How Ford Increase Their Bottom Line Results Using Social Media

In this video interview with Scott Monty, the head of social media at Ford Motor Company, Scott shares stories of how social media helps Ford launch and sell cars.

You’ll hear how Ford started to build buzz and anticipation with social media a year before the Fiesta was brought to the United States, and how this impacted their sales.

Scott Monty, Ford

Watch the video to hear about the other ways Ford is using social media and be sure to check out the takeaways below.


This video is full of business insights for social media. Here are some of the things you’ll want to listen for.

Use Social Media For Pre-launches
Discover how Ford used social media to pre-launch the Ford Fiesta to:

■Get socially vibrant people to spread their message
■Focus on getting other people to tell people about Ford
In the Fiesta launch Ford converted ten times more reservations into orders than with a traditional vehicle launch

Leverage Facebook Communities
Learn why Ford has a strong representation across different Facebook pages to:

■Give people content to share and ask Facebook readers for more content
You’ll hear how Ford Revealed the Ford Explorer on Facebook instead of at an auto show and how this had greater impact than with a Super Bowl ad

Other Key Insights From Scott
Scott’s biggest social media lesson: integrated marketing communications. Find out how Scott learned to use paid, owned and earned media together for successful marketing.

Hear about how Ford is catering to mobile devices with the new MyFord Touch system, and how Ford has made the API for their Sync system open to the public so Ford can benefit from outside talent and build a stronger community.

Learn more about Ford’s new Focus Rally America, an interactive Ford Rally competition, driven with social media to create awareness for their brand and connect with their audience.

Check out The Ford Story and find Ford as well as Ford Focus on Facebook.

What’s your favorite takeaway from this video? Please share your comments below.

Tags: facebook, focus rally, ford, ford explorer, ford fiesta launch, integrated marketing, michael stelzner, pre-launch, scott monty, social media marketing, video

Facebook takes steps to become a genuine business platform

With businesses increasingly relying on social networking tools to improve communication with employees and partners, the most popular one of them all, Facebook, could be at the heart of a major shift in the way we do business.

Analyst firm Gartner recently predicted that 20 per cent of employees will use social networks as their preferred mode of communication by 2014, with the trend driven by greater availability of social-networking services that are suited to the business, coupled with changing demographics and work styles.

Recent research from Virgin Media Business has revealed that 24 per cent of businesses in London said keeping in touch with colleagues and customers via social networking sites was essential.

Now though, Facebook has launched its own email service to rival Gmail, Google's email platform that is already being used by a host of large and small businesses across a variety of sectors.

The site is offering an @facebook.com email address to every one of its users, which will enable them to communicate with friends via SMS, instant messaging or email. Users will receive messages through whatever medium or device is convenient for them, and the function also enables users to have a conversation in real time.

Facebook engineer Joel Seligstein claims that the evolution of Facebook Messages will even lead to telephone numbers becoming obsolete.

"Relatively soon, we'll probably all stop using arbitrary ten-digit numbers and bizarre sequences of characters to contact each other," he posted on the Facebook blog.

"We will just select friends by name and be able to share with them instantly. We aren't there yet, but the changes today are a small first step."



And according to Jeff Bonforte, CEO of Xobni, an email plug-in that brings added functionality to Microsoft Outlook, Facebook is about to take the functionality of email as we know it to the next stage in its evolution.

"Way back when, AOL let us know we, in fact, had mail. Yahoo! and Hotmail made it global and free. Microsoft made it work for business with Exchange and Outlook. BlackBerry made it portable. And Gmail took off the storage limits," said Bonforte.

"Facebook announced this morning that it intends to make two more contributions. They will make messaging social and, undeterred by Google Wave, more real-time."

But Facebook is not just keen to become a better communication tool for its users; it is even taking strides in the e-commerce arena.

Bazaarvoice, a software and services provider, has now launched its Ratings and Reviews application for Facebook, which allows retailers and manufacturers to promote a dialogue between their customers on Facebook.

The application allows user-generated content to flow in real time between Facebook and a business' primary e-commerce site, integrating customer conversations across different channels, and allowing businesses to also protect their brand.

The application integrates into a brand's Facebook fan page as a tab, which displays a catalogue of available goods and related customer ratings and reviews. This lets users explore products by using the opinions of their friends and other Facebook users who have ‘liked' the product or the brand. Shoppers can also purchase through a ‘buy now' capability that directs the user to the product page on the brand's website.

"Figures show that half of Facebook users log in every day," explained Richard Anderson, international VP of client services at Bazaarvoice.

"By connecting friends, shoppers and brand advocates within the internet's most popular social networking site, companies are able to expand their audience and engage more potential customers through the sharing and liking of content in a familiar and social environment."

The application adds credence to the idea that social media sites will become a popular avenue for e-commerce.

Dell's head of social media Manish Mehta recently told Computing that CIOs need to prepare for the day when sites such as Facebook become a revenue channel for businesses.

"Social media may not have driven sales in an obvious way so far, but the next logical step will be transactional social media. When you can buy products through Facebook, rather than just liking them, we'll start to see a shift in the role of social media in the business," he said.

With the announcements of new Facebook functionality in both the communication and e-commerce sites, that shift is beginning to take place.

