Arnold Tijerina, Author at Storytailer

How to: Spam People on Facebook

April 23, 2012 By Arnold Tijerina

Social media is all about engagement. The option to “friend” someone or “like” a business’ page exists to enhance the user’s experience and present to them only what they have chosen to see and engage with. If you choose not to engage with someone, you simply don’t accept their friend request. YOU choose which business’ Facebook page you are interested in having information delivered to you.

Imagine if Facebook were completely open. “Friends” didn’t exist. You saw every status update from every person on Facebook and every business. Facebook would cease to exist except maybe as a search engine. There would be too much noise. Facebook even recognizes this by filtering status updates for you and providing you with the option to create lists of people so that you can not only tailor who sees any particular piece of content but so you can easily filter out status updates and content into subgroups of your friends.

Then came Facebook groups. Initially, I thought this was a splendid idea. The ability to create an open or private group of individuals who share like interests and who can interact with each other without having to “friend” any group member. It offered a convenient way of sharing via a group Facebook e-mail address and, at the time, it was one of the only noise-reduction alternatives on Facebook.

Facebook groups has now become a convenient way to spam people in your social network against their permission. The ability to add people to groups without their consent has become not only a nuisance but, I believe, has actually decreased the value and allure of groups. I cringe whenever people add me to a Facebook group because 1) it irritates me that people can be presumptuous enough to choose what I’m interested in seeing and 2) because Facebook in their infinite wisdom chose to make the default notifications via e-mail on.

I belong to several Facebook groups. The groups I belong to are through my choice and consist of people and content I am interested in. I can’t belong to every group in existence, nor do I want to. Imagine if businesses could choose whether you liked their page or not. There would be many businesses who would just add everyone on Facebook and leave it up to each person to unlike it.

To compound matters, there are some people who will not only add me to a group, but after I LEAVE the group, will RE-ADD me.

It’s presumptuous and arrogant to take it upon yourself to decide for others where their interests lie. By doing this, you make yourself no different than the person who decided everyone you know could benefit from Viagra.

… and there’s a word for people who do that: spammer.

How Reviews Stop Buying Decisions

April 4, 2012 By Arnold Tijerina

First, it’s been way too long since I’ve blogged. For those who care, I apologize. I’ve been very busy in my new role with a great company, 3 Birds Marketing, and I’m very grateful that they invited me to join their team.

We all know that reputation management is mandatory in today’s digital world. Consumers have increasingly more information at their fingertips and there are more choices than ever out there. With auto brands barraging consumers with marketing, consumers are continuously relying on reviews to help make buying decisions. Studies show that consumers have more confidence in reviews left by other consumers than any other type. Everyone knows the importance of building and maintaining a solid, balanced reputation across all the review sites.

When can reviews actually stop the buying process?

I’m NOT talking about someone choosing WHO to buy from necessarily. Part of the problem is that consumers are so overwhelmed by reviews about your PRODUCT that not only is it essential to maintain a great reputation as a DEALER but to also pay attention to reviews about your brand and models.

Here’s an illustration I found that details pretty accurately what can happen:

Has this ever been you?

How do you prevent consumers from progressing past panel #1 in that comic?

Imagine this scenario… A customer comes into your dealership. They find a car they like. They go online on their phone to see if they want to do business with YOU. While reading your dealership’s reviews, they also come across product reviews from consumers saying positive things not only about YOU but also about the car they are trying to decide upon. After deciding they are comfortable with you, it’s possible that a consumer wouldn’t then feel the need to progress to product reviews on other sites and it could help avoid the progression illustrated in the comic.

In addition to not only building a solid reputation online across ALL review sites (not just focusing on a single site or two), why not also encourage your customers to say great things about your BRANDS and models?

There’s no reason why you can’t ask your customers to write a review about the car they purchase from you. Not only does this add to your reputation but it provides relevant and fresh content that could assist your dealership in not only appearing in name searches on Google but also brand and product searches.

There’s no reason why you can’t leverage consumer product and brand reviews on all of your review sites that can assist your dealership in gaining exposure that your competitor wouldn’t have.

If a consumer is trying to make a decision NOT on whether to do business with YOU but on whether to purchase your PRODUCT, a good mix of both types of reviews can certainly help prevent consumers from progressing to indecisiveness.

