The recent post on the DealerRefresh forums about Social Media Gurus and scams led to the idea that some information might be helpful to dealers in deciding who to hire and trust.

Here are some questions to consider:

How can you research a company or consultant when they claim to be social media gurus?

What’s considered authentic in terms of social media consulting for your dealership?

These are justifiable questions, that deserve to be answered with examples of work and real results. It’s difficult however, for a company who isn’t quite clear on the examples they’ve been provided to make a confident decision on whether they’re hiring a quality provider.

Lets dive in and discuss five ways you can do some due diligence when selecting a high quality social media provider.

1. Client List

The first thing you should look at is their current and past clients. If the provider is reputable, they should provide you with as much information about what they are doing and what they’ve done for clients in the past. Ask them for some specific examples and reports where they’ve blown away their clients with results. Ask them for some popular posts they’ve done, or ways that they’ve engaged on Twitter. You should be able to sense whether they have the passion to work with you on that same level, or if they are a large agency, whether you’ll get the level of attention this work requires. Social media for your dealership is extremely time sensitive, so immediate action is often necessary, be sure to ask about their response time to urgent issues.

2. Knowledge

You’re hiring a provider to leverage their knowledge and to apply that skill and knowledge to your marketing initiatives. Often times you will find that a number of different tasks may be needed to announce an upcoming event that your dealership is promoting, and its good if they have the broad range of skills to help you develop the landing pages, registration, emailing, integration of the page on your site, SEO, socially spreading the message, images, videos, etc. The ability for your provider to understand and be willing to help you handle all of these things will enable you to be less involved with the technical requirements of the events and to me more focused on what, where, and when the event will take place.

3. Who’s In Their Network

High quality providers will leverage their network when needed to help you. If you’re considering a provider that isn’t well known then you could be missing out on finding one that has built a solid network. Request that they connect with you on LinkedIn so you can look over their network. If they do not have connections with influential or notable people then it could mean that they aren’t taking their work very seriously. Building relationships with recognized and successful bloggers, founders of internet companies, venture capitalists, and others in interesting positions means that they have been highly invested in building relationships – which is the core of what social media is about.

4. Statistics = Warning Sign

If you get an offer that is promising your dealership “x” number of anything, Twitter followers, links to your website, or just about anything that sounds outrageous, just ignore them. Trustworthy providers won’t try to wow you with numbers, because the real value comes from building quality relationships. Ask them for a few examples of what they consider to be reputable sites that have linked to them. If these are genuine links, meaning they were not placed in profile by themselves or a site they built themselves, than consider how they earned the link and ask if you can expect that type of commitment. Almost always it requires that they’ve contributed something of great quality, and as a result they got a link for the work.

Links are the most important thing you can get that will benefit you from an SEO standpoint, and if it’s a site that anyone can buy a link or place a link then it’s not as valuable and could potentially harm your rankings.

5. Influencers

In order to be successful as a blogger, or social media consultant, you must have the ability to become influential. Ask them for examples of popular sites where they’ve contributed meaningful information, or if they’ve built any websites that allowed others to contribute information. Finding an influencer that will do social media on your behalf is not going to come cheap, this person is typically an entrepreneur or a blogger that has built a substantial network. If you aren’t getting the advantage of having someone who’s done this type of work for themselves, then it’s unlikely that they will know what works and what doesn’t. If you aren’t sure, ask if they’d be willing to come meet you in person, as this is a great way to find out whether you trust and believe they will be able to deliver.

Hopefully these 5 suggestions help you screen some of your candidates on hiring the right social media firm for your dealership. There are clearly some things that I’ve left out, but these are some of what I believe to be true tests of ones ability to perform for your dealership.

If you have any questions about these suggestions or would like to share some experiences or opinions about what I’ve stated, please do so in the comments.

5 Ways To Screen Your Dealers Next Social Media Consultant is a post from: Car Dealer Internet Sales

A Great Way to Build Customer Retention and Loyalty

Dealer Advisory Boards are a regular tool used by Automotive Vendors to maintain relationships with their top clients and to keep them engaged in the service they provide. Autotrader.com, for instance, has a great Dealer Advisory forum that they use to gauge customer satisfaction and product effectiveness. It is also a launching point for new ideas and services. Generally if their top clients don’t like it, neither will the masses. Autotrader.com not only gains valuable feedback from the dealer perspective through these meetings, but also strengthens the relationship they have with their major client base; which builds loyalty and retention.

So why not extend this idea to your best dealership customers as well?

