NADA Includes SOCIALDEALER in Press Conference for 2012 Convention

LAS VEGAS (Jan. 17, 2012) – The National Automobile Dealers Association announced today the schedule for 21 press conferences at its upcoming Convention and Expo in Las Vegas, which runs Feb. 3 to 6.

All press conferences last 45 minutes and will be held in rooms 233 and 235 in the North Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

SOCIALDEALER has been included in that select list and our press conference will be on Monday, February 6, from 10:00 – 10:45 a.m. Room N233. To see a complete list of press conferences for NADA, click here

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Are Off-Peak Times Better For Social Media Interactions?

In Dan Zarrella’s Article “How To Use Contra-Competitive Timing for More ReTweets, Likes, Comments and Clicks“, Dan makes the observation that less-popular days (off-peak times) for social media updates are the most successful for getting viewer interactions (such as ReTweets and Likes). Dan also includes a nicely-designed infographic to illustrate his observations.

The following information contains our response to the article which brings to light how this observation should be applied to a company’s social media update scheduling and marketing agenda.

“Very interesting points made in this article, Dan. It brings to light a new question… “If marketers identify this new trend that suggests weekends and other unpopular posting days are days in which posts are competing less for attention (therefore more likely to be viewed and interacted with by viewers), will they (marketers) then adjust their social media posting schedules to those days? And in doing so, will more popular posting days (Mon-Fri) become less popular?

The conundrum is such that when Mon-Fri become less popular, your observation in this article becomes an endless tail-chase where marketers are constantly shifting their updates to days in which they feel their posts will have the least competition for views. Today it is the weekends. Next week it may be the weekdays. Then it may shift back to the weekends.

I believe that it is simply best to supplement your current social media marketing update schedules to include peak hours on the weekends. I believe it may be an interesting study to identify what types of posts generate user interactions and then base that on a study of peak hour performance throughout the week.

For example, If a social media marketer’s update schedule contains entertaining posts (videos, photos, and other less sales-oriented types of posts) and informative posts (blog articles, links to OEM reports, promotions, etc), it becomes a question of when and in what quantity to distribute either of those types to gain maximum viewer interaction.

I found this article helpful to analyze Tweets to identify times for maximum visibility http://mashable.com/2011/10/28/best-time-to-tweet/

In conclusion, Social Media never sleeps, and each user’s audience may differ significantly from one company to the next. Do your own studies, test different types of posts, test different times and form your own conclusions. Trends will always shift based on a wide variety of factors. In order to be successful, you have to be up-to-date with technology and have access to the tools that will keep your company relevant in the eyes of your customers.

That’s what we do over here at SOCIALDEALER – http://socialdealer.com. We’re constantly finding new ways to help automotive dealers be more successful with their social media marketing efforts.

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That Negative Review Can Bite Into Your SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a staple in the majority of automotive dealers’ marketing budgets for 2012. The industry has fully embraced the Internet, so logically dealers are investing additional money in search engine rankings to get their websites seen as much as possible.  However, Social Media and Web 2.0 have changed the landscape, specifically in the way sites like Google displays search results.  Whereas at one time search results displayed a website, and other websites linked to the same content, now search results include a rating tied to customer reviews.  Online reviews have become a powerful force in the car buying process.  According to BusinessWeek, 70 percent of consumers now consult reviews before purchasing.

In our market, I’ve seen dealers spend thousands of dollars on SEO, only to have 2 and 2.5 star ratings displayed on page one of Yelp results.  A number one or two position on the first page of Google does no good when it also displays a worse star rating than the competition.  This simply tells the potential car buyers to look elsewhere.  An online reputation can affect whether your monthly SEO investment is being wasted, or generating value for the dealership.

SEO is a continuously changing field, and now the SEP landscape has changed again to incorporate Social Media content.  Here are two examples:

  1. In data from Socialnomics, it was reported that 25 percent of search results for the top 20 brands are links to user-generated content.
  1. Google announced in 2011 that it looks at how reputable a person is on Twitter and uses that information in their search rankings, where previously, Google did not take this into account.

