Ford Dealer Social Media Success Story – Lebanon Ford Podcast
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Social Media Podcast: Ford dealers across North America are executing some amazing social media strategies. While catching up on my reading and best-practices I stumbled across a great case study on how Lebanon Ford (Ohio) has had some incredible success. They don’t just have a great social media team, they have built a truly social culture in their dealership that has resulted in a 260% year-on-year increase in Internet sales of vehicles and a significant increase in walk-ins and revenues overall.
I asked Zack Bello, Marketing and Communications Manager at Lebanon Ford to share with me how they have built such a great social enterprise that drives real business results using social media.
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10 Corporate Social Media Myths Dispelled
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Today’s podcast is about 10 social media myths that are commonplace in the companies and organizations that we work with at Socialized! Agency. Many of these misconceptions stop organizations from truly realizing the potential of social media (or even starting). Below I have listed the myths. Have a listen to the podcast and let me know what you think.
The New Rules of Engagement in Social Media
These are the 7 Rules of Engagement from Sociable! (http://fb.me/sociablebook) that Stephen Jagger and I developed almost 2 years ago… and the rules are now more important than ever! Enjoy! – Shane Gibson.
Social Media Marketing for Hotels and Resorts
Social media use by hotels for their marketing, service and branding initiatives is growing rapidly. Today a tweet posted by a customer from a hotel front lobby can reach more people than an ad in Air Canada’s in flight magazine. In addition to this we have all witnessed the havoc that a Twitter influencer can have on a brand after the broadcast their disdain for the bad service they have received to their 20,000 followers.
Social Media Tools and Networks are a significant force that is growing. We cannot afford to avoid using them. The truth is in the numbers:
•Facebook: 800 Million People
•Linkedin: 100 Million Professionals representing every company on the Fortune 500
•Twitter: 250 million status updates per day and Twitter search is now the second most used search engine on the planet
•Youtube: 2 Billion Views Per Day
A recent study released by AirPlus International Travel on business travelers has a also cited a significant spike in social media use and stated the following:
“83 percent of respondents indicated they participate in social media sites this year, as compared to 77 percent last year. When delving into specific platforms, LinkedIn users, which held virtually steady in 2009 (58 percent) and 2010 (59 percent), jumped to 74 percent this year. Facebook also grew from a low of 45 percent in 2009 to 55 percent in 2010 and to 62 percent this year.” – Travelpulse.com
This all adds up to one important conclusion. It’s not a question of whether or not your customer uses social media or social networks. The question is are you fully prepared to profit from it?
Progressive marketers such as the Palms Resort and Casino in Las Vegas have seen the rise of the social customer and have responded proactively. Using the industry leading social media influence ranking index Klout.com the Palms will upgrade and roll-out the red carpet for big influencers. They also provide some basic perks for those of us that are social regardless if we rank high – a thank-you for connecting with them socially. Palms calls it their “Klout Klub.”
Before using social media we need to understand some core principles:
#1) Social Media messaging is not produced solely by a marketing team.
Expand marketing roles to everyone possible, taking the number of marketing messages and multiplying them significantly online. In addition to this realize that any customer facing staff need to be well versed in your Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare promotions. Nothing is worse than investing in a brilliant online marketing campaign that your front office doesn’t deliver on.
#2) Provide social media training to all staff.
More important than training on the tools is training on the principles of using the tools. There is a specific etiquette to engaging people in each of the major networks.
#3) Have a social media policy and process that outlines how to engage customers online, and how to deal with influencers in-person.
This should include guidance on how to deal with negativity, social events, and clients. Important note: If your guidelines are too stringent and you take the fun out of Twitter or blogging don’t be surprised if your efforts fall flat.
#4) Listen and Engage in Real-time
Social media is about listening, community, adding value and entertaining people. It’s about a dialogue. It is a two-way communications medium. “Talking at” people or “blasting updates” is not true engagement and it’s not good for your brand either. The biggest opportunity in social media in in the “now.” It’s about instantly engaging the influencer who has announced to Twitter that they are in your lobby, or thanking the person who took the time to check-in on Foursquare while attending a conference at your hotel. That instant feedback and dialogue is what builds brands and lets the customer you care on a very personal level.
#5) Get Local
Every hotel group should have a Twitter and Facebook account but I don’t believe that you should stop at a nationally operated profiles. Go the next step and empower your front line marketing and sales teams to engage with customers on a local level using Twitter, Facebook and any other platforms your customers use. This will give you an advantage over marketing generalists that have not gone hyper-local with their social media efforts.
