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In Depth: @Gileschev And Their Use Of Social Media

A couple of weeks ago, I got Giles Chevrolet of Stouffville, Ontario as a new follower on my Twitter feed. I decided to follow their Twitter feed back and I expected to see a car dealer trying to sell cars via their Twitter feed or a lack of a coherent focus on posting to Twitter. After all, in most cases the person who is responsible for marketing a company on Twitter or Facebook is simply the person who has the passwords for those accounts.

Instead, I found these sorts of examples:

Posts like the above outnumber any attempt to sell cars or promote their service department. It wasn’t what I was expecting, and as a result it intrigued me. I reached out to them and got in touch with Jamie Tieche of Socialyze Inbound Marketing Solutions who works with Giles Chevrolet to find out why they decided to take this approach.

 

Q:  What made Giles Chevrolet decide to use social media as part of their marketing?

A: Giles Chevrolet decided to utilize our social media services to help increase brand awareness, as well as build a community of advocates that will ultimately increase word of mouth referrals.

 

Q: It seems to me that you’re using social media to have conversations with people rather than trying to overtly sell cars. Why use this approach? 

A: We believe that each social media channel plays a very particular role, but none of them are meant to be advertising channels. Users visit social media to connect, learn and communicate, not to be bombarded by sales messaging.

Our strategy with Twitter is to provide an abundance of relevant, useful information in the form of links, quotes, and informative messaging, which helps cement us (Giles) as a thought leader and a reliable source of information.

 

Q: Besides the obvious goal of selling a few more cars, what’s the goal Giles Chevrolet using social media? 

A: Ultimately, Giles Chev hopes to create a new channel of communication that didn’t exist prior to social media. Due to the “always on” nature of social media, it’s an ideal platform for collecting information from customers and also providing information to them in a casual setting.

 

Q: Giles Chevrolet made the decision to have you run their social media campaign rather than do it in house. Why is that? 

A: To do social media correctly takes an extreme focus and a keen understanding of the various channels, including what works on each one. Their goal as a business is to be profitable, and so they felt it was more economical to outsource to a company with the knowledge and expertise to get them to a profitable position the fastest.

 

Q: Do you think companies big and small need to have a social media strategy?  

A: Absolutely!  Without a clear understanding of where you’re at and where you want to get to (using social media), your essentially just “pissing in the wind”! Social media is a tool just like any other form of marketing, and therefore it must be treated as one in order to be effective.

 

Q: What can we expect next from Giles Chevrolet’s social media presence?

A: The immediate plan is to continue providing useful, relevant content on a daily basis. The long term plan is to grow the audience, and incorporate more original content ie. videos and blog posts, into their digital marketing plan.

This entry was posted on May 9, 2014 at 10:00 am and is filed under Commentary with tags . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “In Depth: @Gileschev And Their Use Of Social Media”

  1. When Local Social Media Is Done Right, It Gets Noticed And Is Effective – Example | BundlePost Says:
    May 20, 2014 at 7:05 am

    […] The IT Nerd’s Blog Post: “A couple of weeks ago, I got Giles Chevrolet of Stouffville, Ontario as a new follower on […]

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