NADA 2012: Day Four Recap – Final Day

February 9, 2012 By Arnold Tijerina

By Day 4 of NADA, I was totally wiped. Between walking the exhibit hall, networking, and night-time adventures, I didn’t have a lot of gas left.

Day 4 in the exhibit hall had me looking for some cool swag for my daughter. Not many booths had “kid” swag (lighty-blinky things, etc. A lot of footballs but not much else). In my treasure hunt, I managed to get a caricature done courtesy of Jack Behar and the VisuallyLinked booth, a DealerTrack 1/24 scale die-cast car, some autographs with Playmates at the Aspen Marketing booth and more.

I managed to make it until I won this huge bear from the CUDL booth:

Walking around the exhibit hall with that huge bear got me a mixture of strange looks, smiles, queries as to how I was getting it home (I drove) and monetary offers but I was taking this home to my 5-year old daughter. (Man, was I a hero when I got home.) In the end, at about 2:30, I had to go back to my hotel room just to drop this off. I took a load off my feet and **BAM** I was out. I woke up right as former President George W. Bush was speaking. I was bummed to miss that.

I was invited to dinner with 3Birds Marketing that evening and we went to a delicious Thai restaurant. Afterwards, I needed to make a stop at the Caesars Palace Forum Shops. As the store closed its doors, they allowed someone in to shop privately. It happened to be Floyd Mayweather Jr.!! It was him and I, the store employees and his bodyguards (although I dont know why he needs bodyguards). Got to say “Hi” to him but I succeeded in restraining myself in asking for a picture with him.

After that, it was off to the Imperial Palace Karaoke Club. I typically visit at least once every time I’m in Vegas and it so happened that, earlier that day, Shaun Raines of DrivingSales tweeted out an impromptu industry karaoke party. Some of the 3Birds Marketing crew were there as were some ReachLocal people. It was a blast, as always. Rob Fontano KILLED the songs he sang. Dude even had a freakin’ harmonica in his pocket and played it during his songs. Are you kidding me?!?! I’ve NEVER seen someone whip out a harmonica during karaoke. Check it out:

Then, Shaun stepped up and did a duet with the DJ:

Great people. Good times.

To summarize, this NADA was the best experience I’ve had at a conference and the first major industry event in the last couple of years in which I wasn’t working in some way or another. Between all the celebrities, events, parties, swag, gifts from heaven, networking, and sessions…. I sincerely felt charmed the whole time. Thank you to NADA, God, the Lucky Charms leprechaun, and all those that made this convention so wonderful for me.

If you’d like to see some of the pictures I took (102 on display), you can view them HERE.

Oh, and remember that eBay Motors party I told you about in my Day Two Recap? I’ll leave you with some ice, ice, baby.

NADA 2012: Day Three Recap

February 6, 2012 By Arnold Tijerina

Sunday saw a lot of meetings, and running into (and trying to connect with) people. The exhibit hall was in full swing and jumping. The day was destined to be short because the Super Bowl started at 3:30pm here and all the parties were starting at 2:30pm.

We went to what, in my opinion, was the best Super Bowl party ever! eBay Motors set up the classiest, most intimate Super Bowl party I’ve ever been to. It was so classy celebrities were asking to come just so they could have a place to watch out of the general public. Not only that but all of them were super nice. They rented out the whole Seville Row ~~bar~~ ~~restaurant~~… hell, I don’t even know what it was. It was a private area that is part of the LAX nightclub. Max capacity was only 125 people. Every place to sit was a freaking couch VIP area. Lots of room. Great wait service with an open bar and lots of great food. We even had home-made cupcakes made, and hand-delivered, by Robyn and Taryn of The Food Network’s Cupcake Wars TV show.

I met Roy “Big Country” Nelson from the UFC as well as Greg Hendrick who is the Director of Event Operations for the UFC. I also met Coolio .. yeah.. that one. We were living in Gangsta’s paradise. Roy Nelson joined us at our table for a while as did the girls from Cupcake Wars. Lots of great conversation (and pictures). Oh, and Coolio gave me his cell phone number and the club manager gave me a UFC t-shirt and an autographed Roy Nelson action figure. Yeah, that’s how I roll. Talk about making connections, how is a partnership with the UFC for digital marketing and social media sound? Money, baby. That was only one of many connections that I, and people I know, made.

eBay Motors delivered a first-class Super Bowl experience. I couldn’t have improved it in any way. In my, and other people’s, opinions, they pulled off both the best party of NADA (Vanilla Ice) and the best SuperBowl party of NADA.

