Part 3 of a Series of Blog Posts about how Car Dealers can leverage Twitter for more Effective Marketing and Customer Insights...
So how does a Car Dealer, or the assigned people get started? That's what this Part 3 of The Car Dealer's Twitter Guide is all about!
One of the cool things about Twitter is that it gives car dealers a way to have friendly, public conversations with automotive consumers. You’ll make the most of those casual conversations if you do a little planning first. In this section, we’ll suggest a few automotive social media marketing strategic things to think about before you dive in, and then we’ll give you some pointers to start twittering smoothly.
Before you post your first message
Before you get started, it’s important to understand that on Twitter, people choose to view your updates by searching for specific keywords or by following your account. This recipient-controlled model means that if you and your dealership's Twitter post streams are compelling to people on Twitter, they’ll choose to view your updates. The reverse is also true—people may choose to un-follow you, your dealership and your employee Twitter profiles just as easily.
Dry, boring feeds rarely draw many people. Successful Twitter dealership and automotive professional accounts, though, can take many forms. They may be personal and chatty or they might even have mostly automated information, such as the latest activity stream from your Dealership's ADP Social Media Reputation Management "Automotive Community" social network. But no matter the style, the key is to post messages that your Twitter profile followers will find compelling.
Twip: Help people understand what to expect from each of your Twitter accounts by posting a little description in your Bio.
So making your dealership's posts on Twitter interesting is key, but what are you going to post about? That depends on your goals for the specific Twitter account.. Do you want a Twitter profile focused on building deeper relationships? Would you like another Twitter account to be used to get on the radar of potential new car buyers or service customers? Or does your dealership want to provide more responsive and immediate customer service... Before the new car buyer gets the OEM survey sent to them?
You can meet several automotive marketing communication goals simultaneously by thinking about each of your Twitter accounts as a friendly information booth, kiosk or coffee bar. It’s a place for people to ask you spontaneous questions of all kinds—a spot to share intriguing new model insights, or high performance tips they might find interesting. When you hit stride with these exchanges, they often lead to unexpected, valuable relationships with automotive consumers who are now compelled to visit your dealership when they are in the market for a new or used vehicle, for reasons other than that low-ball price posted in the local newspaper!.
Of course, you can have multiple Twitter accounts that focus exclusively on specific dealership goals, like providing customer service updates by a hash tag with the customer's specific R.O. number becoming the hash tag... You can also have a special Twitter account specifically for offering promotional deals to move new and used inventory. People would follow when they are in the market, buy a car and then keep following... Just in case something too good to pass up shows up in your "ABCmotorsPromo" Twitter stream.
Twip: Companies sometimes worry that twittering might require a lot of staff time or even hiring new people to maintain an account. In fact, Twitter works best for businesses when you start slow, devoting a few minutes a day to see whether and how it’s valuable to you.
Regardless of how you plan on using Twitter, you should figure out how to integrate it with your existing dealership marketing communication channels. For instance, if people make enquiries on Twitter that should be handled by your service advisors, how will you connect those customers and the right service advisor? Or if your Internet Sales department does your twittering, but your showroom sales team wants to share info on a promo, how will they do so? Who gets the leads? When they show up on the showroom floor, is it an Internet Up or a showroom sales Up?
The answers will depend, of course, on things like whether your dealership is run by three department directors or a strong General Manager and how you already handle similar cross-platform sales and service opportunities and business development issues. But don’t hesitate to have multiple accounts that serve different purposes, different departments and check out Twitter's Best Practices and Case studies for additional ideas.
To get a sense of what Twitter can do for your car dealership, spend a little time listening in on the conversations happening right now (you can use Twitter search whether or not you have an account). Listening will help you quickly learn what people are saying about your dealership, the makes and models you sell, your competition and it will also give you a feel for the flow of conversations on Twitter. In addition, it can give you insight into how other dealerships handle Twitter exchanges (our Case studies can give you more ideas).
Once you’ve got a sense of how you want your dealership and staff to engage on Twitter, you’re ready to dive in.
Dive in!
If you haven’t yet signed up for a Twitter account, either for yourself or your dealership it’s easy, and it takes just a few minutes. Here’s how to get started:
1. Sign up
Head over to the sign-up page, and fill out the four fields. If you’re creating a dealership or department account, use the “Full name” field to type in your dealership name, and department if applicable. That’ll help people find your dealership, and the relevant department on Twitter. (You can add your own name, or the department manager's name in the Bio field, as described below.)
The Username is the handle by which the account and profile will be known on Twitter, something like what I chose for the ADP Social MediaReputation Management team; ADPsocial. Choose the shortest name that best describes your dealership or this particular department.
