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'Do you know the average click-thru rate for the tweets your brand sends? If not, you can easily find out here. According to the research, the average rate is a little more than 6 percent. While this may seem low, it's still higher than the industry average click-thru rate for banner ads, which is between 1 percent and 2 percent."

However, there are three steps you can take to help improve the click-thru rate of your brand's tweets, which will ultimately drive more traffic to your website:

1. Use your headline to pique interest and prove the value of your article.

One of the best pieces of advice I received when it comes to using Twitter is, "Don't tweet boring stuff." While this may seem obvious, many brands aren't sharing content in a way that piques the interest of their audience. The best way to connect with your audience with social media is to share content that will add value and enrich their lives. By enticing your followers with a line helps them believe that by clicking on the link, they will learn something valuable, you'll make sure that the tweets you're posting are interesting, engaging and "click worthy."

2. Find the right time to tweet.

Once you've identified the kind of content that resonates with your audience, the second step is to find when they will be most likely to see the tweet. By identifying the optimum time to send your tweet, you can ensure that you're sharing your content during the highest traffic time for your audience. There are some great apps that can help you identify the peak time for your specific brand, one being Buffer. Along the same lines, don't assume that just because you shared a link once, your entire audience saw it. If you want to drive traffic to a particular blog post, share the link multiple times throughout the day, intermingling it with your other content.

3. Optimize by measuring.

The only way to learn is to experiment. Maybe there'll be a certain time which people are really receptive. Maybe there's a certain topic that isn't resonating with your audience. As with any marketing tactic, you can't improve what you don't measure. Almost every social media tool offers some sort of analytics for its users. By measuring, you'll learn and optimize. And you'll make your tweets and content more engaging.

What tools are you using to improve the click-thru rate of your tweets? How have you seen it improve your overall traffic and sales?

Source: Guest Blogger-Nashville Business Journal

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Ninja

A recent study by AdAge, which has been tracking such things since 2009, shows that there are over 180,000 people on Twitter who claim to be social media mavens, experts, consultants, ninjas, pros, warriors, or some other noun that’s intended to fill you with confidence about their ability to save you from the evil world of Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. This is up from 16k when they first checked.

It’s challenging for businesses to keep up. The world of social media offers so much potential, so many options, and has so many people using it every day that the allure to get involved is high, but there are risks. Bad strategies, an inability to keep up with changes, and the potential to blow a lot of time and/or effort are all high. Businesses often look to experts who reside in this world on a constant basis to guide them through the mess.

The bad part is that the industry can be an extremely lucrative one, so many people are jumping in without having a true understanding of how to make it work for business. The good part is that there are things you can do to identify the good ones from the bad, the real ones from the posers. Here are some telling signs:

 

Check their personal accounts

The most important component here is that follower counts mean nothing. For under $100 a Twitter user can buy thousands of “followers”. Given enough time and a willingness to accept any friend requests, a Facebook account can hit the 5,000 “friend” limit in a couple of months.

You’ll be looking at two things when checking the accounts. Links – what kind are they posting? Are they posting links to notoriously spammy sites like Hubpages and Squidoo? Do the links lead to teeth whitening, Forex, or “how to make money from home” ebooks? Everyone has to start somewhere, but those who are worth their title should have gone beyond the spamming and moved into the realm of quality content posting, particularly with their personal social media accounts.

The second thing you’ll look for is interaction. Are people retweeting them? Talking to them? Engaging with them? Commenting, liking, and sharing their content on Facebook? Giving their posts +1s on Google+? If so, is it organic? Just as with the account size factor, it’s not hard to buy likes and retweets. Are the people engaging with them real people or fake?

 

Look at their advice, strategies, and tips

Most gurus have a blog. They may have a YouTube channel. They should be on Pinterest. Check out the content that they’re posting and the advice that they’re giving. While not every guru is a writer, it’s safe to say that they should be able to put together a list of tips at the very least.

Are they putting out advice videos? These don’t have to be regular – a video with the right content can be useful for months – but there should be something of interest, some rants or recommendations that work on video. Are they pinning quality infographics on Pinterest?

Content is a tool of the trade. If they aren’t putting out content on their own sites or social profiles, do they really know what they’re doing or are they regurgitating strategies they read on Mashable and Social Media Today?

 

Look at their clients

As with any agency or individual that you hire, it’s important to look at the results of their efforts. Check to see if the pages they run, the accounts that they manage, and the content that they’re posting is effective.

Again, size doesn’t matter here. It would be easy for me to say, “don’t work with people who only have a couple of clients” since my company is loaded with clients, but it’s simply not true. Some of the brightest minds and most effective social media experts that I know only keep a handful of clients. Size is not important. If anything, being too large means that your needs won’t get the personal touch that you might require.

The most important component here is to call or email the clients. Be very skeptical about experts who use the “client confidentiality” ploy. It’s true, there are times when businesses do not want it known that they use a social media agency, but that really only applies to being out in public. I’ve had clients that do not want us to post that we work with them on our website, but none of them in the last 5 years have ever said they were unwilling to be a reference to a potential client. If they’re unwilling to let you contact their clients, they might not have any.

Social media isn’t hard. It’s time-consuming. It requires a constant attachment to the changes that are happening. That’s the main reason to hire gurus, experts, and agencies – if you’re running a business, do you have the time and energy to devote a couple of hours a day keeping up with it all? Finding the right person or agency isn’t hard, either. Yes, it requires an investment of time to find and check out candidates, but that is time well spent. It’s better to have no strategy or presence than a bad strategy driving a poor presence.

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Twitter Links

The automation of Twitter for businesses continues to become the norm.

As micro-blogging, interaction, and expression get replaced by RSS feeds, Facebook feeds, and post scheduling that is all dominated by links, links, and more links, the power of Twitter is being replaced by the easy alternatives to actually, well, using the service.

This is a huge mistake for most. There are some who are simply overwhelmed by social media and internet marketing in general and anything that they can check off their list with minimal or zero effort is a good thing. For those who actually want to find success on Twitter, it’s not going to work with zero effort. Thankfully, Twitter is a platform that can work very well with minimal effort. There has to be some, just not a ton.

 

Post fewer links

When I first started using Twitter over five years ago, the site was loaded with communication. Links were in fewer than 20% of the Tweets in my feeds. It was mostly about, “look at what I’m doing here” or “I really like pickles”. Now, links dominate Tweets. For news sources and other publications, this is fine. For super-active accounts that talk to people regularly, this is fine. For businesses who are not super-popular on social media, links should be used sparingly.

Again, it comes down to time. If you simply don’t have the time to come up with 3 or 4 good, solid unlinked Tweets, interactions with everyone who reaches out to you, and proactive interactions with new people the way a proper Twitter strategy should look, then getting something out there on a regular basis is better than going completely stagnant. The effectiveness of the “bail out” strategy is minimal, but if it’s all that you can afford from a time perspective, so be it.

It’s it’s at all possible to tone down the links and get truly engaging with your posts, you’ll get much more out of the service for your business.

