Social media can be used as a useful reputation management tool and to help boost customer satisfaction.
According to Erik Qualman, the American author of Socialnomics, a book exploring how social media transforms the way we live and do business, the return on investment of social media is that “your business will still exist in five years”.
That might be a rather sensationalist statement, but there can be no doubt of the rapid popularity of websites like Facebook with 750 million users worldwide and 29.8m in the UK.
Facebook accounted for 12.4% of UK internet visits in January 2011 while 37% of adults claim to use social networking each week.
Perhaps more importantly, 46% of users follow one or more brands through social networks, with 23% saying that they’d like to receive brand information through Facebook.
So, with almost half of the UK’s population on Facebook, can dealers afford to overlook social media as a way of interacting with consumers?
Tim Smith, GForces managing director, told AM: “With people increasingly looking to single sources, such as social networks, for opinion and information, car dealers are well advised to ensure that they maximise their presence.
"At present, while 83% of the nation’s top 200 car dealers now have a Facebook page, very few have been able to translate this social media activity into increased revenues or customer loyalty.
“As such, it is imperative that dealers can offer something more through their social media presence, otherwise the cost of maintaining a page could end up outweighing the benefits.”
Top 30 AM100 dealer Ridgeway Group has used social media across its business for more than three years and has discovered a way to use the medium positively.
When the group first started using it, social media was used as just a sales channel, but it quickly became apparent this wasn’t the way to go.
Philip Deacon, Ridgeway Group communications manager, told AM: “We wanted to educate ourselves about it and understand how we could use it.
"We used the first three months to sit back and analyse what was working and what wasn’t.
“We then developed a strategy which was focused on creating content that makes people come to us.
"Using it as a sales channel provided no interaction with customers.”
As part of the “no sales pressure” attitude, all mentions of monthly payment finance deals and any sales pitches or adverts were removed.
Deacon had to present to the board to justify the time and effort before incorporating social media into the group’s digital strategy.
The dealer group opened brand specific Twitter and Facebook accounts in May 2009 with separate feeds of all its brands including Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Skoda, Smart, used cars, bodyshop and its affinity programme.
On Twitter, Ridgeway’s group feed @RidgewayGroup is then used to repost or “retweet” content from other parts of the business.
Deacon describes the marketing team at Ridgeway as the group’s “on-site roving reporters” that will highlight anything interesting going on throughout the business or with the brands it represents.
Deacon said: “All the information we post is relevant and up-to-date.
"We create interesting links to news, blogs, new car launches, competitions, video content and we can communicate with customers.”
Ridgeway has a central marketing team of three people that takes responsibility for handling social media activity as part of its job role.
Ridgeway uses a piece of American software to help track keywords across its social media activity.
Social media can help dealers to view conversations that are taking place about their business and then get involved in a non-intrusive and helpful way.
Deacon gave an example: “We saw that there was a woman on Twitter wanting to know about the new special edition Smart Fortwo and it just so happened that we had one delivered that day at one of our dealerships.
“I saw the tweet and asked someone at the dealership to take a picture and email it to me.
"The picture was added to Ridgeway’s Smart Twitter feed and the customer got in touch, arranged a test drive and placed an order.”
Deacon believes social media is just another aspect of a dealer’s marketing mix and expands the way a customer can choose to get in contact.
A lot of dealers are concerned that getting involved with social media opens them up to negative feedback on a public forum.
Deacon said: “If there’s a disgruntled customer we react very quickly and they tend to go from being unhappy to an advocate of the business, all because we’ve taken notice of them and resolved the issue.”
Ridgeway’s social media strategy is being explored every day and is a “constant evolution”.
Deacon said: “There’s the stigma about social media that it’s just for kids, but that’s through a lack of understanding and we’ve had to gain that understanding through education.
"Everyone in the management team understands what we’re trying to achieve.”
Particularly active figures in the automotive retail arena on Twitter include Daksh Gupta, Marshall Motor Group chief executive, and Robert Forrester, Vertu Motors chief executive, who both manage their own accounts to interact with customers and post highlights about their businesses.
Gupta said: “All our management have access to Twitter and Facebook to help market their businesses.”
Lifestyle Europe encourages its staff to keep in touch with customers through Twitter and doesn’t have strict guidelines as to how they deal with customers.