A Dealership Advisory Board is a “soft value” add-on that is beneficial to both your excellent clients and to you. Unlike giving away free oil changes (which we all know is no guarantee of future customer pay labor) this added value creates and strengthens the relationship you have with your most important commodity, your Regular Customers.

These meetings, held up to twice a year allow your customers to impact “their” dealership, especially when they enjoy the changes their feedback initiates. The “partnership” between the DAB and the Dealership becomes long lasting and you will be surprised at the level of ownership your customers will take of the dealership after participating.

The DAB is a win-win because not only do you gain valuable feedback to help you improve your process for all your customers, but you also gain the best advertising anywhere- REFERRALS!

The best customers to choose for your first DAB should be your most loyal ones. Avoid the negative customer at first; those can be folded into the mix later. Try to find customers who have prominent positions in the community if possible. One dealer advisory board I managed had the head of the Pilots Union on it. That one person had the potential to reach literally thousands of other pilots, flight attendants, luggage handlers, ect.

Be sure to create an environment that is enjoyable and make your best customers feel appreciated. Gift bags are a great way to end the meeting. You can fill them with coupons, branded give-aways and a special gift like an i-pod or planner. Remember this is only 2x per year- so make it impressive.

Always remember to keep it positive and accept the criticism well. Most importantly, act on the feedback you receive. All your customers will be thankful for it!

Have you ever considered having a Dealer to Customer Advisory Board at your dealership?

Build Customer Loyalty with an Advisory Board is a post from: Car Dealer Internet Sales

1. Price
2. Soonest Availability
3. Best Ratings

Did you find one for me yet?   No!  What do you mean you didn’t look?  You just kept reading?  Okay – fine, I’ll tell you who this exercise is really for:  your staff or your HIPPO (HIghest Paid Person with the biggest Opinion).  You’re on DealerRefresh so you already know this stuff.

When you were searching for my TV did you go to BestBuy.com and ogle at the homepage?  Ooooo that’s a pretty button.   Wooooow look at that slideshow of specials.  Maybe they had something up there that caught your attention, but chances are your mission had nothing to do with that homepage.  Your mission started in the navigation at the top – you were looking for my 55″ LED TV and nothing else was going to deter you from finding it FIRST.

Logically, when building a website, it makes a lot of sense to start with the homepage and work your way into it from there.  I get that, but….  Why not start with the navigation?  The header?  Extra buttons and conversion points on the internal pages?  What do phone numbers look like and where are they?  Should the homepage be the last thing you put together?

If you want to start living life by the numbers here are some measurements you can use to see which parts of your website are the most valuable:

Rank your pages by form submissions
Simply go into your website’s analytics and find the report on form submissions (a.k.a. Internet Leads) and sort your pages based on the number of leads submitted.  Got a page that isn’t performing as well as you’d like?  How many views did it get?  Which brings me to the next one….

Per Page Conversion Rate
On that same form conversion report there should also be a “Visits” or “Views” column.    You simply divide the number of forms submitted by the visits or views.

Forms Submissions (Leads) ÷ Views = Conversion Rate

What is a good conversion rate?  As with all Internet metrics it is all subjective to the analytics tool used and too many other factors, so calculate your own average and start by paying attention to the pages that are below average.  Be sure to look at the pages that are above average to see what’s going on there.

Time spent on Homepage
Look at the time spent on only your Index page in analytics.  Factor out the bounce rate if your phone numbers are on it or if you have a SEO guru on the payroll.  You want to factor out the bounce rate because your homepage phone numbers might be all that customer is looking for (and you’re tracking those differently) and if you have a SEO guru pointing 5 million links at you you’re going to get a lot more unwanted traffic that bounces.  Read this about True Time on Page.

Take your bounce rate and subtract it from 100% to get the percentage of visits that didn’t bounce.  Multiply that percentage with your Average Time on Page to get your “True” Time on Page without bounces  (hopefully I put that into usable English).

What is a good metric?  This depends on whether your home page is severely action-packed, opens links in new windows, is sitting on dealership computers all day everyday, you hired a SEO consultant, or is just insanely confusing.  You’ll have to be the judge of that.

P.S.  If you export your analytics to Excel you’ll want to use this at the end of your cell that have times in them:  /60/24/60 and then format the cell to show time as hh:mm:ss to get your times in English.  Or you can borrow my Excel calculation =(((1/(E2-1)*-1))*D2/60/24/60) that should work when you export specifically from Google Analytics.

