Automotive Social Networking - Starting to Gain Traction, Finally…
Automotive Social Networking is gaining ground in the Industry at an alarming rate. I did a post here in the past, you will find the link below, that discussed how much room there was for improvement in this sector and now since taking on affiliation with http://drivingsales.com feel that it is time to revisit the subject.
When discussing Automotive Social Networking in this post I am referring to spaces that cater to dealers and their employees, and vendors in the dealer services segments. Not social networks that are designed to reach consumers and engage them. That is a topic for another day. Right now I am just concentrating on platforms that have an open membership and allow members to contribute content other than comments, so no blogs discussed either.
The main purpose of social networks is to connect people with each other to share ideas and experiences
that is often overlooked. To quote another blogger - “It’s the community people, its the people, people. It’s not the cash. People make communities work. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t call them communities.” and that is what is missed in most of the communities in the automobile dealer social networking space. You must provide an outstanding user experience and create the desire for people engage the community without the marketing aspects being the fore front of its existence.
Wrap up on the players in Automotive Social Networking Today…
My comments will appear the same as this text.
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DrivingSales.com
From the DrivingSales.com Our Story Page - “Started out as a class project by founder Jared Hamilton, while a student at NADA’s Dealer Candidate Academy. A third generation dealer, Jared grew up in the business, working in virtually every facet of a dealership with a strong tutoring in leadership and financial management. While at the Academy, Jared saw a need for his classmates to easily stay in touch and maintain their valuable idea exchange once they returned to their stores.”
As a result, Jared created the DrivingSales platform, an Internet-based, Wiki-enabled, social networking platform for his classmates. The network was small and private, and features were added as needed. Due to the innate enthusiasm of dealers to be more successful, learn, and connect, combined with the truly viral nature of the Internet, the DrivingSales community began to grow. And just as any of us would do if we had the opportunity to take a high performance sports car out of the garage and onto the open highway, Jared opened it up, full throttle - welcoming all of us in the auto industry along for the ride. Join us!”
“By far the most dealer centered in the space today. Not only are industry professionals contributing content to help dealers, dealers are also contributing best practices, strategies and rating the vendors that serve them in their online marketing efforts. Vendor ratings and reviews will be a strong traffic generation tool. Still in BETA for public consumption, having had access to many of the features yet to launch, it will be the a huge resource in a dealers digital online marketing efforts.’”
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Automotive Digital Marketing -Ralph Paglia created this social network on Ning
Ralph’s Description - “Automotive Digital Marketing serves Car Dealers, Internet Sales, BDC and OEM Managers, Advertising, Web Site, CRM and Technology Suppliers as an online exchange for strategy, tactics, best practices, resources and contacts within the auto industry.”
“I am an active participant here. More consultant speak than anything at this point. Have had some good conversations and networking opportunities as a result of my participation. There is a lot of direct vendor marketing taking place which is acceptable by this communities standards.”
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Car Dealer Social Network- usedcarsonly created this social network on Ning.
“While I feel I have a good understanding on why this network was formed it does appear to have moved to a spam hole in the automotive social networking space.” - No apparent mission statement or lack of direction. Maybe the founder has something in the works to revive it.
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Automotive News Forum
“They have launched a new forum space that has not been publicly announced yet from my research. The content there is not very exhaustive at this point and appears to be an answer to some of the other networks that have recently hit the space. I am not sure if membership and contribution requires a paid subscription to automotive news or not. Not much info on this attempt at all. From the forum descriptions and moderator participation it looks like they are trying to increase their online ad revenue share and engage the dealer community. This is one to watch, I wonder if they have seen this article from the Wall Street Journal?”
Automotive social networking has come a long way since the first of the year and continues to grow with leaders in different segments trying to capture the momentum.
Are they doing it right? What is your take?
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