Social media management in the automotive industry

Social media management in the automotive industry

The bad news first: According to a study by Batten & Company, 64 percent of people simply think brands are interchangeable. So why should customers buy goods or use a service from your company? Of course, you can lower your prices or increase your quality. But it's not the products or services that bind your customers to you in the long term, it's the personal relationships. And the stories that people associate with you and your company. This is exactly where social media comes into play. 

With them - and that's the good news - you can anchor your company more deeply in the minds of users and therefore potential customers with relatively little effort. At first this seems like a good and fairly simple plan. Also because numerous studies show: the more engagement and interaction a company achieves on its social media presence, the higher the willingness to buy. “The percentages and euro figures for this increased willingness vary depending on the study and industry,” explains communications expert Gergely Teglasy, also known as TG: “But they all have one thing in common: they are all clearly pointing upwards and have been pointing upwards for years.” In short: a fan buys more. That's why today there is no advertising campaign without social media.

And that no longer just applies to big brands and companies. “Even the hairdresser on the corner thinks that he gets free advertising with his Facebook posts, which spreads virally like wildfire, and that customers are knocking down his door the next day,” says Teglasy, who teaches at the University of Vienna and several technical colleges and advises international organizations and companies on their digital communication strategies. As a result, more and more trivialities and clumsy advertisements are clogging up social channels - from the infamous cat pictures to iPad competitions to boring press releases. “Standing out is the art,” says Teglasy, who writes regular columns on the topic in the automotive industry.

The car industry basically has good cards. After all, she sometimes has emotionally charged products and often spectacular images. The latter applies not only to car dealers with their stylish new cars, but also to workshops that can, for example, post pictures of spectacular damage. In any case, almost everyone can do something with it.

Of course, a professional social media presence also costs time and money. "But if you are replaced, it will cost you a lot more. It's about telling stories that emotionally bind your customers to you. If you can do this, then there is a chance that you are not replaceable," points out the social media expert.

Of course, simply saying “We have to be on Facebook” is not a communication strategy. Experts also unanimously advise against the initially often practiced approach of simply assigning responsibility for social media activities to a young intern. Just because someone is a digital native and knows how to use social networks as a user, this does not guarantee that this person recognizes communication needs and problems.

A sensible strategy requires clearly defined goals. In social media management, a distinction is made between soft and hard goals. Soft goals are difficult to measure. For example, building a brand or strengthening your image. They are important – but alone they are not enough. Therefore, you still need hard goals, i.e. clear numbers by which you can measure your success. There are a lot of numbers you can measure on social media, and all you can measure is metrics. This ranges from the number of followers to the reach of your posts and interactions. However, you need to determine which of these is essential, i.e. which metric is really a KPI. KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator and means the key figures that you use to measure actual performance. Useful KPIs can be conversions (= conversion of interest into concrete action) such as newsletter registrations, downloads of an offer, filling out a contact form or even sales. Of course, soft and hard goals must be consistent and realistic. 

“What you know from other areas of your company also applies to social media: If goals are not measurable, unattainably high or simply meaningless, motivation in the team quickly declines,” explains communications expert Teglasy. “So be smart and make your goals smart: sspecific, medible, aattractive, realistic and t“mined.” So instead of “We want more newsletter subscribers,” it would be better to define: “We want 200 interested parties to sign up for our newsletter by September 30th.”

The expert never tires of emphasizing that social media needs three things: time, a strategy and money. For example, sometimes it makes sense to invest in external consulting, training, influencers and advertising. 

Technical terms like content marketing and storytelling are buzzing around and are being proclaimed as the newest of the new. "We can play bullshit bingo with these terms, but it still doesn't make communication new. Because what has moved us since time immemorial are stories. We love stories and we buy stories," says Teglasy.

Stories are essential to interpreting facts. Only they make it possible for us to put ourselves in situations, understand connections and thereby understand the world. Sometimes just a single word can make the difference. Teglasy gives the following example: "Compare the following two sentences: 'The king dies, the people rise up.' Or: 'The king dies, the angry people rise up.' It is only one word that makes the difference. The difference between pure facts and a story that we can understand and empathize with."

