as well.  Rock reluctantly lets the dealership take a look at his car and then subsequently has an independent shop evaluate it  as well, who confirmed that the warning lights were attributed to steering and stability control.  BMW North America even asks Rock permission to look at the car again with a team of specialist who never showed up.  Penke Automotive then has the nerve to ask Rock to remove his comments posted online about the incident and the store.

As of now, Rock hasn’t filed a lawsuit and hasn’t even requested any money to fix the damaged car.  What he wants is an explanation as to what the real issue is with his car and why on Earth he was told that it was an emissions reminder when it clearly wasn’t.

What I find more interesting than the story itself, which is a direct example of appalling business operations and atrocious customer service, is the discussion forming around the article.  In the hundreds of comments that have surfaced since the story broke, self-described and insinuated technicians are calling out this guy as a fraud, saying there’s no way that the steering could freeze up or that’s what could have been the problem when he previously brought the car in.  They’re calling BS on Rock, declaring he crashed the car on his own and is simply looking for BMW to take the fall. 

Fair enough, I can appreciate that kind of loyalty to their brand and expertise on mechanical service.  But the real issue is the lack of service Rock received on all fronts: from the service technicians, the GM of the dealership, BMW North America, and even the lawyer from Penske. 

People make mistakes and maybe that’s what happened in the first round of service.  It happens all the time.  And maybe the technician didn’t make a mistake in this case and Rock is trying to pull a fast one on them to see what he can get away with – who knows.  Either way, it’s the dealership’s responsibility to respond to the customer’s valid concerns in such a way that at least appeases the expectations of the customer while simultaneously backing the confidence they have in their staff and vehicles.  The GM could’ve, at minimum, apologized that Rock experienced the situation he did, if for no other reason than to validate that the guy was in car accident!

In addition to the horrid service, this is another clear example of a dealership not having an appropriate social media strategy or even enough of an understanding of social etiquette to know how to manage the online situation.  Rock maintains that both BMW and Penske have stated that they “don't appreciate that [he’s] made this a public issues on the forums."  Well, get over it.  These conversations are happening online on a daily basis and how dealerships respond to them is even more telling than the original posts.  They really have no right to ask the customer to take down the post until they actually fix the problem or at least address it.  Asking the guy to bring his car in might be sticking their good foot out, but it in no way addresses the Rock’s concerns about the previous service he received, or the misdiagnosis.  A simple apology would’ve gone a long way for Rock and for their reputation. 

A BMW driver takes his car into the dealership to get a warning light checked out and left with no service – customer or mechanical.  Steve Rock, owner of a Certified Pre-Owned BMW 335i, took his car into the BMW North Scottsdale dealership because he had warning lights flashing at him; the service technician told him it was merely an emissions alert, disengaged the code, and sent him on his way.  A few days later, when his steering failed on the middle of the highway, he found himself crashed off the side of the road.  Oops.

Rock did what many people do these days and took his incident to the web.  No, he didn’t blast the dealership or smear their brand all over his favorite social sites.  He simply logged on to his BMW-enthusiast forum and posed the scenario to his virtual acquaintances – has anyone else had this problem, or something similar?  After reading feedback suggesting that the warning lights were definitely not indicators of an emissions reminder, Rock contacted the GM of the BMW dealership.

The GM didn’t take responsibility and didn’t even offer an apology.  I’m starting to wonder if the man even asked Rock if he was okay (which he was, thankfully).  The GM wanted Rock to bring the car back to the dealership to be looked at – a feeble attempt to make nice, maybe?  Rock tried to express his understandable concerns of fading trust in the dealership’s diagnostic ability, to which the GM replied, “Then you shouldn’t even be in my office wasting my time.” 

Yes, my eyebrows went up and mouth dropped when I read the original article on Jalopnik as well.  Rock reluctantly lets the dealership take a look at his car and then subsequently has an independent shop evaluate it  as well, who confirmed that the warning lights were attributed to steering and stability control.  BMW North America even asks Rock permission to look at the car again with a team of specialist who never showed up.  Penke Automotive then has the nerve to ask Rock to remove his comments posted online about the incident and the store.

As of now, Rock hasn’t filed a lawsuit and hasn’t even requested any money to fix the damaged car.  What he wants is an explanation as to what the real issue is with his car and why on Earth he was told that it was an emissions reminder when it clearly wasn’t.