The Ego….errrr….Dealership Home Page is a post from: Car Dealer Internet Sales

Critiquing a Live Dealer Chat Transcript

We have word tracks for when were face to face with a potential client.
We have word tracks for becoming a Ninja like phone-up professional, moving the customer to appointment.

Have the right words at the right time in your arsenal and move the customer that much closer to the appointment or sale.

But what about word tracks for Chat..”Chat Tracks“.. for when you’re in the introduction or knee deep in a chat with a customer on the other side of your monitor?

If your dealer is using chat to build a relationship and capture more leads from your dealers website or inventory listing site like Cars.com, it’s imperative to obtain ninja like chat skills.

I’ve been messing with dealer chat for quite a few years now. I’ve failed miserably, I’ve outsourced, I’ve totally gotten rid of it (and said I would never do it again).

To my wonderful surprise and by default, I’m back into leveraging chat as a lead driver for a few of my current dealers.

Here’s the PROBLEM; and it’s why I moved away from chat a few years ago – MOST people SUCK on Chat (and the phone for that matter).

However, if you take the time and learn how to effectively chat, it can no doubt be one of your most highest converting “lead sources” your dealer can have.

Some might be quick to discredit chat on their dealer website, saying it merely takes away from other points of conversion. However, I think the dealer chat case study that Shereef at CarChat24 has been showcasing here in the DealerRefresh forums will potentially change your perception.

It doesn’t matter who’s chat service you’re using. We have several that advertise and participate in the forums here, so if you’re considering chat, be sure to give them a click and check out their services.

Consider this; Before you jump into chat or if you are already chatting away, having some ninja chat skills behind you is imperative. If you’re great on the phone, you can be just as great on chat. Most of the same best phone practices carry over to dealer chat – though there are a few differences, plus you get more time to figure out what to say.

SO — let’s get to the purpose of this thread.

Below, I have posted the first actual live chat transcript. Let’s all put our heads together, collaborate and find the areas of improvement. Vendors are invited to participate with no blatant or hidden sales tactics of course

Review the live chat transcript below..

Where did they go wrong?

What should they have said differently?

What “chat track” would have worked better AND why?

Side note: let’s keep this the only chat transcript for this thread. IF you have your own chat transcript that you feel as if would be a great example, please submit to Dealerrefresh and we could use it in a future Chat Track critique session.

Let’s Begin…

Starting Time: 6/16/2010 1:08:47 PM Central Daylight Time
Agent: Jack Handy
VisitId: 7717927
Time to Answer(in seconds): 45
Origination: Removed
Context:
Year=1998
Make=Toyota
Model=4Runner
StockNumber=V1168133
VIN=JT3HN86R4W01854454
Price=10990
StockType=Used
caId=43379944
affId=automotv

Transcript:
[1:09:07 PM]<System>Agent Jack Handy has accepted the conversation
[1:09:11 PM]<Customer>is your White 1998 Toyota 4Runner SR5 for $10,990 still available?
[1:09:32 PM]<Jack Handy>Hello, How are you
[1:09:38 PM]<Customer>Here is a link..http://www.cars.com/go/search/detail.jsp?tracktype=usedcc&listingId=43379944&
[1:10:07 PM]<Jack Handy>Please hold while I look that up for you.
[1:10:17 PM]<Customer>thanks.
[1:11:23 PM]<Jack Handy>Im sorry for the hold, Have you been working with anyone in our sales department
[1:11:48 PM]<Customer>No.  Just looking for a 4Runner online.
[1:12:31 PM]<Jack Handy>Ok, I would be more then happy to help you. My name is Jack Handy, I should be receiving a answer very soon
[1:12:41 PM]<Customer>Thank you.
[1:14:04 PM]<Jack Handy>I am back, sorry about that
[1:14:44 PM]<Jack Handy>I have followed up and we did sell that Toyota 4 runner, Would you consider a 2004 though
[1:15:07 PM]<Customer>can you send me a link to look at the specs online?
[1:15:33 PM]<Jack Handy>Yes I can, Please give me a sec
[1:16:20 PM]<Jack Handy>Please go to www.abctoyota.com
[1:17:33 PM]<Jack Handy>My name is Jack Handy if you would like to stop by for a test drive or if I can assist you in any way. Thanks once again. Can I help you out with any other questions
[1:18:19 PM]<Customer>I don
[1:18:38 PM]<Customer>I don’t see a 2004. Is it posted on your site?
[1:19:35 PM]<Customer>Also, why are some certified and others not?
[1:20:18 PM]<Jack Handy> When you go into ABC Toyota , go to Used inventory and you should see it listed. Is there a phone # that I could contact you on and walk you through the process.
[1:20:41 PM]<Customer>I think I’m good. Thanks for your help.
[1:21:27 PM]<Jack Handy>Some are Certified and others are not. The Toyota Certification process is very very tough, They need to go through a 160 point inspection to pass for certification
[1:21:38 PM]<Customer>got it, thanks.
[1:21:53 PM]<Jack Handy>Your welcome, Thanks for your time & have a GREAT day
[1:22:03 PM]<Customer>you too.