Companies now have to find out which stories they can and want to tell. An external consultant can help you with this and work with you to create a strategy for your social media communication. "But you should be involved in telling your stories yourself; you should never outsource it entirely. Because social media only works authentically, the communication has to be real and come directly from the company, it has to be 'human'," emphasizes the expert. According to Teglasy, only this offers customers the opportunity to build a long-term relationship with the company and not move on straight away just because the same offer is ten euros cheaper around the corner. 

But what actually makes a good social media post? According to Teglasy, the data is clear: a video gets more interaction than several photos in a row (in technical terms, carousel post). These in turn achieve more interaction than a single photo. And pure text or just a link performs worst in comparison. And then the expert adds another interesting detail: “We also know from studies that the use of emojis can achieve up to 47.7% more interactions.” In this sense, a wink smiley can't do any harm 😉 But be careful: "This is statistics and in no way means that the easiest way to post cat videos is with smileys and hearts. Because while this may lead to a lot of likes and comments, it doesn't do much for you as a company," says the expert. Tongue-in-cheek afterthought: “Unless, of course, you sell cats.”

So what are the topics you should be posting? The professional's advice: "Communicate in such a way that your target group has added value." This could be interesting or special information about your company, a look behind the scenes, humorous anecdotes - also about everyday life, interesting or unexpected things about your employees, exciting new developments or insights and, above all, stories that move you and your customers emotionally. 

As already mentioned, the automotive industry has a lot to offer here in terms of products and services alone. For example, when BMW presented the new M3 and M4 in 2020, there was a lot of excitement online because the fan base discussed the new front design with the significantly larger kidneys in an emotional manner.

However, the automotive industry has not yet fully exploited the potential of social media. The digital agency Virtual Identity came to this surprising conclusion at first glance after analyzing the social media presence and relevant activities of various car brands and thus billion-dollar corporations. Other sectors such as toys, construction and garden centers or fast food are far ahead of the automotive industry.

Virtual Identity developed a four-stage maturity model that used 60 criteria per channel to examine how different brands exploit the potential on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube. The focus was on business-relevant communication. The central question: Are formats and technologies used that actually make a contribution to the brand, sales or leads? “That’s exactly what it’s about,” explains Amir Tavakolian, Managing Director of Virtual Identity Vienna, “and not about key figures like likes, which do not make a direct contribution to business success and which, as we all know, can also be bought.” 

As mentioned, the results of the industry study are sobering: The top three in Austria - BMW, Opel and Ford - only reach maturity level 2 out of 4. Other brands such as Škoda, Seat or Renault only reach maturity level 1. In Germany, where the 15 best-selling car brands were examined, Toyota is by far the first to cross the finish line. However, the Japanese only get 52% of the possible points in the overall ranking of all categories. A core finding of the study is that the focus is often too much on attractive images and not enough on contemporary tracking. Although the operational tools are in place, strategic action in social media has not yet become established, as Michael Schmidt, Director Consulting at Virtual Identity, explains.

For example, Volkswagen uses friendly storytelling with a high recognition value, but pixel targeting to stay with fans falls short. “It’s a bit like having the sales room stocked with the most beautiful models, but no car salesman being there to sign the purchase contract,” says Schmidt, drawing a striking comparison.

The overall dismal performance of the car brands is primarily explained by the lack of Facebook and Instagram shops. When it comes to business relevance, i.e. lead generation, the automotive industry is naturally not as easy as other industries on these channels. After all, cars are rarely sold through an online shop, but toys and garden accessories are.

"On the other hand, all major car brands do have e-commerce-capable products and services," as social media expert Schmidt emphasizes: "On the one hand, there are merchandise product shops or financing products that can be concluded online - even if there are restrictions here. So, like Tesla, the entire car doesn't always have to be sold online in order to exploit business potential."

The authors of the study describe “community management” as the “eternal stepchild” – in all industries. "Interacting with users doesn't seem to be easy for anyone. Some of the brands examined prefer to leave questions and criticism unanswered on their channels, and some even don't respond to direct inquiries at all," says Schmidt. That doesn't seem professional. His conclusion: The tools of the trade are largely mastered (the pages are generally set up reasonably well and are at least managed appropriately), but what is missing is the strategic understanding of targeting and retargeting, which in the best case scenario turns a like into a lead and reaching for an emoji turns into reaching for a credit card. In other words: There is still a lack of the necessary transition from reach generation to business value.

