Strip the technology away and it’s all about people
Meet Ontario dealer Ernie Dean, of Ernie Dean Chevrolet Buick GMC in Alliston, who is mixing his social media efforts with his community service to raise awareness and money for a local hospital.
Often seen as important business people in their communities, most dealers find that raising money and being community backers comes with the territory. But consider this: instead of having your good deeds go unnoticed, or waiting for the grip-and-grin photo to appear in the local paper, use your social media channels as free extended promotion.
Dean’s dealership did that by starting a contest whereby they would donate $1,000 to the Stevenson Memorial Hospital Foundation by paying $1 for every Facebook page fan that signed up by December 31, 2010. They started with only 30 fans, and as of our press time, they had passed 380 en route to their goal of 1,000 fans and $1,000 dollars. They are also gaining lots of attention in their community.
“We’re using Facebook to connect with the community where we live and work. If we can help the community by supporting a good cause at the same time, we’re happy to do so,” says General Manager Frank Dean in a news release.
Creating community
The business proposition for social media is very simple: you need to create a community within the people who are in driving distance of your dealership. Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and other social media channels are places they might find out about you, or better still, might engage you in a conversation.
Grasping social media should feel familiar for dealers because it’s about using your “social skills,” not just technology. If you are doing well in this business, then you and your salespeople are likely already pretty good at small talk and socializing. You wouldn’t burst into a conversation at a party without having a sense of what everyone is talking about and just start rattling off your inventory. You wouldn’t sit down at your local Tim Horton’s with strangers and start talking about your service specials that week while they talk about the hockey game or the weather.
That would be, well, socially inept behaviour. But that’s exactly the type of approach some dealers are trying when dabbling in social media. They don’t have the patience to engage in conversations, they want to monopolize the conversation and soon discover no one is talking to them.
My advice is to be yourself in your social media dealings, and recognize that the “hot leads and prospects” you find online are just neighbours and friends you haven’t met yet.
Facebook for newbies
Dean’s campaign was developed and promoted by Ryan Thompson, who, among other things, publishes a blog on automotive marketing and got his start in the business working at Ernie Dean. He’s a bright young man with ideas and energy to spare.
You can also get good free Facebook advice in a video from (the highly overcaffeinated) Jimmy Vee and Travis Miller on their website devoted to helping dealers get richer. They bill themselves as the “nation’s leading experts on attracting customers” and the “preeminent marketing consultants to the automotive industry” (www.richdealersdaily.com).
If you can sit through all their annoying off-topic banter at the beginning, you really will learn something. But if you don’t have 6 minutes and 22 seconds to spare, drag the slider to about the 2 minute 30 mark. If you don’t want to hear their sales pitch, you can bail out at about the 5 minute 20 second mark.
They do help explain how you can go about setting up a Facebook fan page and how to do it right to avoid ticking people off. Their off-the-cuff, unscripted comments about what Facebook is all about are worth the listen.
Bottom line: If you remember that social media is about conversations and not just conversions you will do just fine in the social media world.