Twip: We don’t allow name squatting on Twitter. So if somebody who doesn’t work for your dealership is holding or using your business or franchise and location name inappropriately,contact us to get it sorted out.
After you’ve signed up, the site walks you through a couple of screens to help you find people, such as your best customers, dealership employees and suppliers on Twitter that you already know or might be interested in. The process is quick, but if you want to jump directly to your account page, just head to the bottom of each page and click “Skip this step.”
2. Fill out your info
When you first arrive on your account page, it’ll look something like the picture shown below. Before you do anything else, click Settings to get a page where you can fill out a few more details to help people recognize your dealership or the specific department you are setting this account up for. Most of the fields are self-explanatory. But pay special attention to the Bio, which gives you 160 characters; this is a great place to list the person or people twittering for your dealership or the department.
Twip: If individual staffers have their own Twitter accounts, you can list their @usernames in the bio section.
Before you leave Settings, check out the Picture tab, which is the place to add your dealership logo, the franchise logo or a photo of yourself. On the Design tab, you can upload a background image for your Twitter home page and tweak the page colors.
Twip: Because the Bio gives you just 160 characters, dealers often use the background image to share additional contact info, addresses and domain names for their eCommerce sites.
3. Find highly relevant people and companies to follow.
Whether or not you chose to follow anyone in the sign-up process, now’s a good time to search for people and companies of specific interest to you. Use the search box on your Twitter home page to look not only for people talking about your dealership, the brands of vehicles you sell, or even the people that work for you, but also for partners and mentions of key automotive terms in your local dealership marketing area. When you find interesting messages, consider following those Twitter accounts. No need to worry about the number of people you’re following—just follow a few whose updates you really want to read, say hello and let conversations grow. Also look at the Find People section.
Twip: By default when someone follows you, you'll get an email from Twitter saying so with some basic information about the user. Anyone can turn off those notifications, though (under Settings > Notices), so don’t assume people will know you’re on Twitter just because you’ve followed them.
4. Post your first message.
This is where the real fun starts. On your Twitter home page, in the box at the top, type in a message. As you type, the counter on the upper-right corner of the box guides you down from 140 characters. When you’ve got a message ready to go, hit Update to post it (pressing Enter won’t do the trick).
If you’re thinking, “Sounds easy, but what should I say?”, consider trying ssomething like, “Excited to start twittering. Let us know what you want to hhear about from Our Dealership.” Or you could go with, “Hello! Is this thing oon?” A conversational, playful tone flies beautifully on Twitter, so don’t hhesitate to add some fun into your messages.
Once you’ve posted that first message, you could follow up with some hellos to people you know on Twitter, and perhaps post a link to an interesting news story about your industry (just copy the link and paste it into the update box).
TTwip: Once you’ve set up your account page, add your mobile phone to your account so you can Twitter from the road. Customers can also follow you from their mobile phone by texting “follow YourUsername” to 40404. If you have a smart phone, like an iPhone or a Blackberry, download any of the numerous Twitter clients for those platforms.
Second installment in a Series of Blog Posts about how Car Dealers can leverage Twitter for more Effective Marketing, new and used car sales, CRM strategies and Customer Insights...
Every day, millions of people use Twitter to create, discover and share ideas with others. Now, people are turning to Twitter as an effective way to reach out to car dealerships, too. From local single point dealerships to big national enterprise auto groups with multiple brands, and from Internet Sales Managers to showroom sales staff, wholesale Parts departments to internet-based accessory sales by Hyundai dealers in Massachusetts (you know who you are!) and especially for service departments, car dealerships are finding great value in connections they make with automotive consumers on Twitter.
So how do businesses use Twitter?
Twitter connects car dealers to their customers right now, in a way that was never before possible. For example, let’s say you work for a Ford dealership in Colorado. If you run a search for "Ford Expedition", you may find people posting messages about how happy they are driving their Expeditions your dealership sold in the Rocky Mountains - giving you a chance to share tips about SUV-friendly restaurants and road side cafe's along their route.
Others may post minor equipment complaints or desired features that they would never bother to contact you about�"providing you with invaluable customer feedback that you can respond to right away or use for future planning. Still others may twitter about serious problems with the Expedition's cooling system when towing heavy loads up long grades - letting you offer no-charge roadside assistance as a customer service that can turn around a bad situation.
You don’t have to run a car dealership or even be a manager to get good stuff out of Twitter. Businesses of all kinds, including major brands, increasingly find that listening and engaging on the service leads to happier customers, passionate advocates, key product improvements and, in many cases, more sales.
A key benefit
One of Twitter’s key benefits is that it gives you the chance to communicate casually with automotive consumers on their terms, creating friendly relationships along the way - tough for car dealerships to do in most other mediums.
