When Your Dealers Social Media Goes Extremely Wrong

Ouch - A powerful message.

When people ask me how much social media they can outsource I tell them to think of their kids. You can hire a babysitter to lighten the load, but you would never outsource 100% of your relationship with your kids. Your relationship with your customers or "your community" is the most important thing for your dealership. Keep a close eye on it.

Its your brand. Own it and stay on top of it.

Thanks for example jeff.

That's a fantastic analogy Jared. I'm going to borrow it if you don't mind....full credit to you.

I love this article, well done! Jared your comment is spot on. This catastrophe would have been avoided if they had a Facebook mom. I became "friends" with my Mom on Facebook and she's like my moral content police. If any inappropriate content gets posted by myself or others I get a scolding text (almost immediately) It's a quite reliable system. Almost like Google alerts but with more shame.

Great post Jeff and a strong reminder for dealer principals to be educated on how to inspect their online visibility.

This is a great example of why it is important to inspect the work of vendors and brand messaging. Others possible landmines include ex-employee attacks, competitors attacks, and disgruntled customers posting blogs about the dealership.

I've seen many ugly things, but this example is at the top of the list.

If this article does just one thing, I hope it causes all stakeholders at dealerships to invest just 5 minutes a week doing a few searches on their brand name in Google, Twitter, and Facebook. Also, to click on the review sites rolled-up in Google Places.

Yes, there are tools to automate this but dealers may not want to login to another dashboard, read another email, etc. The hands on 5 minute a week experience is much better. It creates a brand inspection discipline.

Great post, Jeff... The scary reality is that so many dealers are in this same boat with no awareness or knowledge. When and if they do, so many don't know what to do or where to turn. Good analogy, Jared.

Great post, Jeff; thanks for sharing this important example of how NOT to handle your social media presence.
It's important for dealerships to be aware of the fact that they DO have an online presence, whether they realize it, or are a part of it, or not.
Share the work when you can - have a reliable company help promote and monitor your brand, invest in some solid advertising - on and offline - and make sure to be adding valuable content and speaking to and with your audience consistently. That way, if you come across bad reviews or spam, you can catch it immediately.
And most importantly, as your blog post demonstrates so clearly, at the end of the day, make sure you personally inspect your dealership's online reputation.

As a side note, this is exactly what can happen to your online community if spammers find it and you don't stay on top of it (and even if you do stay on top of it, they can make your life a living ____). There are a number of ways to fight spam on an automated basis and investing in them can be well worth the money so something like this never happens.

WOW!

Disclaimer: As their used car website provider, it wasn't us. We will bring it to the store's attention. However, I couldn't relocate the "ladies" page

Nice find, Jeff!

Ha, ha, ha. LMFAO! What I think is funniest about this are the comments from people who provide outsourced Social Media services... In the end, if a dealer has to fake Social Interactions (by using an outside company), then they have no business being in Social Media.

Holy set it and forget it Batman.....I would think that even if you were to outsource you Social Media 100% you would still be watching. To piggy back on Jared (sorry I'm trying to lose those extra pounds) if you don't know the babysitter wouldn't you set up a babysitter cam???? As Brian points out 5 mins a week. At the least take that 5 minutes and set up some Google alerts. I complain about how busy I am but I'd rather complain about that then being unemployed!!!!

It just proves that dealers are still buying the bright shiney "this will solve all your problems" objects. There are so many options available for dealers to handle their social media, reputation management etc. in house. What it boils down to is a willingness to learn and grow. I love Jareds analogy, but these folks just left the kid in the car while they sat at the bar playing joker poker.

Dear Jeff and the DealerRefresh Community:

My name is Alex Luft and I'm the E-marketing and Social Media manager at Phil Long Dealerships. Firstly, I would like to thank you for your article, as it sheds a considerable amount of light on the issues I've been having in attempting to delete the accounts you outlined -- include the Twitter account as well as the Community Page.

In short, I've been trying to remove the Ning Community page (PhilLongCommunity.com) and its associated Twitter account (@phillongcomm) for the last month and a half. Needless to say, neither is a shining example of communications -- or social media. As far as I know, both were created by third parties; since that time, we've brought all of our social efforts in-house. The third-party in question can not find the logins for either account -- and for the last month, I've been hard at work trying to remove both accounts via the proper communications channels with Twitter and Ning.

