Social Media May Finally Become TRULY Relevant To Dealers In 2010
Social Media May Finally Become TRULY Relevant To Dealers In 2010
I’ve had a pretty long-standing disagreement with social media. There are far too many people on my side of the table (agency side) that use the confusion and hype of social media to sell ineffective products to car dealers. In my general session presentation at Digital Dealer 7, I had a whole section on ‘Do Social Networking Right, Or Don’t Do It At All.”
However, the integration of social media make it hard to stay out of the market too long. Here’s my thoughts:
First, Google is including Twitter content in search results, right in the middle of organic and paid content. This means that dealers can use their Twitter content for added SEO value. Tweet something including the name of your dealership and a hot trend, and you have an opportunity to have it included in Google search results.
However, it really doesn’t make Twitter that much more effective than it was before. According to a study done by Pear Analytics, Twitter is pretty much a pile of useless chatter. Their study showed that 40% of all Twitter content was ‘useless babble.’
Case in point: I was doing a presentation for a client showing them exactly how Google was including Twitter content and it proved how hit or miss social media can be. Check out the search results. I think the tweet, “we made some alfredo pasta, it was pretty delicious. i want to google cat sweaters now,” can give you an idea of how bad social media can be.
Regardless, dealers can now create Twitter content that can reasonably land in the hands of consumers.
Next, is what is most convincing – Local Trends. This week, Twitter announced Local Trends, which show Twitter trends based on your location. Twitter always showed the topics that were getting the most traffic, but they were on a national level. It would be very hard for a dealer to break into all that chatter. Now, Twitter is rolling out trends on a local basis, which will give dealers a much better opportunity to getting attached to hot local trends. While Twitter only offers this in a select few cities, they’ll roll it out nationally.
I felt much of the same about Facebook as I do Twitter. It’s a big, tough environment and took effort or money to play in the sandbox. Now, there are a lot of apps that have been developed, that make it that much easier. For example, we’re taking our clients’ email newsletters (that we’re creating in WordPress) and suck them right into Facebook accounts. We’re doing the same with YouTube channels and Twitter feeds and inventory. What does this mean? You can create an up-to-date, relevant Facebook account without creating more content.
Conclusion
Don’t get me wrong, I still think people need to be cautious about the power of social networking. I always say diving into social networking is like diving into the shallow end of the pool. However, with the advent of more locally based social networks and the ability to port content from one to the other in a much easier fashion, social media might finally become relevant in 2010.
