Social Media Rookie? Here are social media sites you should know. PART 2

In our previous post, we defined some of the most common social media terms that relate to the social environment itself as well as content delivery and engagement tools. This time, we’ll look at some of the most important gathering places – those social media websites, or platforms, likely to be most valuable for your dealership’s marketing efforts.

 

There are dozens of social media websites, some with very general audiences and some that serve specific interests. Since you’re marketing to other businesses, you can skip all the sites devoted to kids, entertainment, etc. and focus on those where you’re most likely to meet and engage with people looking for information about construction equipment or heavy trucks.

It’s not realistic to expect you can participate on all these sites, but at least you’ll know what they are:

Facebook is a social utility that connects people with people who work, study and live around them. Facebook is the largest social network in the world, with more than a billion users.

Flickr is based around online picture sharing. It’s like a photo album. You can store photos online and then share them through profiles, groups, etc.

Google+ is the social network launched by Google almost two years ago. It’s rapidly catching up with Facebook in terms of user numbers. It has significant value for you, for two reasons — it automatically integrates other Google products such as Google Maps and YouTube, and it’s become a hot spot for people to post reviews about businesses.

LinkedIn is the original business-oriented social networking site, and it’s still used primarily for professional networking. This is an excellent site to connect with your OEM, other dealers or customers, based on their business type or OEM interest.

Pinterest is a photo-based site. It’s much newer than Flickr and much better known than Zoomr, offering far broader opportunities to promote your dealership and specific products. It’s audience is heavily weighted toward women.

Reddit and another site called Digg are social news sites built around a community of users who share and comment on stories.

SlideShare is an online social network for sharing presentations and documents – it’s where you publish PowerPoint presentations. You can embed presentations as well as share them on other social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.

Twitter is a platform that allows users to share messages that can be only 140 characters long. You can “follow” another user to automatically receive each others’ posts, or you can send a direct message to another Twitter user.

Yelp is a social network and local search website that provides users with a platform to review, rate and discuss local businesses. Your dealership might receive some reviews on Yelp, so it’s worth checking periodically.

YouTube is a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos. It’s part of the Google empire. It’s not only the largest video sharing site in the world, it’s one of the largest social media sites, period.

Zooomr is another online photo sharing service similar to Flickr and Pinterest.

This list is by no means exhaustive, these sites are just the largest and best-known. There are social media platforms for everyone, regardless of age or interest, which is why your dealership needs a carefully designed social media component to your marketing plan.

Using social media judiciously but strategically helps you get the word out about your dealership and your products and services, and it enables you to engage with prospects and customers, both as a group and one-on-one.