This blog post was adapted from an article written for the Cdn Hotels Marketing & Sales Executives.
Shane Gibson (@ShaneGibson) is a sales and social media speaker who has addressed over 100,000 people on stages on three continents over the past 15 years. He is also co-author of Guerrilla Social Media Marketing and Sociable! How Social Media is Turning Sales and Marketing Upside-down. When he’s not speaking or Tweeting he is in the social media trenches working with his clients as Chief Social Officer for Socialized! Ltd. (http://socialized.me)
Double Double by Cameron Herold – Book Interview (Podcast)
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Today’s podcast is an interview with Cameron Herold on his brand new book “Double Double – How to Double Your Revenue and Profit in 3 Years or Less.” I read this book twice I found it so valuable and so I reached out to Cameron and asked him to come on the show.
If you’re a business leader, entrepreneur or business builder you need to read this book. It’s packed with usable real-world advice and success strategies.
The Role of Psychology and Community in Guerrilla Marketing
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Since I stepped into the ring and became a guerrilla author in writing Guerrilla Social Media Marketing with Jay Conrad Levinson I have come across all kinds of misunderstanding, misuse and abuse of the term guerrilla marketing. Today’s podcast was inspired by what I can describe as a well meaning (or possibly not) but off-base commenter on the Creative Guerrilla Marketing blog.
I decided instead of just replying in the comments section that I would take the time to respond in the form of a podcast. Why? It’s so vital to understand the role of psychology and community in Guerrilla Marketing.
I also think it’s important to establish that Guerrilla Marketing is well defined, and it’s body of wisdom and definition that is widely accepted and used by over 20 million readers of the Guerrilla Marketing Series of books. Some people will take pieces of the body of wisdom and use them to suit their outlook on marketing but the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. In addition to this just because you slap the term guerrilla on a book, blog post or marketing campaign it doesn’t make it guerrilla.
Here are the facts:
- The term “guerrilla marketing” was coined by Jay Conrad Levinson and popularized by his best selling book that was released in 1983. Guerrilla Marketing uses unconventional means to achieve conventional goals, it relies on time, energy and imagination rather than a big marketing budget. (We added community on-top of time, energy and imagination for Guerrilla Social Media Marketing because of the vital role it plays in social media marketing).
- Since then over 20,000,000 (that’s twenty million) books have been sold and read in Jay Levinson’s Guerrilla Marketing series of books making it the #1 best selling series of marketing books in history. Jay’s definition is the original and most widely accepted definition and grows by 1million readers and fans per year.
- Guerrilla’s apply and use the 19 Guerrilla Marketing Secrets (Principles).
Instead of paraphrasing why true guerrillas must understand and depend on psychology, I have posted in Jay’s own (timeless) words the importance:
Guerrilla marketing does not rely on guesswork because wrong guesses are so darned expensive. Instead, it relies upon psychology as much as possible. Psychology used to be a body of theories. Today, many of those theories have been debunked while others have been transformed into laws, actual laws of human behavior. Guerrillas lean on these laws because they want certainty to be a hallmark of their marketing.
There are 15 things that all guerrillas know about psychology as marketing is slowly transforming from guesswork into science:
- Purchase decisisons are made in the unconscious mind. People may say the words consciously, but they process the data in their unconscious.
- We now know how to access the unconscious mind. The way to do it is with repetition. Put these two thoughts together — purchase decisions are made in the unconscious, and you can access the unconscious with repetition, and you begin to understand the entire process of marketing.
- People are either left-brained or right-brained. Left-brained people respond to sequential, logical reasons and love marketing that gives ten reasons to buy. Right-brained people respond to emotional, aesthetic appeals and love marketing that looks stunning and tugs at heartstrings. Guerrillas are sure to hit both left and right-brained people.
- Businesses that succeed are those that form two bonds with all customers: the human bond and the business bond. The stronger the human bond, the stronger the business bond. Connect up as two human beings before you connect up as buyer and seller.
- All marketing has two messages — the stated message and the metamessage. The stated message is what you say. The metamessage, often stronger than the stated message, is what your marketing looks like, feels like, where it appears, what size it is, and how professional it appears.
- If you’re interested in increasing your share of market, the way to do it is to first increase your share of mind. If you go only for the share of market, don’t expect much customer loyalty — or even many customers.