 

Talk to people

It would have been hard to imagine in the days when I was first getting started on Twitter that there would be a need to give this advice, but that need is here. Twitter is first and foremost a communication tool. Most businesses are using it strictly for broadcasting. The paradox that many fail to understand is that if you talk about yourself less and talk about others more, your messages about yourself will reach a greater number of people. In many ways, it’s about earning the right to broadcast.

Those who use Twitter regularly can smell a feed-driven Twitter account in seconds. They can tell when an account is strictly being used to broadcast and when it’s truly being used for communication. When someone is strictly broadcasting, they better be a publication like Mashable or a celebrity like Oprah Winfrey or the message simply won’t be heard.

Here are some quick ways to establish that you’re communicating on Twitter rather than broadcasting:

  1. Send @replies – If you’re a standard business account that is getting a handful of interactions directed at you per day, reply to all of them. If you’re more popular, reply to the ones that are personalized. In other words, no need to reply to retweets unless the sender added their two cents to the conversation.
  2. Retweet often – A decent account should retweet 5+ times a day. A more active account can get away with fewer but should be retweeting at least once a day. This isn’t the “RT @0boy…” style, though those should be worked in as well. These are the direct retweets by pushing the retweet button directly from Twitter. This is important because it adds different avatars to your stream. When visitors see that you’re retweeting others, they’ll be more likely to assume that you’re actually listening to the outside world rather than working inside your own little Twitter broadcasting box.
  3. Start or join conversations – You’re an expert in your industry. You can chime in on conversations that are happening regarding your industry, your local area, or even the world in general. That doesn’t mean that you should butt in and start spreading your wisdom in one-on-one conversations, but it does mean responding to people’s Tweets or even starting the conversation with them directly. You can see in their Twitter streams whether they’re replying to people or not. Be sure that if you start a conversation, it’s with someone who will reply back to you.
  4. Split your times up – This is all very easy stuff, but doing it all in one block per day isn’t the best way to do it. It’s better than nothing, but the preferred method would be to do it at least twice a day. A best practice is to do it first thing in the morning when you’re done checking your morning emails and then again shortly after lunch. You don’t want to do it at the end of the day unless you’ll be checking your stream from home in the evening because you’ll want to be timely with your responses when people engage back at you.

Once you’ve established that you communicate properly through Twitter, you’ll have room to post occasional self-serving links. If all you post is links, your message will get lost in the mix.

 

Post pictures and unlinked text

Twitter has a great filter feature for mobile images. Use it. Before we recommended Instagram but that didn’t work out so well, so Tweeting images directly through the Twitter mobile app works great.

If you use Buffer or any of the other posting tools that upload images directly to Twitter (Hootsuite doesn’t do this, FYI), scheduling images through a PC is another way to get your feed flowing with engaging content. It’s not as good as mobile uploads as people love to see real pictures taken by real people associated with the business, but it’s definitely better than nothing.

Text posts are great as well. They can be sayings, quotes, opinions, or anything that has nothing other than possibly hashtags linking out from the Tweet. This is particularly useful when posting about local area events and asking questions. One note: if you do ask questions designed to get a response from your followers, be sure that you’re available to respond to their answers. Don’t drop a question in the queue and walk away. Again, timeliness is important, even for a business Twitter account.

* * *

Twitter is the one component of social media strategies that has been botched by most over the years. It’s hard to get real followers. It’s harder to get real engagement.

It can, however, prove to be extremely useful if you put the effort into it. Again, and I cannot stress this enough, the effort that’s required to take a Twitter account from decent to great really isn’t that much. It’s for this reason that if you have a little extra time every day, Twitter is a good investment of it.

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99 Social

One of the biggest problems faced when businesses try to use social media as a marketing tool is that there are simply too many social media sites. A day doesn’t go by when I’m not asked about this new site or that old site and whether or not they can be used is marketing. Most can. However, most simply do not have the reach to make them worthwhile. For the majority of businesses, if they stay focused on four current social sites, they’ll have the vast majority of their marketing covered.

Some big sites were excluded. It’s not that Tumblr doesn’t have its place or that Foursquare is useless. It’s that the time and energy necessary to make them stronger is not worth the return on investment. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest are the big dogs right now. They don’t take a ton of time to master and the results are strong compared to the effort put into them.

  • Facebook – This is the only no-brainer out there. If you only use one social media site for your marketing, this is it. From both a social interaction perspective as well as a public relations perspective, Facebook can cover as much as 70% of your social media marketing efforts.
  • Twitter – This is often the hardest for businesses to understand. They look at it, give it a try, and believe that the results aren’t worth the effort. The problem with that argument is that Twitter is still extremely popular and more importantly the time necessary to have a rock-solid Twitter presence is minutes a day at most. Don’t abandon the low-hanging fruit just because the results aren’t apparent. If you use it right, the results will come.
  • Google+ – Even if you don’t believe that Google+ will emerge as a true social media force (it will, but I won’t argue that here), the search engine marketing benefits of building up and maintaining a strong presence on the platform cannot be argued. Few would say they couldn’t use better search results or more traffic from Google. Their social network is one of the ways to improve those results.
  • Pinterest – Just like Twitter, Pinterest falls into the category of low-investment, higher-returns. One of the things that differentiates Pinterest from other social sites is that they’ve embraced business usage more readily than other platforms. Posting and maintaining a quality Pinterest presence can be literally less than a minute a day and many of those who use the platform swear by it.

There’s a common theme here. Effort versus reward. If you measure your returns relative to the amount of effort put into the maintenance, you’ll find that these are the sites that generate the highest level. Used properly, just about any business can benefit from a strong presence on these four social media sites.

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Begging

As social signals continue to rise in prominence when it comes to search engine rankings, there has been a revival in the need for retweets. Google and Bing are assigning a certain level of importance on the sheer organic numbers that are gained when it comes to social sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, and Twitter is the easiest of the numbers for a business to be able to influence quickly. Research is showing that increased engagement on an individual page on a website through social media can improve rankings across the board for the domain.

As such, a day that many of us thought (hoped?) was behind us has gained in prominence again. Today, businesses who do not get a good amount of Twitter activity to their domain must ask for retweets since they are the easiest way to influence search rankings. As a result, it’s time to dust off the old “Rules of Twitterquette” and recall how to make it happen without risking losing followers or effectiveness altogether.

 

A Brief History

There was a time when Twitter was a tremendous traffic generation tool. I recall several occasions when I received thousands of visitors to my various websites simply by tweeting a link and getting it retweeted by a handful of people. Back then, Twitter was only about 5% links. Today, it’s gone in the other direction.

Over time, the need for the retweet faded and in many ways I was pleased by this. You see, I’m not crazy about asking people for anything on social media. If they find value, they’ll retweet it, share it, comment on it, or otherwise engage with the content that I post. If they don’t find value or simply don’t want to interact, that’s fine. Even when it was effective for traffic, I didn’t like asking. It just didn’t seem sincere.