Lifestyle told AM on Twitter: “We monitor our peripheral teams, but generally we allow them to take their own route to create closer/localised relationships.”
Benfield Motor Group is another business which has invested in social media to form part of its digital strategy.
Nigel McMinn, Benfield managing director, said: “We recognised 18 months ago that we needed to be into it and it wasn’t good enough to be aware of it, we needed to be active.
“I don’t want to be one of those companies that looks at social media in five years’ time and realise that we’ve been left behind.”
McMinn was already testing the waters personally with social media and overcame his own objections about social media before introducing the idea to his managers.
He told AM: “I coerced a lot of managers to get on Facebook and Twitter and use it themselves.
“There was scepticism at first with a lot of managers saying it would open us up to a bigger platform for customers to complain.
“As long as you’re seen to deal with the problem, it can be a big benefit. Customers have actually leapt to our defence when a customer has complained in some instances.”
After a month of using it themselves, the managers in the group had a much more positive attitude.
Benfield also has franchise specific Twitter accounts which are managed by volunteers that have shown willing to own the medium.
Benfield has sales executives and managers that take responsibility for posting content and replying to customers.
McMinn went to a specialist digital agency to help guide the business with how it should approach its social media marketing.
He said: “We needed a coach once we had all bought into it.
“We’re working with the right people to help give us guidance where we need it and they’re working to a six-month programme which has a committed cost and they’ve been tasked with helping us to increase our follower count on Twitter and Facebook.”
McMinn said social media accounts for a relatively small amount of Benfield’s marketing budget.
Using Google Analytics, Benfield tracks all mentions made of the company’s name with reports generated every day.
He said: “We always make sure we address complaints and 90% of the time they react well to us getting in touch and sorting the problem.
“The most important aspect of social media for our business is the two way conversation, the fact you can have a back and forth with the customer in that environment.
“We want to be able to ask them questions and get their feedback.”
Twitter
Best practice for business
- Share Share photos and behind the scenes info. Even better, give a glimpse of developing projects and events.
- Users come to Twitter to get and share the latest, so give it to them.
- Listen Regularly monitor the comments about your company, brand and products.
- Ask Ask questions of your followers to glean valuable insights and show that you are listening.
- Respond Respond to compliments and feedback in real-time.
- Reward Tweet updates about special offers, discounts and
- time-sensitive deals.
- Demonstrate wider leadership and know-how Reference articles and links about the bigger picture as it relates to your business.
- Champion your stakeholders Retweet and reply publicly to great tweets posted by your followers and customers.
- Establish the right voice Twitter users tend to prefer a direct, genuine and, of course, a likeable tone from your business, but think about your voice as you tweet. How do you want your business to appear to the Twitter community?
Case study: JetBlue @jetblue
JetBlue, the airline, was one of the first major brands to join Twitter, which it did in spring 2007.
Today, the company has more than a million followers, and its account is often cited as an example of smart corporate tweeting.
But the company started out on Twitter with modest goals. It wanted to help customers.
“Some people were asking for help, and others were saying things that weren’t correct,” recalled JetBlue’s manager of corporate communications, Morgan Johnston.
He’d been spending time on Twitter search, and he’d realised that JetBlue customers, often on the move, were tweeting about travel problems.
“You can only see that a few times before you want to jump in and do something.”
He proposed the idea of setting up a JetBlue account on Twitter and cleared it with communications executives at his company.
They were very supportive – in part because they could start by just dipping a toe in the water.
Chatty posts and customer service assistance tended to generate a lot of replies and new followers. Press releases and announcements were met with silence.
From this experience, Johnston hit on what he calls the Twitter “kernel of truth”: be receptive to what your followers want. How do you know what that is? You can gauge their responses to your tweets, and – as it turns out – you can also ask them.
When JetBlue faced dead air after pushing out new route announcements, Johnston started wondering what people wanted from the account.
So he asked. The responses surprised him.
“People said simply, ‘This is what we want. We want to see you asking.’”
He added that people even went as far as to say that they wanted the company to see them as a resource for helping JetBlue deliver a better product.
Author: Tom Seymour - Automotive Management Online
http://SocialBusinessToday.net - The Best in Social Business
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