After that party, we headed to the DealerTrack party at the XS nightclub. We got there and, swear to God, the line looked like people were at Disneyland waiting to ride Space Mountain. Serious.

That party was OFF THE HOOK. HUGE place, great layout and tons of people. You could party inside or by the pool. Nice. Well played, DealerTrack.

After DealerTrack, it was off to a nice dinner then bed. Brilliant day at NADA.

It was so brilliant, this is what I felt like at the end of the day:

That’s right. The Honey Badger doesn’t care. He takes what he wants.

This year, I’m going to be the Honey Badger.

Stay tuned for more tomorrow! Thanks for reading!

NADA 2012: Day Two Recap

February 5, 2012 By Arnold Tijerina

My goal for yesterday was to make the rounds in the exhibit hall. I started at one end with Robbie Campbell, Manager at Subaru of Puyallup (Harnish Auto Family) and Dan Moore of Smart Web Concepts. Took us 4 hours (yes, it’s that big!) to go down every aisle to do a complete walk-through of the exhibit hall.

I took a lot of pictures but, unfortunately, they are in my bag in Robbie’s room since I didn’t want to lug it around all night BUT, I promise to post them soon.

Caught up with a lot of friends – both in-real-life and virtual – and networked. Swag was awesome. VAuto had the best Id seen so far with this old school phone handset that plugs into your mobile phone. It’s so pimp. A lot of sweet rides. Some of the vendor booths were crazy! You’ll see. Be ready.

After the show, Rob and I headed to the Mandalay Bay for UFC 143 (which was awesome) and then to the eBay Motors party at the LAX nightclub at the Luxor.

OFF. THE. HOOK

Easily the best party of NADA. Seemed like everyone was there, including Vanilla Ice… YES! Ice Ice Baby was in the house and did a set! That’s some ghetto fun stuff right there!

Now that the party is jumping
With the bass kicked in, the Vegas are pumpin’
Quick to the point, to the point no faking
I’m cooking MC’s like a pound of bacon

Yes. Yes. Yeeeeeessssss.

Afterwards, they had pretty much the whole upstairs VIP section with bottle service. We weren’t worried about the 300 people in line outside trying to get into the club. eBay WAS the Honey Badger last night!

Now to start day 3. More friends, fun and networking as today is the big game! Seems like there are 57 Super Bowl parties.

Which one will be the best? Which one will you be at?

NADA 2012: Day One Recap

February 4, 2012 By Arnold Tijerina

Here I am at the National Automobile Dealers Association, yesterday was the first day of the conference. Registration opened at 10am and sessions didn’t start until around noon. I got to connect with a lot of people I hadn’t seen in awhile. It seemed like yesterday was just kind of a “catching up” day for vendors without booths while others were getting booths ready for today.

Today is the “real” kick-off in that the exhibit hall opens and the mass scramble for dealers’ attention begins. There will be more iPads given away in the next few days than I think the Apple store stocks. I’m looking forward to visiting and plan to take a lot of pictures.

It’s a big weekend here. On top of the convention, there is a UFC fight tonight (UFC 143: Diaz vs. Condit) and the SuperBowl. I think there are 37 Super Bowl parties tomorrow.

As a prologue, pre-NADA events have been great. I got to catch up with the VinSolutions ~~team~~ rockstars, hang out with Jeff Collins of Peters Chevrolet CJD, Dan Moore of SmartWebConcepts, Rob Fontano of 3BirdsMarketing. Ended up in a suite which, unbeknownst to me, eventually turned into a reception suite for Car-mercial (part of the DMSC) then transitioned to a fabulous dinner at Il Mulino courtesy of Scott Falcone (super smart and VERY passionate guy) and PrestoReviews, then on to the VinSolutions party afterwards.

Monday morning saw many in-real-life meetings with Twitter friends, industry friends and even some vendors I work with who I had never met, like Mike Fitzpatrick of DealerTrend. Ran into Grant Cardone. Caught Todd Smith (CEO of ActivEngage) session. He’s crazy brilliant. People were asking him questions well into the next session.

Eventually it was off to the Mandalay Bay for some non-conference, non-drinking, non… well, you get the point.. a break. Went to the weigh-ins for UFC 143 and then saw Joe Rogan doing stand-up. Met a TON of fighters (way cool) then called it an early night at 1am (yes, people, that’s an early night at ANY automotive convention but especially NADA).