Now, going into 2013, the need is back. We’ve tested the difference between content and entire websites that get very little social interaction versus similar sites that are able to get retweets, Facebook shares, and Google +1s. The differences are dramatic. Since most businesses are not in a position to generate a ton of social signals simply by posting it, the time has come to pull out the best tool in the bag – asking for it.

 

How to Ask

Here are five rules. They aren’t technically rules – ask for retweets in whatever manner you like. I’ve just found these guiding best practices have shown to be effective.

  1. Keep the post mid-length. Short posts do not get retweeted as much as longer posts, but if it’s too long you’ll miss the coveted “mention retweet”. Remember, there are two types of retweets. When people see your posts and push the Retweet button, they are actually posting your Tweet on their feed. Your avatar appears and there are no additional characters required. However, if they are doing the “mention retweet”, they are posting it themselves and adding “RT @0boy” or “Via @0boy” somewhere in the Tweet. If your post even appears to be too long, they’ll probably skip it. Keep your posts over 60 characters but under 110.
  2. Request it sparingly. If you ask for retweets every time you have a link, people will stop doing it. As a general rule, there should be at least five Tweets between each request and no more than one a day if you’re posting more than six times.
  3. Make it universally important. By “important” that doesn’t mean that it needs to be something of a pressing nature. It could even be a link to something frivolous on your website, but it has to have general appeal. Avoid using self-references in the Tweets that you want retweeted. “I” or “we” does not play well when someone who is not you is being asked to say something in their Twitter feed.
  4. Ask the right way. Saying “Please Retweet” or “Please RT” is better than saying “Retweets are appreciated” or “Retweet this”. Be polite but to the point.
  5. Tag it. According to a study by QuickSprout, posts with tags asking for retweets are almost twice as likely to get retweeted. The most popular tag? #Twitter.

In many ways, Twitter’s role in business is changing. It’s not longer as great at direct marketing as it is at communication with current and future customers and clients. The addition of social signals as a search ranking component has brought it back into the realm of internet marketing, but don’t get caught up in the SEO value alone. Twitter still has value in other ways. You just have to be willing to put in the effort to find its value for you.

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I had thought the days were behind us. Call it a hope, but I believed that the majority of businesses who were active on social media had pushed beyond the plague that once filled our feeds - the worthless post. I was wrong.

 

It was while auditing an account that followed numerous car dealers on both Twitter and Facebook that I came across the reality of the situation. There are still plenty - over half from the sampling of several hundred that I examined - that were posting the type of "content" on social media that drives people to unfollow, block, or simply ignore them. Recently I've been posting some advanced business social media tips, but it's time to take a step back and go over one of the basics...

 

If you're going to ask people to do anything at all on social media, whether it's to click on a link, share a post, or engage in any way at all, give them a valid reason to do so.

 

Don't get me wrong. I realize that social media is still new to many. I realize that not everyone is learning the best practices that it takes to make it successful. I was simply taken aback by the numbers of businesses that were making this profile-killing mistake. In the example above (not the worst example, mind you, but after seeing so many this was the one that was closest to the top for a quick screen capture), the dealership is asking people to do something. They want their fans to browse the inventory of a particular new vehicle. The chances of anyone clicking on this link are miniscule compared to the chances that they'll see this post and unfollow the dealership.

 

The same thing is happening on Facebook. In many ways, it's worse because people are much more stingy with clicks that take them away from Facebook than they are with clicks that take them away from Twitter.

This needs to stop...

Give them a reason

There are much better ways for a dealership to use social media than to try to get clicks to the inventory, but if you must do it from time to time, make sure there's something enticing to make it happen. For example, a Tweet might say...

  • The 1st batch of next generation #Mazda6 just rolled off the truck. [link] #SmokinHot even in December!
  • Our biggest sale of 2012 starts next week. Get a head start by browsing the #special inventory [link]
  • New incentives just hit for the #Nissan #Sentra. Claim dibs on yours, #Atlanta! [link]

Social media is about now. If people wanted to browse your inventory, they'd go directly to your website or find the car they're seeking on Google. There's no chance that seeing a Tweet or a Facebook update telling them to click to your inventory for no reason will ever work. Give them a reason.

 

Of course, posting links to inventory is not a best practice. It's something that should be done sparingly (if at all) and only when there's a valid reason to do so. Your goals with social media are many, but two of the basics are (1) improve your branding for future considerations, and (2) catch people in market with something compelling.

 

Compelling. Give them a reason. Otherwise, the seconds it took to post a meaningless update could have been better spent reciting a limerick.

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Over the past couple of months, I've been working on a standard operating procedure for a comprehensive social media marketing service. It has been a while since I had to develop an overarching strategy rather than one that was individualized for a business or organization, so my daily reading of the industry trends and changes has had my eyes bleeding by the time the kids get ready for school. My fingers have bled as well... from making adjustments to the SOP as the industry continues in its unending state of metamorphosis.

 

In the worlds of search marketing, there are needs to stay on top of things. Google and Bing make changes to their algorithms. Consumers make changes in their searching habits. Devices make changes in how they present the data. It's pretty rough trying to keep up with search. However, keeping up with the changes in search is a piece of cake compared to keeping a social marketing service fresh and operating properly.

 

My conclusion in putting together this SOP is simple - keep it general and fluid. It must be allowed to grow and adjust based upon the changes that are made by the social media sites and the users themselves. Here are a few examples of activities that may have been a part of a social media SOP if I made it last week:

  • Post an image to Instagram and have it feed through to Twitter.
  • Sponsor one post a day on Facebook that is business-oriented.
  • Get people to +1 your Google+ business page as well as recent posts.
  • Post to Pinterest three times a day and feed it through to Facebook.

These would have all been valid actions in a standard operating procedure last week. Today, they are all obsolete.

 

Social media moves way too quickly for concrete practices. Any full-service company that wants to run your company's social media needs to demonstrate the ability to stay informed about the maelstrom of changes that happen every week as well as the ability to keep a fluid service that moves with the trends and the changes themselves. If they're offering a social media service that is static, that is using techniques that have been "proven to work for a long time", then they do not understand the very nature of social media and should not be trying to run yours for you.

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Picture the following scene. You're throwing a party. You have even sent out invitations. You have allowed your guests to each bring a +1 or even +2. Fastforward. It's the party. You're standing by the door, casually talking to a friend of yours. Every so often another one of your guests strolls in with one or two people you have never met before. And, you completely ignore them even after they've extended their respective hands to greet you. That party isn't going to last very long. 

When your Twitter account receives new followers, whether it's two or ten, are you ignoring them? Or, are you reciprocating their virtual handshake? It should be custom for any dealership or business to at least thank their newest followers. They have, after all, taken the time to check out your page and click the "Follow" button. You should be grateful that someone cares what you have to say. This may seem like a silly topic to discuss, but it ties into the larger problem that most dealerships face when it comes to social media. The anti-human tweeters, I like to call them. J.D. Rucker recently touched on this (See here: Dealer Should Posts Fewer Links and More Interactions, Text, and Images

It's so simple, yet many fail to do it. When we were children, we were always taught to say "Thank you" upon receiving something from a friend, family member, neighbor, and so forth. On Twitter, it should be no different. It only takes a few seconds to tweet to "@ILOVEFORD123" and say "Thanks for following!! Looking forward to connecting." Depending upon the person, you may not even hear from them ever again. But, that's not the point. The point is that you're building an online community and the evolution of your virtual network starts with a simple handshake. 