This has proven to be more difficult than expected -- since reporting the Twitter account to Twitter's @Spam bot has not resulted in the account being removed -- and contacting Ning is nigh impossible. The moral of the story is that things go down hill when
1) you don't have access to an account
2) the third party that created the accounts in the first place can't find the login info, and
3) getting in touch with someone at busy startups such as Twitter and Ning is a greek legend

It goes without saying that I will continue in my quest to remove these accounts from the face of the internet -- and would appreciate help from the DealerRefresh staff and community in bringing Twitter's and Ning's attention to the matter.

Having said that, here are some examples of Phil Long Dealerships' newly-established social media efforts:
facebook.com/mbcoloradosprings
facebook.com/phillongford

We're starting our social efforts slow and steady and will be picking up steam over the next two months. By that time, we certainly hope to be "knocking it dead," with an article on the front page of DealerRefresh.

Sincerely,

Alex Luft
E-marketing and Social Media Manager, Phil Long Dealerships

Good point Alex!

If you run a blog for your stores, BEWARE!

Jeff --

We noticed SPAMMY feed coming from the "community site" in our Twitter feed and looked into it back in September 2010. Purely as a courtesy, we brought it to this automotive group's attention thinking that they would want to take action or take down the site as it clearly reflected poorly on the group and their excellent reputation as a community oriented business. We forwarded a SlideShare presentation to management (http://bit.ly/gvgjlb) and communicated with them about it. We were told they had outsourced the "community site" but would be handling social media internally in the future. I am glad to see that Alex Luft has been brought in and is working so diligently to get the Ning site down. It is unfortunate that it is such a challenge to correct the problem.

There is nothing wrong with getting help with maintaining your social media presence, but it is simply not realistic to think that there is a solution out there that will let you just "set it and forget it." The lesson for all of us in this is that if you can't allocate internal resources to minimally keep an eye on your business's social media presence, you're better off not venturing into those waters.

We will -- but we'll do it all in-house -- and will have complete control of the content and functionality.

Alex Luft
E-Marketing and Social Media Manager, Phil Long Dealerships

A lot of industry folks are capitalizing on this dealers misfortune... ; ( No tweeting or reposting of links to promote this mishap from this direction... To point out that the real issue here is that the dealer did not control the keys (passwords) to their kingdom is hind sight... Every dealer should retain / have the ability to alter / cease their digital marketing efforts at a moments notice. Good Selling, DTG

First, I would never use Ning for a reputation based community. It's probably one of the worst "white labeled" social platforms out there. SPAM runs a muck, if you aren't on top of it day and night.

Twitter are hard people to get a hold of. Ning, a little less harder--but still, sometimes-challenging.

Always keep an up-to-date list of vendors, login links, the account's email address, usernames and passwords. Demand it from third party vendors and NEVER let a vendor register a domain name for you.

woops, posted that too early. What I meant to say was

If you run a blog for your stores, BEWARE phishing attack on your CMS systems like wordpress!

I've had 2 attacks. Need to check your webmasters account to see if your AOK.

Sure thing - spread the word.

Oh - and use the subject line "Notice of Claimed Infringement"

Hi Jeff,

I was hired last year to be the Director of Social Networking for the Volz Auto Group in New York. I found this article to be highly informative and look forward to using some of the ideas and techniques.

Thank you so much,
Anthony Hazzard
Director of Social Networking

Great to have your on board Anthony. We look forward to your participation.

Kristen, nice SlideShare presentation - thanks for sharing. Great stuff!

Nick, thanks for joining in stating your position. You have some challenges ahead of you getting this stuff removed but with time, I'm confident you'll have this taken care of. If you would ever need any help or advise, please reach out to the DealerRefresh community! We would be more than happy to help in any way we can.

Alex, I use Ning for our community site, as well as allot of ADP dealers, Certainly you have your hands full. (and it's Monday !) Later this afternoon I can take a look around. Possibly the best person to reach out to would be @RalphPaglia, who I credit with starting the "dealer community" site idea using Ning. Rock on brother.

Wow this is pretty unfortunate but Alex with the right actions you should be able to overcome this. There are some pretty knowledgeable people here on DR that specialize in such things and can help you.

Situations like this should not cause us to conclude that social media has to be done in-house. Employees are "third-parties" too when it comes down to it. It's like Jared says, you hire babysitters to lighten the load.

This relates to something being preached a lot these days...dealer education. How the web and social media are tackled are as important as the overall sales process itself now. They are one and the same now really. This will make for a great training exercise in the years to come I am sure.