Getting ready to begin Day 2 of NADA with coverage of the exhibit hall. It may, or may not, be live in the morning but it will be live eventually. Thanks for reading!

Buying Reviews and Car Dealerships

January 28, 2012 By Arnold Tijerina

In the last few days, there has been national media coverage of a vendor on Amazon who decided to “stack the deck” and buy reviews. The two articles, one on Gizmodo and one in the New York Times, told the story of a company selling cases for the Kindle Fire on Amazon who included notes in the packages asking for positive reviews from buyers in exchange for a full refund of the purchase price they paid.

Within the automotive industry, there have been (and still are) companies that promise to increase your online reviews and, while they claim the reviews are all genuine, people paying attention can easily dissect the fact that they are not. I wrote an article in June of 2011 that investigated one company, Review Boost, that was suspected of doing just this in which I interviewed the owner.

Most dealers do not participate in or knowingly hire any companies that do this.

One statement in those articles, which was included in the letter to consumers who purchased the Kindle Fire case, caught my attention though.

“We strive to earn 100 percent perfect ‘FIVE-STAR’ scores from you!”

Does this sound familiar?

Most dealerships have a time, usually in their delivery process, in which the customer is “educated” that they will be receiving a survey from the manufacturer and how important it is for the dealership to receive top scores in all areas. Some dealerships even get as detailed as having a copy of the survey with the desired answers highlighted and reviewed with the consumers. I know dealers who ask the customers to fill it out and bring it into the dealership in exchange for something – a free oil change, t-shirt, etc. Some ask for the survey to be returned blank (which they obviously plan to fill out themselves) and some just ask them to return a completed survey which they can then read and decide for themselves whether to return it or not. I know dealers who will even RDR the car with a different address if there is heat on the deal so that a customer never gets the survey at all.

While this is certainly not identical to the vendor in the articles, in which they offered a refund for the product in exchange for positive reviews, it’s pretty close.

Reviewing a CSI survey with customers when they buy a car is skating a fine-line especially when there’s coaching involved. When you throw in a free oil change or some other incentive, it’s the same thing. Every dealer knows that they aren’t supposed to do this. However, CSI scores can be tied to future incentives from manufacturers so dealers are always under pressure to keep their scores high.

The problem with any of this is that you never get an opportunity to truly improve. You don’t get real feedback on what (or who) is broken in your process. Even though these aren’t “public” reviews and are only viewed by the manufacturer and employees of the dealership, the opportunity for improvement still exists.

You should embrace the opportunity, take your lumps when they come, and do your best to solve the customer’s complaints or criticism with your CSI surveys just as you would with your online public reviews. Even though consumers might not see these when choosing your dealership, making sure that ALL your customers are happy by attempting to solve issues they may have had, whether you received the feedback publicly through an online review or privately through CSI survey feedback, will help you grow as a dealership.

Embrace all reviews, both negative and positive, public or private, and use them as a learning experience and an opportunity to fix broken processes, clean house of cancerous employees, and become a better dealership.

I guarantee that by doing this, you’ll see less negative reviews.

Tip: Selling Cars using eBay Motors Local Market

January 24, 2012 By Arnold Tijerina

In my experience, I’ve heard many dealers complain about eBay Motor’s Local Market service for dealers. For those who don’t know what it is, it’s NOT a typical auction-style listing service. It will post your entire inventory on eBay and offer shoppers two choices on your vehicle page on eBay – “Make an Offer” or “Contact Seller”.

One of the coolest things is that, different from a normal eBay message from an interested buyer, you actually get full contact info for the consumer as they have to be logged into eBay to complete the action and eBay passes along this information to you straight into your CRM. So if someone contacts you and asks you a question, you have the ability to follow up with them just like any other lead.

One of the biggest complaints I hear from dealers are that they continuously get ridiculous offers for vehicles – like an offer of $1,000 for a $10,000 vehicle – and they don’t want to waste their time. They believe there is little value in having their inventory on eBay because their perception is that all they get are stupid offers and little else.

What I ask dealers when they make this complaint is “If you had someone in your showroom making you an offer of $1,000 on a $10,000 car, what would you do? Would you tell them to hit the pavement?” The typical answer is “I’d sit down with them and work the deal starting off with explaining why that offer is not realistic.”