Smaller players from related industries such as the workshop or supplier sector may even have it easier here. On the other hand, smaller companies also have far fewer resources. For them, even creating a post can sometimes be a challenge. Ultimately, you should use self-produced videos and photos if possible and only a small amount of purchased stock images, as management consultant Gergely Teglasy emphasizes. It's good that when faces are visible, viewers immediately have a connection. Of course, you should also pay attention to the quality of the images and, if necessary, hire a photographer. Because: “Attractive images are the key to social networks,” says Teglasy. Live videos are an exception; they can sometimes be blurry or not perfect.

Tonality is also important in communication. This is successful in social media if it is relaxed, direct, humorous, short and friendly. “Your postings shouldn’t read like press releases, nor like advertisements,” Teglasy advises entrepreneurs. It is important that you tell a little story with every post. And as with any story, we humans love variety on social media. 

If not enough people are interested, you can also buy some on social media. According to numerous studies in recent years, many companies – including large ones – as well as well-known personalities have up to 50% fake followers. This means that every second subscriber is not a real interested party. This is not the only reason why the number of followers is no longer a recognized (only) measurement in the social media world.

There are tempting offers, you can get 500 followers for just $25. A bargain. At first glance. Because these followers may not be real people at all, but so-called bots, i.e. small automated programs that do what they were programmed to do, namely follow your company. Or there are very poorly paid workers in click farms in the Philippines who simply click “Follow” every second. Without even looking at the profile.

“Both do absolutely nothing for you as a company,” warns the expert and advises against buying followers. The reason is plausible: "Neither the bot nor the Filipino cheap worker will ever become a customer of yours. Neither will buy from you or use your services. Never."
According to Teglasy, buying followers actually has more disadvantages than advantages:

● When someone looks at your profile and your followers, in most cases they can be recognized at first glance as fake followers.
● Your posts get no reactions (engagement in technical language), because the bots or fake followers care exactly nothing about your painstakingly created posts.
● Potential customers and business partners could block your profile.
● The social network could block you because it detects fake followers on you.
● The algorithm penalizes you and doesn't show your posts to your real followers.

On the latter point, you have to know and keep in mind that there is a fundamental problem with social networks: there is too much content for too short a time. Every minute, 150,000 photos are uploaded to Facebook and 350,000 Instagram stories are created. Every minute!

So it's clear: not everyone can see everything. The social networks therefore introduced algorithms years ago that filter the content for users (regardless of whether you want it or not). Because the operators know: If all the content is played out, there will be too much that you don't like. And if content is irrelevant to users, the social network will not be used. Then the users leave the ship and it sinks. The algorithms of the social networks do not show your post to all of your followers. You first show it to a small number, test and learn (in a matter of seconds, by the way).

Let's say you have 1,000 followers on your channel. 500 real fans and 500 bought, i.e. fake, followers. Now, with a lot of effort and love, create a posting and publish it. Now your post will initially be shown to 100 followers. Let's further assume that all of these 100 people are fake followers. Of course, these do not interact with your content. Why should they? They are bots or employees of click farms. The algorithm immediately learns: Okay, no one is interested in this posting. So I show it to fewer followers. “You will have already recognized the problem: you run the risk of your posting not being seen by a single (or very few) of your real and actual customers,” explains Gergely Teglasy: “So you would have been doing work for the trash can.”

Teglasy's conclusion on this: "Admittedly, slow, organic growth is much more tedious than buying followers. But it is also more profitable and more useful in the long term. Because then your followers won't be gone tomorrow."

And yet successful social media presences cost more than “just” time. “You need three things for social media today: a strategy, time and money,” says communications expert Teglasy. The days when it was assumed that social media could be run on the side by an intern for free are over.

All the algorithms that determine who sees what and when have two main goals: on the one hand, to show users content that is relevant to them, and on the other hand, to win companies as advertising customers. This is not inherently reprehensible. There are profit-oriented companies behind social networks. The algorithms assume that companies should pay for the distribution of their content. Just like you ultimately have to pay a TV station to show a commercial on television. The advantage of social media is that it lives exclusively from user-generated content. In other words, content that users create.

As I said, the algorithm then shows your posting to some of your fans and sees how it is received. Your posts may be well received and delivered to many followers and possibly even go viral. "But that's not the rule, you usually have to pay for it," says expert Teglasy: "To put it simply: the larger the company (= the more followers), the less the content is seen if you don't pay for it. You see: there is no right to organic reach. But the opportunity to place advertisements."