But Twitter isn’t just about useful immediacy. The conversational nature of the medium lets you build relationships with customers, referral partners, suppliers and other people important to your dealership. Beyond new and used vehicle sales , Twitter gives your constituents direct access to employees and a way to contribute to your dealership's automotive consumer insight; as marketers say, it shrinks the emotional distance between your dealership and your customers. Plus, the platform lends itself to integration with your existing communication channels, lead management tools and automotive CRM strategies. In combination, those factors can make Twitter a critical piece of your dealership’s bigger digital footprint.
For instance, let’s say you run a big retail auto group's website. In addition to learning more about what your targeted automotive customers want, you can provide exclusive Twitter service coupon codes, link to the included service's full details on your website, share tips for scheduling service online, and announce specials at each of your dealership locations. And you can take things a step further by occasionally posting messages about fun, quirky events at your dealer group's HQ, giving others, including individual dealership employees a small but valuable connection with the people in your auto group's corporate offices.
Twip: Twitter can be “ground-breaking” for businesses�"a big claim. We truly believe it because we’ve seen lots of examples, many of which we are going to share in this series of blog posts. But if you’re new to Twitter and still wondering what all the fuss is about, hang around the Twitter site (or good 3rd-party apps, like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite) for a week or two, save searches for your dealership's name, the brands you sell and a few of your more popular models... Maybe even keep an eye out for what people are saying about your competition and give it a few minutes a day. Twitter almost always delivers “Aha!” moments for people, but it can take some getting used to before you have your moment of enlightenment.
What’s up with the name?
Twittering is the sound birds make when they communicate with each other�"an apt description of the conversations here. As it turns out, because Twitter provides people with real-time public information, it also helps groups of people mimic the effortless way a flock of birds move in unison. On these pages, we’ll show you a few examples of that powerful Twitter characteristic.
Why 140 characters?
SMS (i.e., texting on your phone) limits each message to 160 characters. Twitter takes that limit and reserves 20 characters for your username, leaving you 140 characters to play with. That’s how it started and we’ve stuck with it!
Part 1 of a Series of Blog Posts about how Car Dealers can leverage Twitter for more Effective Marketing and Customer Insights...
Every day, millions of people use Twitter to create, discover and share ideas with others. Now, people are turning to Twitter as an effective way to reach out to businesses, too. From local stores to big brands, and from brick-and-mortar to internet-based or service sector, people are finding great value in the connections they make with businesses on Twitter.
When people working in the Empire State Building twittered that they were craving ice cream delivery, New York local chain Tasti D Lite was there to listen and meet their need.
When electronics buyers look for good deals, the Dell Outlet Twitter account helps them save money with exclusive coupons.
When Houston's coffee drinkers decide where to get their daily dose, many choose Coffee Groundz, which lets them order via Twitter.
Read on to learn what Twitter is and to get detailed examples of how car dealers and many other types of companies are using it. In this series of blog posts we’ll also reveal how Twitter can help your dealership right now.
So what does Twitter do for car dealers?
Twitter is a communication platform that helps dealerships stay connected to with automotive consumers. As a car dealer, you can use it to quickly share information with people interested in the makes and models you sell,the used cars you have available or what your services, parts and accessory departments have to offer. Car Dealers can gather real-time market intelligence and feedback, and build relationships with customers, partners, suppliers and other people who care about your dealership and the products you sell and service. Individual Twitter users who are automotive consumers (88%) can use Twitter to tell a dealership's management team (or anyone else) that they have had a great�"or disappointing�"experience with your dealership, offer product ideas, and learn about your dealership's great offers.
So how does it work?
Twitter lets you write and read messages of up to 140 characters, or the very length of this sentence, including all punctuation and spaces. The messages are public and you decide what sort of messages you want to receive�"Twitter being a recipient driven information network. In addition, you can send and receive Twitter messages, or tweets, equally well from your desktop or your mobile phone.
When you combine messages that are quick to write, easy to read, public, controlled by the recipient and exchangeable anywhere, you’ve got a powerful, real-time way to communicate. And real-time communication is turning out to be ground-breaking for users and businesses alike.
Listen for Your Dealership's Name Being Mentioned
Tip: To listen in on the conversations happening right now, search Twitter for the name of your dealership, makes or models you sell. If you have a Twitter account already, your Twitter home page has a handy search box on the right side. If you don’t yet have an account, try typing in the box below or go to search.twitter.com.