- There are two schools of marketing hard at work in America these days — Freudian marketing, which is based on Sigmund Freud’s work and aims for a change of attitude — and Skinnerian marketing, based on B.F. Skinner’s proof of the power of behavior modification. Which does a guerrilla choose? Both. Guerrillas constantly implant attitudes while peppering their prospects with special offers that require instant action.
- During a recession, the tactics that generate sales are: leaning on current customers, enlarging the size of each transaction, offering a guarantee, and showing that high prices are an assurance against making a purchase mistake — something nobody wants to do during a recession.
- Realize that people hate taking the hard step of buying something, so guerrillas use soft steps to make the hard step a little easier. Soft steps include things like free consultations, free seminars, brochures, videos, demonstrations, and free samples.
- Full color marketing materials increase retention by 57% and increase inclination to buy by 41%. And the cost of full-color drops dramatically if you tell the printer you have the patience to wait for a gang run.
- Use as much non-verbal communication as you can. There are only about 250,000 commonly-used words in the English language, but there are 600,000 non-verbal gestures. They are more potent than the spoken words.
- You can gain guerrilla marketing power if you blend customer insight with product insight. The more your insight, the better your marketing.
- The way guerrillas view their marketing is as an opportunity to help their customers succeed. If you do the same, your profits will show it.
- A key to successful marketing is making each of your customers feel a special way. The way they should feel is unique. Not easy, but necessary.
- It is essential that you constantly feel a sense of dissatisfaction with your marketing and try to improve it without changing your identity. This personality trait will fare you well in the marketing wars.
So I have a challenge when someone (for their own self-interest) tries to redefine Guerrilla Marketing. Add to it? Great! Innovate? Great! But don’t negate, shrink, or dilute it. Back off. It is a timeless body of wisdom that has grown to be mainstream but it is more relevant than today than it was 20 years ago. It works, it’s simple, and it’s time tested.
Guerrilla Marketing is a body of wisdom and movement. It’s bigger and more important than campaigns, tricks, or tactics. To learn more about the book that started the movement (and continues to grow daily and globally). You can visit http://gmarketing.com.
Have a listen to the podcast and tell me what you think!
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Social Media Speaker Video: Going Social with CRM #SCRM 41:28
I recently delivered the keynote speaker address to CDC Software’s CRM conference in Las Vegas. This is one of the most recent social media for sales professionals talks I have done and it’ not just a promo clip. Here’s the full 41 minutes on “Going Social with CRM – How Social Media is Turning Sales Upside-down:
Here are the slides to go with the presentation:
Social Media Week Vancouver Registration Get Involved!
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Today’s podcast is a little different than most. It outlines the upcoming Social Media Week in Vancouver that my team and I at Socialized! are putting together (with some massive help from our community, sponsors and our advisory board). I will posting a full text outline of this as well on the Social Media Week Vancouver blog shortly. In the meantime, have a listen and if you’re anywhere near Vancouver we would really like to have you attend, sponsor or even speak.
Assessing Defining and Measuring Your Social Media Influence
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Today’s podcast is on defining and measuring your social media influence. Dave MacDonald who is an integral part of our team at Socialized! works on our social media assessment process with our clients. Recently he suggested we add a component to our assessment that measures how well the client we are working with is engaging and connecting with influencers in social media.
The question of course is what makes someone influential? Should we look at the Klout score of the people they interact with? Possibly the number of important bloggers that write about them? Or is it simply how viral or broad their message gets shared? As a guerrilla social media marketer I measure success in profit and net-action or results. For this podcast I want to focus on a section right out of our Social Media Rules of Engagement training module. Here is the basis for what we consider influential:
John C. Maxwell said it best when he said “Leadership is Influence.”
He didn’t say leadership is a good idea, a vision or a title. He said influence. Influence can be defined for our purposes as causing someone to take action (internally as and personal growth or externally as in doing something). So we can imply the following:
Influence = Action
Following are some examples of action:
- Message gets passed on
- Get linked to
- Changing or molding views
- Registering and attending events
- Solving problems
- Getting feedback
- Listening and creating brand and relationships
- Generating dialogue
- Getting press
- Capturing an e-mail address or contact info
There are many more. The important factor here is to go beyond the Klout score mentality and realize that people are not an algorithm. I check my Klout on a regular basis, but it’s value of the actions we create determine if we are truly influential. So to summarize this:
Leadership = Influence = High Value Action
Social Media Monitoring Strategy Podcast and InfoGraphic
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Today’s podcast is on social media listening, monitoring and strategy. I have also done a quick infographic / flowchart on the process and key points from the social media monitoring podcast. Have a listen and let me know what you think.