The same holds true for Search Engine Marketing (SEM). The higher number of reviews you have, the higher your click thru rate and conversion rate.  Multiple studies show increases of 10 to-20 percent depending on the total number of reviews and average score.

Social Media will continue to grow and soon will infiltrate all aspects of an Internet marketing plan.  Dealers who want to effectively market their dealerships online will be forced to include managing their reputation into that strategy or they will not succeed.

So what to do?

1) First and foremost, manage your reputation online.   If your average rating does not stand up to your competition, cut back on SEO until it does.

2) Track the number of reviews and your average score on all the major review sites.

3) Handle negative reviews as soon as possible and generate more positive reviews by asking your customers to rate you on review sites, in order to get your average rating up.

4) Monitor what is being said about your dealership outside of review sites – what are customers saying about you on Facebook, Twitter and blogs?

5) Employ software solutions that can help you manage all of this. Assign someone in the dealership to take responsibility for managing your reputation, and track your trends over time.

What are you doing to increase positive reviews in your dealership?

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Happy New Year from SOCIALDEALER

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The Viral Potential of Social Media

There has been a lot of discussion lately with Automotive Dealers about building fans in Social Media.  We have long taken the stance that it is the quality of fans that is critical for success, not the quantity.  The top priority for an auto dealer should be to build their number of in-market fans and followers.  Not only do in-market fans have the potential to become a customer, but their social network is going to be concentrated around where they live.  So if they live in your market, so do the majority of their friends.  This means there is a far greater chance your content will be relevant to their audience, and so they will be more likely to share or re-tweet your content.  Since your fans’ friends tend to be in your market, their friends (friends of friends of fans) will also tend to be within your market, again, meaning a better opportunity for sharing relevant content. This is where the viral effect of social media really comes into play.  Your content posts to even a small, local, quality audience can have a large effect, because it’s not simply the size of your audience that affects your reach, but the size of your local audiences’ reach beyond your immediate audience.

To illustrate with a quick example: For one of our new full service automotive clients, we designed and posted a service coupon.  Within 24 hours the coupon had been clicked on 390 times.  Why is this remarkable?  Because the combined audience for this dealer, between Fans and Followers, was less than 250 people.  Getting a click thru rate in the low single digits is seen as very good – but let’s say we did really well, and got 10% of the people who saw the coupon to click on it.  With 390 clicks at a 10% click thru rate, that is 3900 people who viewed the coupon, but their audience is only 250 – That is a 15 times increase in their social reach.  How does this happen?  Sharing. People share relevant, interesting content with their friends and family. Compare that to a dealer who has an audience of 3000 fans and followers, except these fans and followers are all over the world.  Since most of these people will be out of market, a local coupon is neither interesting nor relevant.  So what happens next?  No clicking, no sharing, and no new customers.  Dealers who have this large fragmented audience only see clicks and sharing when they post generic content, such as a photo of a polar bear.  While the polar bear may be cute, and may incite some fans to click or share, we have yet to see any affect on sales.  So what auto dealers need to ask themselves, is their social media goal to entertain the world with pictures of animals in nature, or developing new customers to make their dealership more successful?

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Follow the Leader Interview with Joe Castle

Joe Castle, Founder & CEO of SOCIALDEALER was interviewed by Automotive Digest as part of their Follow the Leader Series

Joe Castle discussed SOCIALDEALER’s mission of leveraging Social Media to develop tools and provide innovative solutions to the automotive industry that promote the value of marketing brands and products.  Read the Interview: http://www.automotivedigest.com/content/displayLeadersSingle.aspx?l=34

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5 Companies that are Rocking Social Media

Thanks to Scott Monty at Ford for sharing the infographic


Created by Voltier Digital for ScottMonty.com

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Happy Holidays from SOCIALDEALER

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Happy Thanksgiving from SOCIALDEALER

AutoSuccess has posted a podcast interview with Joe Castle on how to convert your traditional dealership into a digital dealership

Listen Now

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How to Become a Digital Dealer

AutoSuccess has posted a live podcast of an interview with our CEO Joe Castle.  Joe discusses how he converted his traditional dealerships into digital dealerships, and transforming them into profitable, growing businesses.