Click Here to share your comments, ideas and thoughts on this live dealer chat transcript over on the DealerRefresh forums.

Chat Tracks – Critiquing a Dealer Chat Transcript is a post from: Car Dealer Internet Sales

If you’ve ever worked in a dealership, located in a competitive market, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Over the years I heard a lot of “we should do this because I feel it is the best way to do it” and “I think we should ____.”  I rarely heard “I looked at the numbers and even though I don’t personally feel it is something I would use, the numbers don’t lie so we are going to do this.”  There are quite a few operators and General Managers who have made careers off of “feelings”.  They did this through a mix of talent, luck, short memories and the rule of equal incompetence.  I can’t say that my own career hasn’t had a few of these elements mixed in.  I’ll be the first to raise my hand and say guilty as charged.

Lately, I have heard “I think” and “I feel” more times than I care to think about.  I’m taking a stand.  No more decisions by gut.  Give me stats and A/B tests.

With so many numbers at our finger tips there is only one reason to ignore the facts:  you don’t understand them.

Ignoring the numbers helps to fuel the rule of equal incompetency.  It keeps you in the dark and it keeps you guessing.  I don’t know about you but I don’t like guessing my way through the dark.  So if you’re still gut-guessing I have to ask why?

• What do you not know about your website analytics?
• What do you not understand in the trends your financial reports show you?
• Do you not see that CRM activity breeds more sales?
• Can you pinpoint which reports to focus on that show whether your people are working smarter?

These are things you should be asking yourself.  If you are finding areas inside your DMS, CRM, PPC, SEO, Marketing, or Website reports that don’t make sense find someone to clarify these things for you (usually your vendor).  Make sure you’re not the equal incompetent.

I also suggest getting another opinion on what’s important from the DealerRefresh community.  Sign-up and ask any question you want on the DealerRefresh forums.  They say 1,000 heads are better than 1.

I think I feel …and the Rule of Equal Incompetence is a post from: Car Dealer Internet Sales

Since the beginning of car sales, we have tried to find that elusive balance between holding gross and increasing volume.

OEMs would love nothing more than to have an army of sales professionals whose sole focus was moving product- so much so, many of them have decreased profit margin to all time lows in the name of “customer satisfaction”; leaving dealerships with fewer and fewer ways to generate revenue.

So how do we continue to hold gross in a climate that has very little of it to hold? TRADE -IN VALUE!

Trade-in value is the missing ingredient to generating and holding gross in the new car deal, and increasing revenue in the used car deal. The trade-in is one of the most emotional aspects of a negotiation. Here is a vehicle that a customer has loved, repaired, cleaned and relied upon for transportation. It is a vehicle they “feel” about and an area of the deal that causes the most stress- not because they are not ready to part with it (however I have seen my share of hair pulling and crying during delivery about the old vehicle) but due to how we handle the presentation of figures on it.

Rarely do we take the time to explain our process and how we arrived at the value. Frankly, we generally send a sales person into a negotiation with a number they do not understand or know how to defend. To make matters worse, we are then very quick to back off the number and give in if we smell a potential sale. These practices have trained our customers to distrust our figures, fight us on value and detest the overall transaction.

The best way to build Gross in a deal and trust with a customer is full disclosure on the trade.

FULL DISCLOSURE?

Yes I know this is a foreign concept in the car business, but one that is truly effective. Here is how it works:

• Sales people complete a walk-around on a customer trade with the customer prior to the appraisal. At this time, they take note of any visible imperfections and discuss the hows and whys of the trade and the desires in the new vehicle.
• During the appraisal, Managers record and give a cash value to any possible reconditioning requirements. These can include: bald tires, dents & dings, ripped or stained interior, etc
• A 3rd party source is printed, like kbb.com on the customer vehicle along with itemized reconditioning expenses.
• The sales person, armed with the 3rd party source, goes back into the deal and presents the information in the following manner:

“Mr. Customer, KBB says your vehicle is worth X, and we AGREE. However, in order to get your car retail ready, there are some reconditioning expenses we have to take care of… you remember when we were walking around your vehicle and saw….”