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It took listening to my own words in a Twitter conversation for me to realize that I had barely brushed over the most important aspect finding the right times to post on social media for business.

This is Part IV of the series on timing. Please read Part I, Part II, and Part III first.

While engaging with @Activyst, one of @MariSmith's Twitter fans, the ideas surrounding the differences in opinions about the best times to post became clear...

That's how the conversation started, but in my head I took it further. How would time zones affect timing? Audience type clearly affects it, especially when considering local businesses versus worldwide businesses. It's easy to simply say, "test it out," but are there best practices that can streamline the process and come up with conclusions faster? These questions led to these ideas...

 

Establishing a Baseline

Technically speaking, "test" shouldn't be the very first step. You must first analyze what's happening with current posts before trying to improve on them, so analyzing to create a baseline is an essential start. Social media analysis comes in many forms for brands, particularly on Facebook where success can manifest in different ways. Likes, comments, and shares are one measurement. Reach is another, and while it's often affected by the comments, likes, and shares, there are other factors that come into play. Those using Sponsored Posts, for example, may find that their ads perform better at different times than non-sponsored posts.

 

Facebook allows you to look back at the posts that were most popular. If you're using static posting times, it's possible to look back. You will have to count the posts to determine the exact times; for example, if you know you post at 5:30am, 10:30am, and 7:30pm, then you'll have to isolate the three posts during a particular day to know which was posted at what time since Facebook only shows you the date they were posted once it gets beyond 24 hours.

There's good and bad to the way that the Facebook news feed and advertising algorithms work. Because your past influences your future, it's often hard to go back too far to find success because the influencing factors have changed. You have more or fewer fans, you have been removed or added to news feeds, and the way that you posts become popular is in a constant state of change. Still, you'll need to start somewhere.

Once you have an idea of both the type of content that was most popular as well as the times that they were posted, it's time to make your first adjustments and start...

 

Testing

This is the easy part, actually. Start posting at different times and see what works best at which times. Keep track of your results, of course, and keep in mind a few factors:

  • It's not just about times but also days. Posting times differ from day to day, between weekdays and weekends, etc.
  • Take note of external factors. For example, if there are large trade shows in your industry at the time, it can affect what people are seeing and talking about on social media.
  • As long as the external factors are minimal, use a week for each test component. For example, this week you can post at 6:00am and 2:00pm. Next week you can try 5:30am and 2:30pm. Then, the following week you can go back to the initial 6:00am and 2:00pm, but this time you'll flip-flop the post types such as posting images in the morning and links in the afternoon.
  • Avoid analyzing in real time. There's no need to monitor your stats constantly. Wait for the week to be over before looking back at the data.
  • Stay consistent with your use of Sponsored Stories. The test won't work if you're promoting the Monday morning post one week and not promoting it the following week.

This entire process should be ongoing for a while. A month if often not enough to get a real feel for what works. Mix and match. Throw in additional posts every now and then. Most importantly, don't let the testing get in the way of business needs. If you have a big sale in a couple of weeks and you really want to make it successful, post more, advertise more, and make it happen.

 

This isn't very hard. It just takes patience and persistence. It's your business. They're your customers. Focus on your goals and let the data guide you. If it works, stick with it. If it can work better with some adjustments, try them. Analyze your results regularly and you'll have a much better understanding of how to reach the most possible people.

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Native advertising is hot right now, even if nobody seems to know exactly what it isSolve Media, a digital advertising firm, has attempted to solve that problem with this infographic, which takes a stab at a standard definition: "Native advertising refers to a specific mode of monetization that aims to augment user experience by providing value through relevant content delivered in-stream."

Actually, that's pretty good. As the rest of the graphic shows, native advertising is clearly where the money is going in the industry. At the very least, when ad execs are throwing the term around at Christmas parties, they can be on the same page.

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People often ask me how I'm able to stay up on the millions of things that are happening in the world of automotive internet marketing on a daily basis. There are tons of blogs, social networks, and industry websites with enough posts to fill a full day if you plugged them all into an RSS reader. How does an automotive professional with limited time during the day stay ahead and not miss out on the important things?

#AutoMarketing

It's one of the keys to success.

There are content producers galore in the industry. Everyone has an opinion on what to do with search, social, websites, analytics, CRM, classifieds, PPC, banner ads, and every other aspect of internet sales. Throw in the best practices and tips on how to actually work with customers and you have a huge mess. It's not that it's bad. It's that it needs to be curated.

The Twitter hashtag #automarketing is the easiest way to do it. Sure, there's going to be poor content that makes its way into the hashtag. That's inevitable. Many use it as a marketing tool to get their message out regardless of quality. However, the majority of what gets into the hashtag and stays at the top is high-quality.

Here's how it works. People read the blogs, social networks, and industry websites. They find content they like. They share this content on social networks like Twitter. Those who are very active on the internet side of the industry realize that certain hashtags like #AutoMarketing and #CarDealers get fed into Twitter chatter monitor widgets everywhere on the web. Thus, they put in the hashtag whenever they find something of interest.

The more that people curate and share the best content, the more powerful the hashtag becomes. It's not just the industry sites that get posted. Marketing sites that have content pertinent to car dealers often find their content shared with the hashtag as well.

If you want to stay ahead of the curve, this is one of the easiest ways to do it. Just do a search in Twitter for "#AutoMarketing" and you'll find content that curators have enjoyed. You can become a curator yourself by adding it to tweets of important industry posts. The more people that do it, the better the hashtag can become.

We need curation. You can save time by taking advantage of it. You can help by participating.

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This is Part 5 in a 5 part series. Please read the previous posts first or none of this will really make any sense.


There was a promise back in 2007 and 2008 that was made to businesses, particularly those with physical locations. It was clear that there was something about social media sites like MySpace, Delicious, Digg, and the up-and-coming Facebook that could be used to promote business activity in the real world. Fewer people were on it and most businesses either dabbled, waited, or dismissed it, but for those who dove in and really gave it a shot, the promise was that it could eventually become the most important part of online marketing. Some even said that it would replace websites altogether.

Fast forward to today and many of the promises are still on hold. Facebook has emerged as the primary network, something that most who were watching believed would happen, just not to the degree that it has. Despite the broken promises of social media curing all challenges, it is finally, in 2013, ready to become the hub through which the real world and the online word can meet and grow as a result. Some people knew from the start the lesson that is becoming crystal clear today - social media can connect people to businesses, but it's much more effective at connecting people with other people.

That's the key to success in 2013. The sooner that businesses realize that they can and must let their humanity shine on social media, the better their social media strategy will be. Done right, social media can become the venue through which nearly every aspect of business can flow.