Listen in to see how you can change your business model.

Featured on http://www.autosuccesspodcast.com or you can go directly to the podcast here: http://bit.ly/tqKz04.  Let us know what you think.

 

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Joe Russo 1964 – 2011

It is with great sadness that we are posting today that Joe Russo, SOCIALDEALER’s Co-founder and President, passed away on Monday, November 14, 2011 at the age of 47.   Joe lived in Oak Lawn, Illinois. Joe Russo and Joe Castle partnered together back in 2007 to begin the venture that would become SOCIALDEALER.

Joe was instrumental in not only getting SOCIALDEALER started, but in developing our ideas, strategies and partnerships. He made the employees feel welcome from day one, and inspired them to all work to make our company more successful.

Joe included inspirational quotes as taglines in his emails, the most recent in my inbox was a quote from Guy Kawasaki, “The best reason to start an organization is to make meaning – to create a product or service to make the world a better place.”  Joe loved what he did at SOCIALDEALER, and we know he truly enjoyed launching SOCIALDEALER with the goal of making the world a better place – both for the employees who work here and the customers we serve.  We will miss his talents and enthusiasm.

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SOCIALDEALER is now on Google+

SOCIALDEALER is now on Google+

SOCIALDEALER
on Google+
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How To Promote Your Good Reviews

Positive reviews left by happy, satisfied customers can have a strong influence over potential customers. You should take advantage of these by posting every 4 or 5 star review you receive to your social sites. Using a Social Media Marketing platform such as SOCIALDEALER, this can be accomplished with the single click of a button using the Publish function. Continue reading

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SOCIALDEALER welcomes Rick Dijamco

SOCIAL DEALER is pleased to announce the addition of Rick Dijamco as a new Sales Executive in New Jersey and surrounding north-eastern states. Rick’s experience includes working in  eCommerce, Sales, Account Management, CRM Software, Software Consulting, Sales,  and Sales Training / Consulting.
Rick is dedicated to give one hundred percent to improve the sales and profitability of a company. As a team player, Rick has increased client retention and maximized sales by analyzing the current market situation to best position a company’s products. Rick makes it a priority to develop a close relationship with by offering them the very best customer service. Welcome to the team Rick!

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SOCIALDEALER integrates with DealerRater API

SOCIALDEALER is pleased to announce that the DealerRater API is being integrated into the SOCIALDEALER platform. Automotive dealers who use SOCIALDEALER will be able to access reviews from DealerRater once they become a DealerRater Certified Dealer.  The DealerRater Certified Dealer program is a certification program and reputation management tool that provides auto dealers the opportunity to monitor, manage and leverage access to consumer reviews posted on DealerRater’s web site. Once a dealer completes the certification application process, SOCIALDEALER will begin to track reviews in the platform and link to DealerRater to manage those reviews. Automotive dealers can apply for DealerRater certification on their website at: DealerRater. Reviews will begin to appear once an application has been processed.

SOCIALDEALER has long promoted the benefits of Automotive Dealers monitoring and controlling their reputation. Our Reputation Manager is continually being enhanced, making it easier to monitor and manage your brand.  Our Reputation Manager section includes the ability to monitor your average rating from the top review websites and enables dealers to manage their reputation from within one central platform. SOCIALDEALER provides ratings and reviews from other top sources such as Google, Yelp, Yahoo, Yelp, Car Dealer Reviews and Edmunds.com.  The Reputation Manager includes tools for Competitive Analysis and Brand Monitoring as well. SOCIALDEAER also provides auto dealers access to consumer generated content that references their dealership outside of the normal review sites. Complete information on SOCIALDEALER and the Automotive Social Media Management platform can be found at link www.socialdealer.com

SOCIALDEALER is a business-to-business platform for social media management, measurement and marketing. SOCIALDEALER sells their social media management platform to OEM’s, individual and franchise car dealerships throughout the United States and European countries.

Customers can choose self-managed (DIY) or full-serviced package to monitor all of their marketing and sales efforts across social media platforms. Solutions include Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube content management solutions, prospecting tools, reputation management, brand monitoring, competitive analysis, and lead generation. All of this can be managed by the dealership itself or with the assistance of SOCIALDEALER.