A Brief History of Twitter
Initially inspired by the concept of an 'away-message' merged with the freedom and mobility of SMS, Twitter began as an experiment in 2006. When value as an instant communication network during shared events like earthquakes, conferences, and festivals emerged, Twitter began to grow... Twitter, Inc. was founded in 2007. Today, Twitter is a privately funded company based in San Francisco, CA.
From early 2007 through the end of 2010, Ralph Paglia was one of the key executives driving Digital Marketing Group Business Development at ADP Dealer Services. He established strategic enterprise partnerships with Car Companies, Dealer Groups and Digital Marketing enterprises such as Google, Yahoo!, DoubleClick, Specific Media, Jumpstart Automotive Media, KnowEm, Ning, TubeMogul, Network Solutions, DealerRater, Yelp, Facebook, Presto Reviews, J. D. Power and Associates, Digital Dealer Conference, Cars.com, CBS, Ford, Kia, Toyota, Hyundai and others.
Paglia's Business Development expertise includes organic growth from creating Digital Marketing solutions for car companies and dealers. He has created revenue growth from new solutions that accelerate vehicle, parts and service sales using web based strategies and tactics.
Paglia led development of new revenue streams for ADP by creating businesses such as Digital Advertising, Digital Marketing Consulting, and Social Media Reputation Management.
After earning his Bachelor of Science in Business Administration at Valparaiso University, Paglia went to State University of New York at Buffalo for his Masters in Business Administration (MBA), specializing in Marketing. His first job after graduate school was with De La Fuente Automotive, Inc. in San Diego (1981). Since then Paglia has become a nationally recognized thought leader on IT systems and digital marketing used for automotive marketing and sales.
Paglia has a remarkable history of implementing Internet Sales Management, Business Development Centers (BDC) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tactical operations. He is a well known and frequently published expert at automotive solution development requirements, CRM systems, dealer business processes, defining Digital Marketing value propositions along with the often elusive measurement criteria for performance reporting and ROI analysis.
HIGHLIGHTS
- 1986 San Diego: Paglia pioneers "Internet Leads" using Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) with first public ISP (CompuServe).
- 1997 San Antonio; Red McCombs Automotive
- 1999 Philadelphia: Cyber Car Internet Sales process consulting for Ford, Honda, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, Subaru and Nissan dealers.
- 2000 Houston: Developed Toyota eCertified dealer program for Gulf States Toyota (GST) 5 State Region.
- 2001 Torrance: Led national dealer consulting and orientation program for Honda's Interactive Network (iN) system roll-out.
- 2002 Montvale: Proposed, designed and executed "StarLeads" ILM program for 322 Mercedes-Benz dealers.
- 2003 Detroit: Led development and training of 50+ consultants that executed 600+ Ford dealership BDC implementations.
- 2005 to 2007 Phoenix: Ralph leads single point GM dealer team that sells more units (4,200+) using digital marketing in 1 year than any other dealership had ever sold (before or since).
- 2007 Chicago: Ralph accepts ADP Dealer Services position; Director - Digital Marketing. His first initiative results in ADP Digital Advertising.
- 2007 Phoenix: Paglia builds and launches automotive social network at www.AutomotiveDigitalMarketing.com as a "Professional Community" which becomes industry's most popular at 15,000+ Visitors/Month.
- 2008 Dearborn: Secures Ford contract to develop the Ford Lincoln Mercury Digital Advertising (FLMDA) Program for Dealers.
- 2008 Dearborn: Secures national Digital Marketing Consulting contract from Ford Motor Company.
- 2008 Dearborn: Secures development funding for Ford Social Media Marketing and Reputation Management dealer program.
- 2009 Dearborn: Presents Ford with performance differential of Ford regions using ADP to secure 100% increase in 2009 revenue.
- 2009 Dearborn: Proposes/wins 2010 Ford DMC and FLMDA Programs that include Tier 3 Social Media Marketing and Reputation Management.
- 2010 Scottsdale: Strategic ASU alliance to open ADP's SkySong Social Media Operations Center
One of Twitter’s key benefits is that it gives you the chance to communicate casually with automotive consumers on their terms, creating friendly relationships along the way - tough for car dealerships to do in most other mediums.
Twittering is the sound birds make when they communicate with each other�"an apt description of the conversations here. As it turns out, because Twitter provides people with real-time public information, it also helps groups of people mimic the effortless way a flock of birds move in unison. On these pages, we’ll show you a few examples of that powerful Twitter characteristic.
SMS (i.e., texting on your phone) limits each message to 160 characters. Twitter takes that limit and reserves 20 characters for your username, leaving you 140 characters to play with. That’s how it started and we’ve stuck with it!
Initially inspired by the concept of an 'away-message' merged with the freedom and mobility of SMS, Twitter began as an experiment in 2006.