What I find more interesting than the story itself, which is a direct example of appalling business operations and atrocious customer service, is the discussion forming around the article.  In the hundreds of comments that have surfaced since the story broke, self-described and insinuated technicians are calling out this guy as a fraud, saying there’s no way that the steering could freeze up or that’s what could have been the problem when he previously brought the car in.  They’re calling BS on Rock, declaring he crashed the car on his own and is simply looking for BMW to take the fall. 

Fair enough, I can appreciate that kind of loyalty to their brand and expertise on mechanical service.  But the real issue is the lack of service Rock received on all fronts: from the service technicians, the GM of the dealership, BMW North America, and even the lawyer from Penske. 

People make mistakes and maybe that’s what happened in the first round of service.  It happens all the time.  And maybe the technician didn’t make a mistake in this case and Rock is trying to pull a fast one on them to see what he can get away with – who knows.  Either way, it’s the dealership’s responsibility to respond to the customer’s valid concerns in such a way that at least appeases the expectations of the customer while simultaneously backing the confidence they have in their staff and vehicles.  The GM could’ve, at minimum, apologized that Rock experienced the situation he did, if for no other reason than to validate that the guy was in car accident!

In addition to the horrid service, this is another clear example of a dealership not having an appropriate social media strategy or even enough of an understanding of social etiquette to know how to manage the online situation.  Rock maintains that both BMW and Penske have stated that they “don't appreciate that [he’s] made this a public issues on the forums."  Well, get over it.  These conversations are happening online on a daily basis and how dealerships respond to them is even more telling than the original posts.  They really have no right to ask the customer to take down the post until they actually fix the problem or at least address it.  Asking the guy to bring his car in might be sticking their good foot out, but it in no way addresses the Rock’s concerns about the previous service he received, or the misdiagnosis.  A simple apology would’ve gone a long way for Rock and for their reputation. 

*The following is a contribution by a real dealer who has asked to remain anonymous (you'll understand why), so I've posted the content to respect their wishes.

Dear OEM:  

Really?  You are in bed with a website vendor and are forcing my hand in using it?  Yes, your SEO truly stinks, your sites take long to load, your bounce rates and overall usability is poor – yet you are forcing my hand to use the site you as an OEM has deemed most acceptable.

I did try to move away with another vendor who I have used prior – everything I know about this website vendor is ten fold better than what you offer and about half the price.  You say it is ok for me to leave…but what do you do, big bad OEM?

You penalize the dealership with infraction after infraction because I don’t have the right wording buried eight pages deep in our site?  We fix what you wanted to fix – you approve the site… and then come back and re-review my site and deny it… again!  NOTHING HAD CHANGED!

After jumping through countless hoops, I finally was able talk with someone at the OEM level and find out there seems to be a mass exodus with your current website vendor.  Therefore the OEM will continue to go through my current (non-OEM recommended) site with a fine-toothed comb looking for the smallest infractions to penalize us…

BUT – what you tell me is that if we go back to your current website vendor, you as an OEM will ease up on our dealership AND you will erase my current infraction you gave me!  Seriously?  

So Mr. OEM – there is a mass exodus leaving your current provider and you have yet to ask yourself why.  The dealers are speaking, yet you are forcing their hand to use a sub-par website due to your current relationship with them.

OEMs – you are KILLING your dealers in the digital marketing arena!   Progressive OEMs and independents will CRUSH us in SEO and SEM strategies if you continue to go down the path you going. 

Not all websites are created equal – take a look, Mr. OEM, at why I wanted to go with someone else.  Here is a snap shot of your OEM recommended site’s analytics for 30 days:

Now – below is analytics of our site I had up for all of 30 days.  138% more visitors and each of those visitors ON AVERAGE spent another 2 minutes on the site, went 2.5 pages DEEPER, and less of them bounced off my site.  Let’s not talk about conversion rates as that would REALLY make way too much sense.

So, Mr. OEM – I am going back to your site for fewer visits, less page views, shorter site time, and more customers are bouncing because this is what the executives think will be best.

So here’s to you, Mr. OEM!  May your digital marketing strategies continue to be obsolete, overpriced, and down right piss poor.

Signed,

Just about every dealer in the country

*The following is a contribution by a real dealer who has asked to remain anonymous (you'll understand why), so I've posted the content to respect their wishes.

Dear OEM:  

Really?  You are in bed with a website vendor and are forcing my hand in using it?  Yes, your SEO truly stinks, your sites take long to load, your bounce rates and overall usability is poor – yet you are forcing my hand to use the site you as an OEM has deemed most acceptable.

I did try to move away with another vendor who I have used prior – everything I know about this website vendor is ten fold better than what you offer and about half the price.  You say it is ok for me to leave…but what do you do, big bad OEM?