It can become the hub. I'll go over how in a bit, but first let's talk about why.

Where's the Value in Focusing on Social?

When I asked a dealership if they would be willing to offer a $5 discount on service to anyone who mentioned on Facebook that they were getting their oil changed or brakes done or whatever at the dealership and were pleased with the experience, she said she would not. When worded differently, it made more sense to her.

"Would you pay a happy service customer $5 to tell five of their friends that they had a good experience getting their service done there and you could verify that they did just that, would you?"

That's the minimum that can happen when people talk about your business on social media. The average Facebook user has 140 friends. Over 70% of these friends are within driving distance. Of those, 47% check their Facebook at least once a day and a post by an active Facebook user will reach 42% of those people. That means 19 local friends saw that Jimbob enjoyed his service and received a $5 discount for telling everyone about it.

Let's take a step further while staying in automotive. If Supreme Honda's Facebook page tells people that they have great deals, nobody will believe it. If Jimbob bought a car at Supreme Honda, felt he received a great deal, and was treated with respect, his friends and family will believe it when he posts that on Facebook. It will register with them. The brand. The name. The fact that Jimbob had a great experience. All of these things leave an imprint on the minds of his friends and family. If they're in the market to buy a Honda or a used car today, they'll likely check out Supreme Honda immediately. If they enter the market in six months, they will be more inclined to check out Supreme Honda whether they remember what made them check it out or not. It's basic psychology, but it works.

All of this is easy to understand once you're seeing it from the right perspective. The challenge is having the willingness to commit with such a murky arena. Social media has not proven itself to a good chunk of businesses and dealers in particular. This is our fault. It's the fault of the vendors out there selling products that didn't work or never achieved the goals. This is changing. In 2013, it must change. There's too much being left on the table. One of my goals in writing this fifth installment was to find real-world examples of car dealers that were truly successful at using social media the right way. I assumed that I would surely find a few. After looking at 229 dealership Facebook pages (yes, I counted them up in my history), I realized that I was mistaken. Nobody is doing it right as far as I'm concerned.

This will change.

How to Make Social the Hub

This isn't a tip. It's not a collection of techniques, tricks, or best practices that a dealership can plug into their current social media strategy and expect success. It's a commitment. It's a paradigm shift. It's about understanding that when you center the online portion of your business around social media and enhance it with offline activities, that you can build a self-perpetuating marketing, branding, and communication system.

This cannot be stressed enough - if you want to be truly successful with social media, you will latch onto an individual at the dealership, preferably the owner or general manager, who can act as the representative of the dealership in all online activities. That doesn't mean that this person has to do all of the work. It means that they have to represent the communication centerpiece for social media, reputation management, and engagement activities such as charitable efforts. The majority of the most successful dealerships around the country have already done this with their advertising. Many do this at the dealership itself, having the "power personality" touch many of the deals and talk to a lot of the customers. This needs to translate over to social media as well.

You're building a local celebrity. You're branding the way that people crave in today's uber-social world, with real people and actual communication back and forth. It's where social media's power is derived. It's where the dealership's next level of success can be achieved.

Once this commitment is made and the power personality is selected, it's time to get them out to the social world. They should (through a representative managing the accounts) touch as many people as possible. They should be on videos, at events, participating in discussions, replying to reviews, and expressing opinions that align with the dealership but that add humanity to the way the dealership is perceived. People want to talk to other people. They want to interact with people who have power. They want to be heard, to be made to feel special, and to know that their actions are reaching the highest levels.

At this point, it's time for discussion. I have ideas about how this can best be accomplished, but upon learning that finding real life examples was a challenge, I decided to hold my specific recommendations for now and let the conversation center around the concept itself. What can dealerships do to truly become successful on social media through these power accounts? How can someone be truly elevated to the point that they are online and offline celebrities in the local area? What are some ways that this can be leveraged?

Let's talk.

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There are two truly valid ways to post on social media. It depends on the personality, goals, and bandwidth available within your business. Both have pros and cons. Both have chances of success and failure.

This is Part III of the series on timing. Please read Part I and Part II first.

Determining which way you'd like to go will guide your posting schedule immensely. We will post something in the future that goes into more details about each individual posting personality, but here's a quick overview of them:

 

The Business-Only Personality

It's a little surprising that more businesses haven't adopted this style. It's likely that a "guru" or two has spread the word that you can't only focus on business if you want to be successful on social media. This simply isn't true.

 

The business-only personality type will do just as the name says: stick to business. They should post infrequently, perhaps 2-4 times a week, and support their posts with ads on Facebook. Twitter, Google+, and the other social networks cannot benefit from ad support and are likely only seen occasionally in feeds and mostly as a destination, i.e. when someone visits the business website and then follows links to Twitter, Pinterest, G+, etc.

 

This is effective in one scenario and safe in another scenario. In the scenario where a business has established a strong fan base of customers, prospects, and industry people, the business-only personality can be extremely effective. It doesn't flood people's news feeds with daily posts that can often encourage them to unlike, remove from the news feed, or report as spam. Because there is a reduced chance of getting an EdgeRank boost (though a case could be made that it can actually improve the chances, but that's for a different debate), it is basically a requirement to support the posts through Facebook ads. As long as the content is useful, not spammy, and relevant to fans, a sustained Sponsored Stories strategy can work very nicely.

 

Fan growth is often slowed as a result of this type of strategy, but there's an upside. If a business is using their page for a particular business-related focus such as a car dealership that posts social-media-only service specials weekly, the quality of the fans can be stronger.

 

The other scenario where this strategy works well is for the "safe" social media business type. Those who are either not bought into social media as a marketing tool or who do not have the time or resources to manage it properly can use this personality type to keep a strong presence without putting much effort into it. It's not a growth strategy. It's a "checkbox" strategy. The good part is that it's safe. As long as the page doesn't go dormant, those who are somehow able to stumble upon the accounts will not be turned off by what they find.

 

The Engaging Personality

This is much more common by businesses that are trying to use social media for branding, marketing, and communication. It's also the more botched approach. If there's only one piece of advice that businesses get from this article, it's that you don't have to rely on internet memes and cat pictures to be engaging. If you're a car dealership, you should be posting about cars. Period. Pictures of cars, stories about cars, useful information about cars... stay within the industry. There are plenty of engaging pictures, interesting pieces of information, and personal business anecdotal stories that can be told to stay focused on your industry without being "all business".

 

For local businesses, there's another realm that help them to stay on topic without diving into memes to stay interesting: the local area itself. A Seattle business can occasionally post images of the Space Needle, for example. Nothing wrong with that to "mix it up" but don't rely on these types of posts. Stay relevant as much as possible.

 

The engaging personality type on social media strives to be a part of the conversations within their market. They post daily, often more than once a day, and do so in order to get more people to like and interact with their content. This style relies on the interesting aspects of their business to feed content to their social profiles in order to set up the "money posts" that they put up from time to time. The money posts are those ones with practical business applications whether it's to directly promote and event or to highlight a benefit of their business.