Keep in mind that, despite their unrealistic offer, these are people, first and foremost, shopping for cars. On top of that, out of the millions of cars listed on eBay, they happened to land on yours. Not only did they land on your vehicle, they took the time to contact you and/or make an offer on that vehicle – realistic or not.

Anyone offering you any amount of money for a vehicle is, in reality, starting negotiations. I’m sure you get unrealistic offers all the time from showroom customers in the box with your salesperson. You ask your salespeople to get a commitment when filling out the initial foursquare and, sometimes, those offers are unrealistic. These leads aren’t any different except for the fact that they aren’t in your showroom.

If you get an unrealistic offer on eBay, instead of looking at it like a waste of your time, realize that, chances are, this person is farther down the funnel than most of your internet leads. They may be higher maintenance and require more work than your typical internet lead but by making the effort instead of just declining their offer and dismissing them as a “jack”, you’ll find that you’ll be able to convert some of those ridiculous offers into sales.

Pre-Conference Twitter Advice for Vendors

January 23, 2012 By Arnold Tijerina

I’ve had the privilege of handling social media for nine major automotive industry conferences in the last few years. (the 1st and 2nd DrivingSales Executive Summits, the 8th-11th Digital Dealer Conference & Expositions, and the 1st and 2nd Innovative Dealer Summits). In that time, I’ve also tried to include exhibitors and sponsors in the conference’s social media campaigns both for their benefit and for the conference’s.

I routinely asked them for Twitter accounts and created lists of those accounts for people following the conference Twitter account (like this one) whether they provided it for me or not (lots of searching Twitter, sadly). We left spots on speaking applications asking for their information and we had the sales team ask. If I had to guess, only about 15% actually provided this information and even less actually used social media to reach out and engage with attendees.

As you can imagine, there is a lot of “pre-conference” promotion (by the conference) and an essential piece of that was done via social media. Attendees would start getting excited and I would see Twitter conversations start ramping up via the conference hashtag. What I wouldn’t see is vendors participating in those conversations. No matter how hard and how many times I would advise a vendor that they should, they just wouldn’t do it. So for the few months leading up to the conference, there would be plenty of conference-related chatter (“Are you going?” “I’m excited” “Let’s get together”, etc) but virtually no vendor engagement. Amusingly enough, I have even had dealership attendees on Twitter publicly noticing and inquiring about the lack of vendors.

About a week before the conference…. it hits. Like someone hit a “Go” button somewhere. Vendors galore. All over Twitter. It was great that they would finally start participating but the problem was that there was no engagement and they were late to the party. A typical vendor’s tweet would read something like “We have your magic solution! Come visit us at booth #1234” or “We’re giving away an iPad2! Come to booth #1234 to enter”. By this point, they are entering (and creating) noise. The dealers and managers attending see this. They know that there is virtually no value in those tweets. They’ve received the countless pre-conference e-mails from vendors promoting something or other all with the same basic call-to-action of “come to our booth”.

On the flip side of this, I see vendors who DO engage with attendees. I see the vendors that engage attendees successfully setting up demo appointments and building interest and rapport with attendees. On the conference side, I always tried to increase their exposure (and the conference’s) by re-tweeting those vendors and encouraging people to interact with them. I rewarded exhibitors and sponsors for contributing to, and participating in, the conversation. What I didn’t retweet was blatant sales-only type tweets.

Fact: The 11th Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition hashtag saw 9,100 tweets from over 1,400 unique people with a combined reach of almost 100,000 people that generated over 9 million impressions…. and this was only from people that tweeted with the hashtag!

Why a vendor would want to skip out of being included in this is beyond me. I think they don’t understand social media 101 – the whole point of social media is not only to engage with your primary audience, it’s also to reach THEIR social network. The only other reason I can think of that they’re not doing this is that they can’t be bothered or see no value in it.

Vendors need to realize that conference attendees paying attention to the conference hashtag don’t want to see your 140 character sales pitch a week before the conference while, at the same time, they are receiving all the direct mail pieces and e-mail marketing campaigns that are hitting their real (and virtual) in-boxes. You become noise. Spam.

They are willing and want to engage with you but you must start this engagement MONTHS before the conference and it must be REAL engagement.You want to get a dealer’s attention pre-conference? Start talking to them pre-conference, not selling to them.

Sell to them at your booth, not on Twitter.