You penalize the dealership with infraction after infraction because I don’t have the right wording buried eight pages deep in our site?  We fix what you wanted to fix – you approve the site… and then come back and re-review my site and deny it… again!  NOTHING HAD CHANGED!

After jumping through countless hoops, I finally was able talk with someone at the OEM level and find out there seems to be a mass exodus with your current website vendor.  Therefore the OEM will continue to go through my current (non-OEM recommended) site with a fine-toothed comb looking for the smallest infractions to penalize us…

BUT – what you tell me is that if we go back to your current website vendor, you as an OEM will ease up on our dealership AND you will erase my current infraction you gave me!  Seriously?  

So Mr. OEM – there is a mass exodus leaving your current provider and you have yet to ask yourself why.  The dealers are speaking, yet you are forcing their hand to use a sub-par website due to your current relationship with them.

OEMs – you are KILLING your dealers in the digital marketing arena!   Progressive OEMs and independents will CRUSH us in SEO and SEM strategies if you continue to go down the path you going. 

Not all websites are created equal – take a look, Mr. OEM, at why I wanted to go with someone else.  Here is a snap shot of your OEM recommended site’s analytics for 30 days:

Now – below is analytics of our site I had up for all of 30 days.  138% more visitors and each of those visitors ON AVERAGE spent another 2 minutes on the site, went 2.5 pages DEEPER, and less of them bounced off my site.  Let’s not talk about conversion rates as that would REALLY make way too much sense.

So, Mr. OEM – I am going back to your site for fewer visits, less page views, shorter site time, and more customers are bouncing because this is what the executives think will be best.

So here’s to you, Mr. OEM!  May your digital marketing strategies continue to be obsolete, overpriced, and down right piss poor.

Signed,

Just about every dealer in the country

DrivingSales is excited to announce that the 2nd Quarter edition of the 2011 Dealership Innovation Guide is officially here!  The Dealership InnovationGuide is a free publication from DrivingSales.com full of good stuff for dealers looking to improve.  It's packed full of the latest vendor ratings and articles that will help dealers identify and adopt best practices that affect their bottom line.  We’ve fielded many requests for a more frequent publishing schedule, so we’ve transitioned from publishing the magazine bi-annually to quarterly.  Now you can get more great content, more often!  

Congratulations to Jon Sherrell for making this edition’s cover article with a fantastic story about how he won a brand new Fiat franchise with his stellar SEO strategy!  You can read this article RIGHT NOW at Dealership Innovation Guide - Jon Sherrell. 

Other great articles include:

“Dear Vehicle Manufacturers:  Three Ways You Are Killing Your Dealers” by Jared Hamilton

“Dealers Must CLOSE THE SALE” by Grant Cardone

“More Changes at Google in the Last Six Months than in the Last Six Years” by Richard Winch

Additional authors featured in the edition include:

Rob Fontano

Bryan Armstrong

Marc McGurren

…and MORE!

Gain access to these articles and the entire magazine for FREE at DrivingsalesInnovationGuide.com.  Want the actual magazine in print?  Subscribe to receive your free copy here.  Read the Dealership Inovation Guide hot off the press!

DrivingSales is excited to announce that the 2nd Quarter edition of the 2011 Dealership Innovation Guide is officially here!  The Dealership InnovationGuide is a free publication from DrivingSales.com full of good stuff for dealers looking to improve.  It's packed full of the latest vendor ratings and articles that will help dealers identify and adopt best practices that affect their bottom line.  We’ve fielded many requests for a more frequent publishing schedule, so we’ve transitioned from publishing the magazine bi-annually to quarterly.  Now you can get more great content, more often!  

Congratulations to Jon Sherrell for making this edition’s cover article with a fantastic story about how he won a brand new Fiat franchise with his stellar SEO strategy!  You can read this article RIGHT NOW at Dealership Innovation Guide - Jon Sherrell. 

Other great articles include:

“Dear Vehicle Manufacturers:  Three Ways You Are Killing Your Dealers” by Jared Hamilton

“Dealers Must CLOSE THE SALE” by Grant Cardone

“More Changes at Google in the Last Six Months than in the Last Six Years” by Richard Winch

Additional authors featured in the edition include:

Rob Fontano

Bryan Armstrong

Marc McGurren

…and MORE!

Gain access to these articles and the entire magazine for FREE at DrivingsalesInnovationGuide.com.  Want the actual magazine in print?  Subscribe to receive your free copy here.  Read the Dealership Inovation Guide hot off the press!