 

By engaging with the various communities, they are increasing the exposure of their money posts. On Facebook, for example, the goal is to play the EdgeRank game. In other words, be as interesting as possible throughout the week in order to make certain that the important posts get maximum exposure. On Facebook and Google+, a business can increase the exposure of their money posts by posting content ahead of it that their fans like, comment about, and share.

 

This is viewed by many as the free technique. In other words, if you go with this strategy, the need for Facebook ads is alleviated. That's not true. The Facebook advertising strategy for the engagement personality is different from the strategy for the business-only personality, but that doesn't mean that you don't have to spend any money at all. The way that Facebook pages appear (or don't appear) in fans' news feeds makes advertising a necessity regardless of personality type. The difference is in how much and how often.

 

Scheduling Based Upon Personality

Now that we have an understanding of the personality types, how does this affect scheduling?

Business-Only:

  • Schedule consistently from week to week. If you have a coupon or offer that comes out weekly, it should be scheduled at the exact same time every week.
  • Take advantage of the social media sweet spots that we described in Part I.
  • Posts about events should be posted well-ahead of the event itself. Without the benefit of engagement, you'll want to maximize exposure by giving everyone a heads up.

Engagement:
  • Be sure that there's a 24-hour gap between image posts sent from the same platform on Facebook. For example, if you post images on Buffer, post them at the same time every day. This prevents "batching" of the posts into unlikable albums.
  • Take into account the types of posts and which times to post them. Part II of this series really dives into managing from an engagement personality perspective.
  • Ramp up event posts the sooner you get to them. If you know you're having a big sale in two weeks, post every other day about it the week before, then daily the week of the event.

As with all strategies, there are different variations based upon your goals. Play around with it. Post more. Post less. Find the personality type that works best for your business and stick with it. The biggest mistake you can make (other than abandoning social media altogether) is to continuously change strategies without reason. With major changes in the platform being the exception, try to avoid constant changes. Find what works for you and stick with it.
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It was the 2011 Driving Sales Executive Summit when I was asked by Joe Webb to participate in a debate about Twitter followers. I had around 100,000 followers at the time and he wanted me to argue for the side of quantity being more important than quality. This made perfect sense except for one fact: I don't believe in quantity being a more important factor than quality. I did back in 2008 when Twitter was bright and shiny and "churning" for Twitter followers was a common technique, but those days are way behind us.

 

Today, size still matters. It's not the total size that counts but the size of your engaged audience. Under most circumstances, I hate using buzzwords like "engagement" but it fits perfectly here. Your engaged audience is all that matters from a business perspective.

 

Let's look at a handful of social networks for examples of how quantity and quality fit into the models for marketing in each. We'll focus on three areas: fan base (likes and followers), posting frequency, and interactions with others.

On Facebook

This is the big daddy in social media and deserves to be up top.

  • Fan Base - This is the most important component when discussing quality versus quantity, particularly for localized businesses. National and worldwide brands do not have to worry about it as much, but when you're promoting a local car dealership, you actually want fewer fans that are outside of your area. An ideal Facebook page fan base would be comprised entirely of locals, of people who would be willing to drive to the store. I'll take 500 local fans over 10,000 fans spread out any day, even if 500 of those spread out fans are local. Why? It's all about demographic and advertising. Facebook ads are extremely powerful and pages that are loaded with irrelevant fans actually hurts your ability to market to the locals. It drives up expenses and can make you look like a cheater to those who see your page and wonder why so many people outside of your area seem to like your page.
  • Posting Frequency - There are two different strategies here. On one side of the spectrum, you have the business-only Facebook strategy that puts up 2 or 3 posts a week all related to business and advances these through Facebook ads. EdgeRank will not be favorable to this strategy, but EdgeRank goes out the window with proper advertising in place. The other side of the coin is to go after 1-3 posts a day (or more) with the hope of being a part of the conversation on a daily basis. This works fine as well. The pages that fail are the ones that are posting constantly. This becomes noise and forces people to hide you from their news feeds. They aren't here to see a bunch of posts from businesses. They came to Facebook to see little Timmy sliding into third base. Don't overpost.
  • Interactions - Again, quality is better than quantity here, but it's less of an issue on Facebook. If you're posting comments, liking, and sharing the posts of other pages regularly but not too much, you'll be fine. The biggest challenge I've seen is in having people log in as their Facebook pages and actually interact. Most are willing to comment on their own posts when people respond to them, but it goes deeper, or at least it should.

On Twitter

The biggest problem that most businesses face with Twitter is automation.

  • Fan Base - I've seen accounts with 1000 avid and engaged followers that have more power and get more interactions than accounts with 250k followers. This is a big problem, the ease in which people can buy fake followers to bump up their numbers. It's a joke, really. Focusing on getting real people who are active on Twitter to follow your account is gold.
  • Posting Frequency - It's not really possible to overpost on Twitter. Posting too many at once is a challenge because flooding followers' feeds will make them unfollow you, but it's possible to get a ton of posts out there every day without making people too upset. However, automated posting tools such as RSS posters or Facebook post integration is a mistake. On some of the accounts I manage, I post over 20 times a day, but every single post is done manually. I schedule them - I'm not on Twitter 24/7 - but everything I schedule is manually vetted. More importantly, they're all hand-crafted. You can get more out of a properly written Tweet than five RSS-fed Tweets any day.
  • Interactions - I'm rude. I don't reply to every single person who Tweets at me or retweets me. It's not because I don't appreciate the interactions. It's because I don't want to flood my followers' feeds with a bunch of "Thanks for the Retweet" posts. As a general rule, interact with those who put in the effort. In other words, you don't have to talk to everyone who pushed the retweet button, but if they typed something specifically at you or added their two cents to a conversation, it's best to interact right back at them. Keep it fresh and don't talk to spammers.

On Pinterest

The newest big hotness in social media is making a splash on the business side. As a result, there is a need to understand the quality versus quantity aspect as it stands now. This can change as the site continues to grow, but for now here are some best practices.

  • Fan Base - For businesses, this is the only social network where size really does make a big difference. You can still be effective without a ton of followers, but they definitely help. Just like with Twitter, there are buying services available that let you bump up your numbers. Just like with Twitter, this is a terrible idea. You can grow your following by posting regularly, tagging appropriately, and interacting with the accounts that are also posting content that you like.
  • Posting Frequency - The first thing I do when I see my Pinterest page flooded with someone else's posts is to unfollow them. The elegant way in which Pinterest displays their feed makes it easy to spot the overposters. To me, the magic number is 10 a day if you can spread it out and no more than five at a time, but some would say you can post more in a day but should post less at a time. Make your choice based upon your schedule; if you can log in and post three or four times a day, post 1-3 at a time. If you're logging in once a day, get 3-5 out there during your Pinterest session.
  • Interactions - Pinterest and Tumblr are the social networks where it's okay to operate strictly from an interaction perspective. Twitter is as well when used strictly as a communication tool, but unless a business is truly dialed in and has integrated their Twitter into their standard operating procedures, they'll get more benefit by proactively engaging. Pinterest and Tumblr are sharing machines, so even if you never post your own original content, you can still be successful by simply being a strong curator. The benefit here is that it's easier to get engagement when you're working with other people's content.