SOCIALDEALER is an ideal solution for dealerships because it boosts brand visibility and in turn overall sales. The direct benefits of using SOCIALDEALER include the abilities to: Increase sales; Track Effectiveness of marketing campaigns; Manage customer relationships; Monitor competition’s social media efforts; Drive customer retention through social media; Control and unify marketing messages; and Generate quality leads.

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SOCIALDEALER version 2.3

The release of SOCIALDEALER 2.3 adds exciting features and functions to expand your content options and track your Social Media efforts.

Manage and Track your Videos on YouTube!

The serious Social Media audiences have long realized that social media content has moved beyond just text and photos. Video sharing and commenting on videos is an integral part of the social media world, so adding YouTube became an important goal for us here at SOCIALDEALER. While most other social content management systems limit you to Facebook and Twitter, the SOCIALDEALER platform now is integrated with YouTube for dealers to manage their video content. YouTube stats on comments and views are reported and tracked with the dashboard, and you can manage, upload and post videos from the YouTube tab in the Profiles section. We are certain this will add a new dimension to your Social Media strategy.

Even MORE Reviews in Reputation Management

SOCIALDEALER’s Reputation

Management section continues to lead the industry in depth of content and usability, and we are not stopping now. Two new key sources for reviews have been integrated into the Reputation Management section: Edmunds.com and YellowPages.com are now available.

Better Analytics – Click Tracking and Performance Reports

Users on the SOCIALDEALER platform are now able to track all links that goes out of Quick Post through attaching

a tiny URL, which include: articles from Content Library, posting YouTube video, images linked from a

short URL, and any links inserted into a Post. The new stats report the number of comments for a post, the number of Likes, and the number of re-tweets, all of which help a Dealer to see what specific content his audience is responding to,

More Content Options with targeted publishing

Dealers can now control their Content Posts with even better targeting. Our new filter enables a Dealer to relate each post to a department, such as Services, Parts, or Sales, which means you can track what types of content your audience is interested in, such as service coupons or new car incentives. Dealers looking for more content also can take advantage of a new feature to add your own custom RSS feeds to the Content Library, giving you even more unique content to post.

If you have questions regarding any of the updates to the SOCIALDEALER platform, please contact us at support@socialdealer.com or 877.326.7624. We are committed to providing outstanding customer service to maximize your investment in social media marketing.

 

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How to get more reviews

The single best way to get more reviews on your business boils down to one word: Ask. We have found that asking customers to review your business is the most cost effective means of building your portfolio with online reviews. The cost involved to implement this is simply training your employees. Every sales or service person, or any employee that might ever engage with a customer, needs to be trained to ask the customer at the end of the transaction to provide a review of your business. Continue reading

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SOCIALDEALER welcomes Jimmy Tragas

SOCIALDEALER is pleased to welcome Jimmy Tragas as a new UI Interface Designer in our Oakbrook Terrace, IL office. Jimmy graduated in 2002 with a bachelors in Media Arts and Animation at The Illinois Institute of Art in Schaumburg. He has been designing websites and web applications for over 9 years. His previous experience included working at software developer Digital Aisle as a UI Designer/Developer for 4 years. Jimmy also spent time as a freelance designer creating iPhone apps and websites.

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How to manage bad reviews

Excellence in customer service is a goal all businesses should strive to achieve. There are many advantages to a business when they reach the point where great service becomes an everyday offering. The strongest benefits being customer loyalty, repeat purchases and the resulting word of mouth advertising. However, even with strict standards and detailed service programs in place, bad reviews can happen. As much as we would like to be perfect,we can’t be 100% of the time. Employees occasionally have bad days, and sometimes personal issues can interfere with work. Sometimes it is the customer. A customer may have unreasonable expectations or may just be having a bad day themselves; where no matter what you do they will most likely walk away unhappy. Continue reading

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Watch the new SOCIALDEALER video

Watch the newest video from Social Dealer

 

 

 

 

 

http://youtu.be/vtpyIBwVHGc

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