Now the question arises as to how these algorithms can be influenced. And related to this is the question of what determines the visibility of your posts. It's the news feed algorithms. This is artificial intelligence programmed by hundreds of developers, psychologists and other experts, which ensures that content relevant to users is shown in the “news feed” on the homepage. None of the networks reveal which factors influence this and how. "Facebook thinks there are over 100,000 factors that determine what we see. This is intended to signal to us: too many to understand. But we know some things from research and practice," reports the social media professional.

Interaction (= engagement) is one of the most important factors. The more users react to your posts, comment on them and share them, the more important the network considers this post. Speed ​​also plays a role: the faster this happens after posting, the more often the post is “played out” to others. By the way, the average engagement rate on Facebook is 0.18%. This means that out of 10,000 people who see your post, 18 will react. The good news: Less is often better. If you have fewer than 10,000 fans, the average increases to 0.52 %. This is also a reason not to buy followers or collect them wildly, as Teglasy emphasizes.

The more friends interact with a post, the more likely they are to see it. Also the same location means increased visibility. Age, gender and interests (yes, the networks know these) also determine the news feed. Of course, the past also counts - from this the networks learn which pages and content are important to them. So if you watch a cat video, Facebook knows it - and shows you even more cat videos. So can we influence our news feed? Although limited, but still, as Teglasy explains. His tip: "Interact quickly with content that interests you and that you want to see more of. And invite your employees to do the same with your company's posts."

But which platforms should you choose for your social media presence? Teglasy: "Definitely not all of them! Because every platform consumes time, energy and money. It's better to concentrate on a few channels that you use skillfully and regularly."

Facebook has around five million monthly users in Austria. In technical terms, this number is called MAU (= Monthly Active Users). And the following numbers also refer to people who are active at least once a month: Instagram (also part of the Facebook Group) is in second place with three million. If you think that Twitter will follow you, you're wrong. Because Twitter has a strong media presence (because many prominent opinion leaders, mostly from the areas of politics and media, post there) and this makes it seem much bigger than it actually is.

But of the only around 200,000 Twitter users in Austria, only 85,000 are actually active, so they not only read along, but also send tweets (status reports on Twitter) themselves. While you constantly read in daily newspapers who has written what on Twitter, you will hardly read that X posted Y on Xing or LinkedIn today. These two business networks are significantly larger with 1.5 and 1.6 million users respectively. 

Size obviously isn't everything. That's why you shouldn't just choose your preferred channel based on that. The expert advises: "Let research and empathy be your guide. Ask yourself and your customers directly: Where are my customers traveling and active?" Of course, Teglasy immediately had an answer ready: “In most cases, Facebook will be there – simply because of its size; after all, two out of three adult Austrians use the world’s largest platform.” And he thinks that for some entrepreneurs a network may be enough, because a social media presence has to be managed and resources are limited. Texts, photos, videos, stories, answers to comments and questions, advertisements and much more. All of this takes time and requires appropriate know-how. It is better to optimally serve one platform and thus capture customers than to serve many platforms half-heartedly.

You can assume that people are talking about your company online. And – even if these are not exactly critical comments – it is fundamentally pleasing. The only question is whether you notice it. And whether you know who is spreading what about your company on social networks. So that you can answer this question with “yes”, monitoring comes into play.

Social media monitoring has three clear benefits. You see:
1. Who says something about you. This means that you get to know what the mood is towards your company and whether there are any quality or communication problems. So where you should invest time, energy and money in improving the product or service, in customer service or communication. 
2. Which topics concern your target group, i.e. your (potential) customers. 
3. An approaching shitstorm.

Which monitoring tool should you use? Google search brings up countless lists of top applications and the most comprehensive one lists 300 “best” tools. Here it is advisable to seek the help of a social media consultant who can create a decision matrix. As an entrepreneur, you determine and weight which social networks, which countries, which languages ​​and which activities (mentions, keywords, etc.) the tool should cover. And also whether multiple users need access, whether this can be done on the computer or via a smartphone app and whether planning and publishing contributions (= posts) should be possible. Of course, the price also flows into this matrix. Social media expert Gergely Teglasy, who incidentally wrote "Zwirbler", the world's first Facebook novel, states in connection with monitoring tools: "But remember: If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. The free or cheapest tools usually do little - and sometimes poorly."