This doesn't mean that having no friends, followers, and fans is a good idea on any social network. It simply means don't focus on size. Stay true to keeping things rolling along in the right direction and the right followers will find you.
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Are you taking advantage of Social Media for Referrals?

 

Have you ever looked up your dealership at www.socialmention.com? If you have never done this, pause and take a moment to do so now. Now that you have looked up your dealership does it come up with having no strength, no results, or even worse no results showed at all for your dealership? Now ask yourself this question. How can I get my fans on Facebook, Twiiter, and Google+ to share my message and their experiences on their Social Media sites?

 

I am going to give you a few ideas to get you started and well on your way to pulling in referral business from customers Social Media sites.

 

Create cool content that your customers will want to share.

 

There are a plethora of website providers that dealers use to convey their inventory, service department, parts department, and body shop, but sometimes we fall into the category of having just one sales page or product information after another. If you look at your website and it falls into this category, then its time to look into developing some cool content that your customers will be interested in and want to share with their friends online. The following is two types of cool content that will drive an incredible amount of traffic and social mentions, which in-turn you can use to get referrals.

 

Inforgraphics: Infographics are simply the the presentation of statistics and information in a visually appealing manner, and any dealer has the ability to design one fairly quickly with the help of a such websites like www.piktochart.com. I guarantee your customers will find very interesting and will want to share them on their Social Media sites. Here is a good example of one that I designed last night that a dealer could use to pull in referrals.

 This is a simple infographic that I put together to show you how you could design one quickly and use to pull in referrals. I have seen others that do include more in depth information and this is a good example of what I am talking about.

Videos: Everyone knows how important video has become, so I don’t want to sound like a broken record. I do however want to ask you if you are developing videos that your customers want to share. People love viral videos, so you may want to think about a video that your sales staff can put together that show your customers that even though you’re a car dealership you can have fun too.  Here is a link to a good example of the good people down at Lost Pines Toyota having a good time with a customer who just bought anToyota Tundra. .https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjlRts82rF8

 

 

Hold a social media contest.

 

Contests are another way to get people talking about your dealership. It can be something as simple as a weekly contest where a random Twitter user who tweets a particular dealership special to their followers can win a free product. You want to do a more elaborate contest using Facebook where fans can win a major prize by liking your page and sharing your content with their friends.

 

Whatever you decide to do for a contest, the key is to make sure that the prize will be relevant to your customers. Dealers are all the time giving away TV’s, but the real question is where your fans/followers will stick around after the contest ends.

 

If you want to increase referrals about your dealership and increase sales in the process, give away your own product! Think about it-if a dealership gives away a free year of service for example and they generate enough buzz with their social networks, then people who didn’t win the free year of service will be so curious about your dealership they will be more apt to come down to your dealership to see what all the buzz is about.

 

It’s all about planting the seed of “What if I was to win this? That sparks more talk and more sales!

 

You can increase mentions about your business through Foursquare.

 

Each and ever dealer has a physical location so why not take advantage of the Foursquare check-ins. As people check-in to your dealership, there is a good chance that they will be sharing your business with their friends on Twitter and Facebook simultaneously.

 

That kind of buzz can really draw in more new customers through your dealerships door, especially if you tie in some great discounts for the customers that check-in!

 

Always update your dealerships social profiles with live updates.

 

Do you ever wonder why more people talk about you on Facebook over Twitter? Is your Twitter feed just regurgitating your Facebook updates? That’s probably the reason why. Customers will follow your dealership on your social networks if you post unique and valuable updates. So if you want your customers to talk about your dealership on Twitter, then start tweeting unique messages. The same goes for Facebook, Google+, and Pinterest.

 

What can you update your social networks about that will get your customers engages? Again, just like content development, you have to think about your target audience and what they would be interested in. Don’t just update your networks with your latest cars or trucks-post updates about your industry. You can also get important feedback from your customers by asking them questions. You might ask them what they want to see from your dealership in regards to your posts.

 

Implement

 

Now it is your turn to re-evaluate the content that you are posting on your social networks. If your content is not creating mentions and pulling in referrals, maybe its time to change what you are doing and implement some of the points that I have mentioned today.

 

Jason Parman

 

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Using Tools to Post Insights at the Right Times

A mistake that many make on social media is that they post things in batches. Rather than spread out the posts throughout the day, they load everything up at once. This poses a challenge for both businesses and individuals because doing so will (a) annoy your fans and followers as you "flood" their feeds with posts, (b) limit the potential audience since only a portion of your fans and followers are monitoring social media at any particular time during the day, and (c) reduce the overall exposure as you make EdgeRank and other algorithms "mad" with your batches of posts.

One way to avoid this is to use scheduling tools such as Buffer, Hootsuite, and, of course, KPA Local Engage.

As humans, we often operate in batches. When we surf the web, we usually do so in longer stretches rather than in bits and pieces throughout the day. Unfortunately, that means that our engagement on social media is similarly batched.

Here's how to fix it:

 

Images

We all come across images that we want to share on social media. For sites like Facebook, you really don't want to post more than one an hour and probably no more than 4 or 5 a day. You have a couple of options to build your library of images to post.

I save the images in folders. Call me old school but I like housing the images locally (as well as through Dropbox) and sifting through them when I'm ready to post.

Another way to do it is to create an images folder in your bookmarks. Just save the link that contains the image and you can go through and post it later. Either way, you'll probably want to purge the images once they're posted - nobody likes seeing the same image twice. I do keep some of the best "timeless" images in an archive folder and include the date that I posted it in the file name. One such image that I posted in the past is the one shown above - Smokey and the Bandit is as timeless as it gets.

 

Thoughts

I'm a terrible mobile typist. Blame it on the fat fingers. As a result, I hate posting long status updates through mobile devices. If it's not an "in the moment" post, I use the voice recorder on my phone to save thoughts as they come to me. A couple of times a week I go through and transcribe these posts into my scheduling tools and spread them out throughout the day.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I'm not a big fan of post dropping. On all of the networks other than Twitter, I schedule posts during times when I'm going to be online whenever possible. I like to be able to respond to people who comment on the posts, so just because it's scheduled doesn't mean I'm not watching.

Some posts are too timely for this method, of course, in which case I'll go ahead and struggle through my fat-finger syndrome to get them posted immediately.

 

Links

For the most part, I find my links early in the morning and schedule them throughout the day. Again, the timely rule applies; you don't want to schedule breaking news.

Occasionally, there are links that come along that are important enough to save and post in the future. These are usually resource links. For example, if you find a video that describes several tips and tricks on SYNC, you wouldn't necessarily just want to post it once. With a link like that, I would save it and post it again and again for as long as it was still valid. I've actually scheduled something weeks ahead of time knowing that it's valuable today and will still be relevant in 2 months.