Using a valid and well known 3rd party source verifies value and removes barriers that get in the way of making a deal. In addition, on average, you will under allow about $500 per trade- which equals BIG GROSS in the end.

You will be amazed at how easy it is to implement. The Cardone Group is a great proponent of this system and the company that introduced it to me. Go ahead and give it a try, you might just find extra Gross hidden in all your deals!

How do you handle the Trade-In at your dealership?

Trade-in Value: The Missing Ingredient to Holding Gross and Building Trust is a post from: Car Dealer Internet Sales

Let’s talk about “LOST” and I am not talking about the widely popular television show that just recently concluded on ABC. I am talking about your lost customers. It all starts with that phone call to unsold customers.

“Hi Jeff this is Jerry with… oh you did, what did you buy?”

How many times have we all heard that conversation? We then conclude with, “Well if you’re ever in the market again please give me a call…” and off to our CRM we go to mark that customer as “LOST!”

We’ve all heard our managers say over-an- over a thousand times, “keep selling until they buy or die.” Well the person who came up with that saying is an idiot! It should be, “keep selling until they die.” The average person will spend over $300K on automobiles in their lifetime. Big deal, you missed out on a sale this time around. A true salesperson will figure out how to win their business the next time around. If you treat them like a customer they may in fact become a customer.

So how are you going to win their business?

LOST – 5 Ways to Prospect Your “Lost” Customers into Future Sales is a post from: Car Dealer Internet Sales

What if you had Superhero powers like Spider-Man, Batman and Superman? You could have an amazing gift to do the unexpected and save the day. Sure, you’ve been tracking calls from your dealership’s website for years. Your store may even be running an expensive pay-per-click campaign that is bringing well-qualified leads. That is what the average “Clark Kent” is managing for his dealership and probably getting praise for being on the cutting edge of internet marketing. Are you ready to be a Superhero? Get ready to switch from Clark Kent to Superman and unveil that special uniform under your suit. Extract the most out of your dealer website tracking with the following Four Superhero Powers.

Power Number One: Have x-ray vision. Find out which keywords are bringing you phone calls. Is it the term “Honda” or “Honda oil change coupon” that is generating leads? There are ways to track these calls back to the individual keyword without constantly monitoring the program, adding phone numbers and investing too much of your marketing budget. Proxy sites can create a bit of a mess for your SEO, so steer clear of this method. By using x-ray vision, you can tell your SEM to shift your ppc budget those terms that are actually selling cars.

Power Number Two: Try leaping tall buildings in a single bound. List one number on your dealership’s website with a greeting to connect callers with the right department. If there are 3-4 numbers listed, often times the caller will dial the first number listed anyway. Your customers will have a better experience, and the sales team will be happy when talking with leads that want to buy a car (not make a service appointment). Look at trend analytics of your inbound calls. What time of day or day-of-the-week are you getting an influx of leads? Are you staffed appropriately at these times? Features like scheduling and round robin will help the team to not miss an opportunity. More than likely, there is no additional cost to set this up.

Power Number Three: Use accelerated healing (think Wolverine). Don’t let those bad sales calls wound you or your sales team. Listen to call recordings and save a potential customer from calling your competitor, then play back the call in a training session. Everyone will learn quickly what they should be saying and how to close a sale faster.

Power Number Four: You’ve become immortal. Import calls from your website into your lead management tool, your CRM. This is your lifeblood and the place where you spend all of your time anyway. You shouldn’t have to log into another system to look at calls. Who has time for this? You are there to sell cars, not remember passwords and instructions on how to run a call report. Integrating your call tracking with your CRM will make your life easier.

You cannot deny the powerful gifts that you have been given to effectively manage your website and call tracking system. Be the Superhero that you were meant to be and start today with these Four Superhero powers. If you aren’t sure how to use these powers or forget what they are all about, contact your call tracking provider to help you get the most out of the service. Their job is to support the Superhero!

Four Superhero Powers for Dealer Website Tracking is a post from: Car Dealer Internet Sales

A few pieces of the training have been done with my boss present.  As I have been the lead for everything Internet at Checkered Flag over the last 9 years, my boss has placed a lot of trust in me.  I made connections in reports that I never needed to explain to him – I’d just say something like “with the stats from our website being up and the increased number of leads, I was shocked to see how low the sales were at Honda this month.”  He’d take that simple statement and get to work on the Honda store.  Now I am showing him how I made these connections, and really explaining the nitty gritty, and, as a team, we are now making even more connections.  In this regard, we’ve made new discoveries and come across new ideas.