His advice: At the end of the decision-making process, you will be left with three to five favorites. You should try them out. Most tools have a free trial period of seven to 14 days. Then make your decision, monitor and continually improve your SM performance. Everyone who uses social media will experience the negative side of social networking at some point: "Sooner or later someone will say negative things about your company. That's part of it. The only question is how you deal with it," explains expert Teglasy.

There are three levels of negativity: criticism, trolls and shitstorms. Criticism is good: you can learn from it. For example, you are made aware of the weaknesses of a service or product that you offer. This way you can see where you can improve. The most helpful thing is concrete, constructive criticism that stays on point. But not all people are able to give criticism constructively; it too often becomes personal. The communication expert's tip: "If someone criticizes, stay on a factual level and use the opportunity for a dialogue from which you can take something away."

A special species is the troll (although it can also be female, but according to all studies it is more likely to be male). This is a user who just wants to cause trouble. He's not interested in the potential for improvement, just in letting out anger. "These are usually narcissists who put themselves above others or want to put them down. The troll's motto is: 'I feel bad, so others should feel bad too'. You will never be able to convince a troll; you will notice that by the time you write the third comment at the latest," Teglasy reports. The troll doesn't respond to arguments, but always has something (else) to complain about. "Every minute is wasted energy and time, so there's one simple rule when it comes to trolling: Don't do it. In other words: 'Don't feed the troll!'" advises Teglasy.

The worst thing that can happen to a company on social media is a shitstorm. Only four factors together result in a shitstorm: mass, negative, emotional reactions in a very short space of time. The three known triggers for shitstorms are quality problems, service or communication problems or unethical behavior. These can actually exist or just be perceived as such by people.

In order to deal with this, it is important that you notice in good time that something is brewing. Because then you can react before the storm even really builds up. This should be the case thanks to consistent monitoring.

Experts differentiate between seven levels on the shitstorm scale: from 0 (calm) to 6 (hurricane). “At level 0 (completely calm sea) everything is fine, up to 4 (strong wind) you can take good countermeasures, from level 5 it is a storm and all you have to do is hold on!” explains Teglasy. The shitstorm is a tsunami of outrage in which communication becomes increasingly detached from the original topic. The end result is denigration and insults to the company about which one is outraged. Then it gets down to business.

According to Teglasy, the most important tips for affected companies are as follows:

1. Don't panic! A hasty reaction is the worst reaction. Stay calm, but react quickly.

2. Hopefully you have social media guidelines, netiquette (= guidelines for users) and a crisis plan. If not, do these three things right away. The crisis plan is important right now: What happened, who needs to be notified (management), who has to approve the response?

3. Don't exaggerate the issue, don't react emotionally, don't pretend to be ignorant.

4. Look into the matter (= the problem), check the facts and clarify them.

5. Be available, respond, communicate concretely and matter-of-factly, get partners on board and keep control of the discourse.

6. Solve the problem, apologize and keep promises.

By the way: The word shitstorm is a Germanized term, in English it is called “flame war”. Sounds much more likeable, but is just as dangerous.

Part of navigating the social media highway skillfully is using the right image and video sizes and file formats. It is important to avoid quality problems, distortions and blurring; this helps the algorithms to display your content better. The preamble to this: neither centimeters nor dpi count on the screen. Pixels are the only thing that counts, this is the unit of measurement you need - for both the width and height of your images and videos. The profile picture for your Facebook business page should (as of today) be uploaded in 180x180 pixels in the .png image file format in order to be displayed in the best possible way. On the computer it is then displayed in 170×170 pixels, on smartphones in 128×128 pixels. “Wherever possible, use the PNG (for Portable Network Graphics) format, it has the best quality and supports correction mechanisms so that images look approximately the same on different systems,” emphasizes Teglasy. 

He has another tip for the currently correct sizes: "Google: 'Social Media picture size cheat sheet' and add the current year, because a three-year-old list is no longer current." Each platform has different formats for posts, some prefer portrait, some landscape, but a simple rule of thumb applies here: square (i.e. in a 1:1 ratio) works for most people - both for photos and videos.