* * *

As I've said in the past, I'm not a fan of using tools to completely automate your social media engagement, but if you use them properly you can maximize your exposure by posting the right content at the right times.

Hat Tip to Adam Ross for inspiring this post.

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Time to Clean off Twitter

There have been debates in the past about whether or not it's good for businesses to follow everyone who follows them. The old way of thinking (for some, including me) was that if they take the time to follow you, that you should be courteous and return the favor.

I switched my way of thinking in 2009 but for many it continued. Many today still feel that way. It's no longer the right way to work with your Twitter account regardless of what business you're in. Here's why:

So Much Spam

Twitter has always been loaded with spam ever since the days of Ashton Kutcher trying to get to 1 million followers. Once it hit the mainstream the spammers saw an opportunity and they've seized it ever since. Twitter does what they can but with half a million users, the spammers and bots are impossible to keep down without damaging real accounts.

They are often easy to spot and if you are already only following important and relevant people, vetting your new followers is easy. If you follow too many people, it's time to start vetting. Unfortunately, this can be a manual process, but it's worth it.

Start Vetting if the Volume is Low Enough

For those with under 2000 followers, vetting them is something that can be done a little at a time every day until you're done. This is still tedious but if you commit to check out 100 Twitter accounts a day, you'll be done in a month (assuming you end up skipping some days).

It's not as hard as it sounds. If you're at least a little active on Twitter you'll be able to recognize many accounts by name. No need to check them out - just whitelist them and move on. Others will be obvious spammers based upon their name, avatar, or both.

The others will need to be opened manually and checked out. Here's what you're looking for:

  • Autoposters: If they are simply using their Twitter account as an RSS feed, you won't see any @replies from them. These are relatively worthless to follow as they aren't going to engage with you or anyone else.
  • Overposters: To some, this isn't a problem. For me, I can't stand following someone who Tweets hundreds of times a day. Nobody's life is that interesting to me and I don't need their posts flooding my stream.
  • Inactives: It doesn't apply to everyone and some would say that following someone who posts 5 times a year is harmless because they aren't filling up your feed, but there's something that can be said about selectivity. As you can see by the @TKCarsitesInc following, we've knocked it down to where we're only following 700 accounts versus being followed by 19k.
  • Spammers and Bots: You'll be able to tell the difference.

Get it down to a manageable number and your feed will be useful, your account will look good, and Twitter can be useful.

But I Followed Thousands!

There is a major challenge facing some Twitter accounts. If you have an account that's simply too large to go through manually, you'll have to start from the bottom up.

It's impractical to think that you can vet tens of thousands of accounts. If, like the TK Carsites account, you followed over 10k (or over 2k for that matter), then it's easier to simply unfollow everyone and refollow the important accounts.

To do this, you'll first want to make a list. If you're using lists on Twitter or other tools like Tweetdeck, this is easier. You've already identified the people you definitely want to follow so unfollowing everyone and refollowing them is a piece of cake.

If you don't have lists, make one. Twitter itself has a decent List option, so build your list of accounts that you want to follow. Then, send out a message to all of your followers letting them know you're about to unfollow everyone.

"Hey everyone. I'm purging my list and following everyone I really know. If I unfollow you, please send me a reply and I will refollow you."

Now, it's time to unfollow. I use JustUnfollow. It's not free, but Twitter is very picky about following and unfollowing, requiring a direct click to do the action. They cut off any programs that allow you to bulk follow or unfollow without individual clicks on each account, but JustUnfollow has the easiest interface that allows you to click straight down the line and unfollow hundreds per minute depending on how fast your index finger can hit the mouse button.

Once you make it through the list, add everyone back that you really want to follow. Then, Twitter gets easy. It will help you by recommending other similar people you might want to follow. By having an accurate following, Twitter can help you find others.

When you're done with the process, the doors to using Twitter as an actual communication and marketing tool swing wide open.

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Twitter Birds

Twitter is not a challenge for most car dealers. It's pretty easy be above average as a dealership because most of your competitors aren't doing it at all. Getting to the next level isn't that hard, either, as long as you apply some basic strategies.

Hashtags are one such strategy.

In the video below, we discuss how to apply Twitter hashtags to your Tweets and posts in order to improve their exposure and enhance your messaging. There are more strategies that we'll discuss soon that are much more advanced, but starting with the basics is often enough to take a Twitter account from above average to really good.

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I want to preface this article by saying this is merely an opinion article. No Social media statistics in this one!  Would love everyone's feedback, though!

"Are you Still Underestimating the Intelligence of Your Social Network?" It's an interesting question. By "Social Network", I'm not simply referring to sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Tumblr, or even Pinterest. Instead, what I mean is your actual network. The network of fans and followers on those aforementioned sites.

Here's the bottom line: If you're still assuming your "social network (Fans & Followers)" is unfamiliar with the world of social media, how it operates, you better think again. If your social media strategy consists of posting car specials (Lease, Finance, Used/New) onto your Facebook page every single day, then you might need to head back to Square One. In my experience, handling the social media accounts for all of Dealer Synergy's clients, I've come to realize that Mr. and Mrs. Smith, with a huge family and full time jobs, aren't going to your page to see what your latest specials are. If they wanted that intel, they'd head to your website or give your internet department a call. They are heading to your page to connect. To check out what cool stuff you're posting. Perhaps, they purchased a car from you or their in-law did. There's a plethora of reasons that people are checking out your Facebook page. Regardless, if you continue to "spam" your network with ads, you're going to drive them away, and chances are they may not come back.

As most of us know (at least I hope!), Social media isn't a fad. People are using social media for all different reasons. Some may use it for a release from everyday life. Others use it to connect with long lost friends & family. And, then there are those who create a Facebook or Twitter account to offer praise (or a complaint) for a business (i.e. your dealership).

Subsequently, if Mr. Joe Smith posts something negative onto your Facebook page after a bad experience at your dealership and your social media prerogative is to keep posting car specials, then Mr. Smith will be sure to tell his friends not to even bother to go to your page, telling them it's run by a emotionless robot. This is counterproductive, obviously. The ultimate purpose of creating a Facebook or Twitter account is to build your brand, as well as work on community and local outreach.

So, are you underestimating the intellingence and the know withal of your social community?

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Do You Have Fake Twitter Followers?

Do You Have Fake Twitter Followers?

Status People, a social media company, created a new social tool that apparently is able to spot out both "fake" followers as well as "inactive" followers

They stated the reason for creating the tool in their blog:

The number of people buying fake followers on Twitter to look more legitmate is a growing problem. Essentially people are trying to game the system and convince people they have social legitimacy when they don't. They are Fakers and they are undermining Twitter. 

 

Of course any third party app always has its complications, but our social team thought this one was pretty cool.

 

What are your results?

 

 

Source - http://www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com/profiles/blog/show?id=1970539%3ABlogPost%3A407314&xgs=1&xg_source=msg_share_post&page=1#first_comment

 

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