Living under a rock is the only reason not to know what Social Media can mean in terms of reaching out to new, current, and past customers. If you don’t live under a rock, you can skip this and read about why our blogs are killing it.
Who doesn’t have a Facebook?
Who isn’t on Twitter?
But Facebook is just for families exchanging daily greetings and photos, right? Twitter is just for inane comments made by the very lonely with no life outside their basement offices or celebrities with big egos, right, and who cares what bloggers have to say? The answer is the people who populate these sites and write blogs are ‘every man’ and ‘every woman’ which equates rather nicely into a way to grow your customer base first through casual banter and later links to your Web site(s).
Getting noticed is what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is all about. Social Media profiles grant an online presence that can be linked back to your Web site or blog, but there are a few protocol pointers that need to be addressed:
Portraying your business in a positive light requires deciding on an online personality. That personality will brand your brand so to speak. It will be important to make sure your online personality takes a type of Hippocratic Oath: First do no harm. If your online personality (you or a designated partner or employee) is having a bad day, do not make that bad day a PR nightmare for your company.
With that in mind first and foremost decide what will and will not be shared on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and blogs. What you want to do with your online presence is ‘connect’ with people through messages, posts, or blogs. Being real about what is going on in your life and how that affects you without coming off as opinionated, judgmental, dramatic, or angry grants followers a glimpse into your life.
Posting a message that mentions witnessing or entering a wet tee shirt contest that turned into a no tee shirt contest probably is best told to your diary. However, mentioning trying to hide in the back seat of a Fiesta to change your top or trousers because your best friend accidentally dumped her latté on you just before a very important business meeting shares life.
Remember these messages may become future business opportunities. Not only that but it was just released that the Library of Congress will store the archive of every public tweet ever tweeted on Twitter. So as Abraham Lincoln so eloquently stated, “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.”
A business strategy for social Media is about ROE (Return on Engagement). Introducing your brand through a likeable personality profile and engaging avatar offers the best way to let people know of your existence so that you can connect with them and hopefully add new customers to your list. After being on social media for a time, there are ways to check your ROE: Sales increases, visitor hits to your Web site, subscriptions to RSS feeds, linkbacks to posts, and various brand monitoring tools offered from social media sites.
The bottom line is: Social Media when used with the right mindset First do no harm, can increase sales in a very cost efficient manner.
Find out how our managed turnkey blog can develop a strong content strategy at your dealership.
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