GM + Social Media = Creating a fan base
Gasoline price rising and loss of $15,5 billion in the second quarter have pushed GM to move forward and try new things. And the new thing is the relaunch of the social media strategy with the release of the new GMnext.com platform. Featuring executive blogs, consumer generated content, and social media tools (like Twitter and Youtube), the so-called social platform aims at targeting young car buyers. This is the context. But GM is missing the important part of the way it works with social media …
Creating a social platform isn’t just enough to get people notice of your brand and make them interested in the content you’re sharing. You have to consider their needs and interests and stick with them. You have to make the brand the “best friend to speak about your hobbies and points of interests”. That kind of statement turns any social media efforts into an opportunity.
What GM has released sounds more like a content aggregator, without any objective but to be a “landing page” as Natalie Johnson, GM’s Social media manager, says. Some basics have been forgotten in the process: listening to the consumers and sharing interests for example. What’s on the website is only “speaking to the consumers” and not interacting with them. There’s no intention to engage with consumers when looking at the homepage, no pitching to invite people to share or read content generated by other consumers. Moreover the content generated by the company isn’t, yet, any match with car blogs or websites, which are the real competitors of GM social media effort.
Creating value generates traction and then engagement if well followed up with readers of a blog. But that doesn’t seem to be any of their concerns when looking at what they’re doing. And when Johnson says “It’s hard to put a specific dollar value on this, but it’s something we have to do” speaking of their social media strategy, the basics of setting objectives (and don’t tell me they’ve done it telling “we have to target youth”) is long forgotten. Or not set to avoid any ROI calculation…
Via Information week.
Fast.Fwd.Innovation weekly Takeaway - Fast.Fwd.Innov@tion | October 6th, 2008 at 8:21 am #
[...] GM + Social Media = Creating a fan base: Gasoline price rising and loss of $15,5 billion in the second quarter have pushed GM to move forward and try new things. And the new thing is the relaunch of the social media strategy with the release of the new GMnext.com platform. Featuring executive blogs, consumer generated content, and social media tools (like Twitter and Youtube), the so-called social platform aims at targeting young car buyers. This is the context. But GM is missing the important part of the way it works with social media … Read more here. [...]