36 Social Media, Leadership and Life Tips in 140 Characters or Fewer
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Today’s blog post and social media podcast is a collection of 36 Tweets I have posted online over the past two weeks relating to social media, leadership and marketing. I have recorded an in-depth explanation (beyond the 140 characters) in my podcast. Have a listen, have a read and add your own in the comments below.
- Social Media Fact: @Banff_Squirrel has more Twitter followers than most marketing experts.
- Social Media Tip: Content is not King [or Queen
] Connection rapport and trust are today’s currencies. - Social Media Tip: build the community, contribute to others success, be authentic and people will line up to help you as well.
- Social Media Tip: treat likes, followers, and connections on any network like gold. Those are votes of trust and confidence.
- Social Media Tip: Contrast keeps the conversation fresh. Vary your update and blog formats. Use multiple media to engage.
- Any social media activity that involves deception, trademark or copyright infringement isn’t guerrilla marketing. It’s lazy marketing.
- Social Media Tip: it’s not old versus new media — it’s about integrating the right media for the right market.
- Social Media Tip: In the “Thank-you Economy” don’t outsource or automate your thank-you’s.
- Social Media Tip: People will read your Tweets and blog posts in the context of their goals and needs. See through their eyes.
- Social Media Tip: Social media marketing is not a fad. BUT social media consultants now need deeper business knowledge.
- Social Media Tip: Blogging is not dead, but recycling content and cut-and-paste mentalities are getting old.
- Social Media Tip: social media strategy needs to be in-line with your business culture and integrated with your business processes.
- Social Media Tip: Having a Twitter account is like having a telephone. It’s just a tool. How are you going to use it to win?
- Social Media Tip: Being an early adopter is not enough. You need to evolve with your market and the tools to stay relevant.
- Social Media Tip: Your rules of engagement will be in context with your goals and your target market’s culture/etiquette.
- Social Media Tip: Activity doesn’t equal profitability. Activity that builds relationships = mindshare = walletshare. Build relationships.
- Want to increase the number of people that follow you back on Twitter? Try taking an interest in them. Marketing is a conversation.
- Social Media Tip: All of the engagement and trust you have built evaporates when your community finds out you outsource your conversations.
- Social Media Tip: You can go it alone, brave the storms and reach great heights by yourself. BUT half the joy is in bringing people with you
- Social Media Tip: hiring the wrong social media help can be worse than not doing it. Be prepared. Assess them & where you are starting from
- Leadership Tip: You don’t need to make someone else irrelevant to raise your profile. In fact you’re usually only hurting your brand.
- Remember it’s not a about blogging, Twitter, Facebook or the next great thing. It’s how you use it. Wisdom comes from mistakes. Experiment.
- Social Media Tip: You are never too popular to be humble. In fact no matter who you are eventually the web will humble you
- Being on a path of integrity isn’t a one time choice. It’s a lifetime of commitment and daily decisions.
- Social Media Tip: Use hootsuite to flag DM’s from other people in Twitter for future follow-up. They can often get buried.
- Social Media Tip: Subscribe to your twitter searches as RSS feeds in your feed reader so that you only have to do the search once…ever.
- Social Media Trend: Community building skills are becoming more important than pitching or selling.
- Good things come to those wait — but they’re usually the things left behind by those who hustle. Giddy up!
- Social media monitoring is vital. The opportunity is in engaging at the right time with the right person on the right topic.
- Leadership Tip: You can never lose by investing in good people. Err on the side of generosity. It will pay in efficiency and loyalty.
- Social Media Tip: Educate and equip all staff to be social… it provides less headache and greater ROI than policing them.
- Social Media Tip: The longer you try to contain social media use to one department the further behind you will be from the marketplace.
- Good publicity is about doing the right thing and getting the word out. Integrity is about doing the right thing when no one is looking.
- Social Media Tip: If you are more aware of the community gossip than you are of the community needs then you’re going the wrong direction.
- Social Media Tip: Stop seeking recognition from the cool kids… instead strive to be significant to the/your community
- Social Media Tip: The more open we are with other people the more willing they are to share with us.
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