Putting things in basic terms has also better defined and educated people as to what I do as an eCommerce Director.  I think it has helped to close the gap between what I think the position is worth and what my boss thought it was worth.  Not sure that’s an absolute guarantee if you’re reading “pay raise” into that statement, but definitely worth a try!

We all have multiple systems and most of these systems do not speak to one another.  As the Internet Sales Manager, eCommerce Director, Chief of Marketing, or whatever we are, we typically need to work in all of the various dealership systems.  It is only natural that we begin to make connections, form processes, and create spreadsheets that help to do our job better.  We can hold onto all of this in an attempt at job security, or we can help to protect our employer by making sure things can continue after we’re gone.  Who knows, you may even earn something extra along the way to their education.

What would happen to your employer if you were to leave?

What happens if you get hit by a bus? is a post from: Car Dealer Internet Sales

Social Media is a platform where many people can communicate equally.  It is really that simple of a definition.  It is not just facebook, or twitter.  Those sites have a lot of eyeballs, but the ones that really last forever and are more relevant are the blogs and forums – especially for our vendors.  Blogs and forums index with search engines, and if your company is talked about on one of these blogs or forums (like DealerRefresh) those conversations are going to show up when a potential client searches for your name.  I’m not tooting the DealerRefresh horn, or DrivingSales’, or ADM’s, or even David Kain’s platform; I’m just going to stress that these kind of places can make or break you.  And this is going to become a bigger factor with time.

Here are some easy rules to live by:

1.  Get involved. Not being there is just as bad as not advertising.  If you are advertising on one of these sites, simply paying to have an ad on the site isn’t enough.  You really need to have a voice with the ad.

2.  Once involved, don’t spam.  Be a knowledgeable assistance to the conversation.  Sure, feel free to start your own conversation asking for input from others, but don’t always talk about your product – it is annoying and doesn’t help with my next lesson point….

3.  Think about what is in it for the reader?  If your post solely benefits you, have you done enough in the past to really ask that favor of the entire community (asking for input is the same as asking for a favor)?  My favorite take away quote  from the Digital Dealer 8 conference is from Mike DeCecco whom I’m not quoting word for word:

If you have lived next door to someone for 5 years and never said “hi” or tried to make friends with that person, would you ask them to mow your lawn while you’re on vacation for 2 weeks?  When you just use Social Media to advertise you are knocking on your neighbor’s door to tick them off.

4.  When someone posts something negative about your company, reply to that person honestly.  If you’re not going to fix the problem, say so and why – then I suggestion trying to steer the conversation in a different direction.  If you are going to fix the problem, then this is a golden public relations opportunity to come out looking like a superstar!  Thank the poster, fix the problem, and thank the poster again by giving him credit for bringing it to your attention (even if you already knew about it) – you’ll gain huge brownie points with him and…..read point 5

5.  Only 3% of all readers will publicly post.  10% will send a private message or email related to something they saw online, so you have to assume that you’re not seeing 97% of the people who are following your online Social Media actions.  I can assure you that DealerRefresh’s site analytics certainly give credit to this statistic.  This is a BIG reason you should take my first point to heart.

6.  You love where you work.  You’re passionate. You cannot fathom why someone would ever say something bad about you or your company.  25% of people will be a great friend.  50% of people will be acquaintances, and 25% of people don’t like you.  That’s just the way it is and you’re going to have to accept it.  Sure, there are exceptions to the rule, but when someone types something negative about you, your product, or your company don’t freak out.  Don’t get so offended that you call that person’s boss asking for him to be fired or force him to pull what he said down.  We talk, we know who you are and this is the most damaging thing you can possibly do to yourself or your company.   In a situation like this, the angry poster might be able to be turned back to your cause, but if you can’t work things out one on one with that person, then you need to publicly respond for your 97% non-posting audience I mentioned in point 5.

I’ve been watching a few vendors do these things wrong for a while.  I hope some of you can shed your fears to get involved.  And the ones who are involved, I hope this helps you to better approach a situation that pops up.

Some other Social Media articles for further reading:

Stop Spamming on Social Media
Social Media Best Practices White Paper from GOSO
Tools to help with Social Media Reputation Management
The next step in Reputation Management

Social Media Etiquette for Vendors is a post from: Car Dealer Internet Sales