Social networking to replace email by 2014

The business benefits of social software platforms will lead to email being replaced as the primary means of communication by 2014, according to analyst Gartner.

Increasing business use of tools such as Twitter and Facebook has resulted in more demand for such systems, says the firm, which predicts that 20 per cent of organisations will use them as their key communication medium by 2014.

Greater security, the availability of the so-called “white-labelled” social networks and more tolerance from organisations allowing use of personal accounts at work are among the factors influencing the business uptake of such tools, says the study.

"The rigid distinction between email and social networks will erode as both become more developed. Email will take on many social attributes, such as contact brokering, while social networks will develop richer email capabilities, " said Matt Cain, research vice president at Gartner.

"While email is already almost fully penetrated in the corporate space, we expect to see steep growth rates for sales of premises and cloud-based social networking services," he said.

The analyst also predicts that in the next couple of years more than half of global businesses will be engaged in some sort of microblogging, with more control and security features, though standalone enterprise use of Twitter-like tools will have less than five per cent penetration.

And only 25 per cent of businesses will routinely use social network analysis to improve performance and productivity through 2015, according to research.

The study adds that more than 70 per cent of IT-led social media projects will fail as technology departments tend to provide an IT solution rather than a social solution that targets specific business value. Gartner says that businesses will need to develop better skills to be able to develop adequate social media solutions.

Gartner also predicts more activity around the development of mobile-based collaborative tools over the next few years.

"As more organisations consider replacing desk phones with mobile phones, they may wish to anchor their collaboration tools also on the mobile phone," said Ken Dulaney, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner.

Social media is already delivering tangible business benefits

For some time now, social networking has been trumpeted as the technology that will change the way we do business. However, while there have been cases of Twitter or Facebook campaigns transforming business brands and helping firms better gauge what their customers’ concerns are, there has been little tangible evidence of how social media can help bring an improvement to a company’s productivity, and ultimately, the bottom line.

Most senior marketing and PR consultants expect to step up their spending on social media over the next year, according to a new study.

Social Media and Online PR Report 2010, by Econsultancy and bigmouthmedia, found that 83 per cent of businesses surveyed planned to spend more on social media in 2011, although a third said that limited budgets were a problem.

One way that businesses can use social media to improve productivity is to set up an internal social network. SAP’s CIO, Oliver Bussmann, recently told Computing about the need for IT companies to pioneer new technologies so that end users can follow suit. As a result, SAP set up an internal Twitter-like tool to improve communication among employees. Another IT vendor, Dell, has set up a social networking tool inside the business.

Most large businesses have an intranet and internal blogs, but in 2007, Dell took its IdeaStorm site, which allows customers to share new ideas with the company, and repurposed it to create EmployeeStorm – a site that enables Dell’s employees to air views, opinions and ideas across the business.

The tool enables employees to better communicate and collaborate, and is seen as an alternative to using email, according to Michael Buck, director and general manager for Dell’s global small and medium online business.

“It has enabled two-way communication among employees and offers a collab orative way of getting peer feedback. But the main benefit is that you get relevant business updates about what’s going on within the company,” he said.

Buck added that setting up the site was relatively inexpensive and that the main costs involved are around maintaining and refreshing content on the network.


Most senior marketing and PR consultants expect to step up their spending on social media over the next year, according to a new study.

The Social Media and Online PR Report 2010, by Econsultancy and bigmouthmedia, found that 83 per cent of businesses surveyed planned to spend more on social media in 2011, although a third said that limited budgets were a problem.

One way that businesses can use social media to improve productivity is to set up an internal social network. SAP’s CIO, Oliver Bussmann, recently told Computing about the need for IT companies to pioneer new technologies so that end users can follow suit. As a result, SAP set up an internal Twitter-like tool to improve communication among employees. Another IT vendor, Dell, has set up a social networking tool inside the business.

Most large businesses have an intranet and internal blogs, but in 2007, Dell took its IdeaStorm site, which allows customers to share new ideas with the company, and repurposed it to create EmployeeStorm – a site that enables Dell’s employees to air views, opinions and ideas across the business.

The tool enables employees to better communicate and collaborate, and is seen as an alternative to using email, according to Michael Buck, director and general manager for Dell’s global small and medium online business.

“It has enabled two-way communication among employees and offers a collab orative way of getting peer feedback. But the main benefit is that you get relevant business updates about what’s going on within the company,” he said.

Buck added that setting up the site was relatively inexpensive and that the main costs involved are around maintaining and refreshing content on the network.

Social networking to displace the role of email

Research firm Gartner has predicted that 20 per cent of employees will use social networks as their preferred mode of communication by 2014.

Monica Basso, research vice president, said that the trend will be driven by greater availability of social-networking services that are suited to the business, coupled with changing demographics and work styles.

"In the past, organisations supported collaboration through email and highly structured applications only," she said.

"Today, social paradigms are converging with email, instant messaging and presence, creating new collaboration styles."

However, she said that a truly collaborative, effective and efficient workplace will not arise until organisations make these capabilities widely available and users become more comfortable with them.

"Technology is only an enabler; while changes in culture are essential to widespread adoption," Basso added.

She also said that the rigid distinction between email and social networks will erode over time as more social attributes such as contact brokering are incorporated into email, while social networks will develop richer email capabilities.

Vendors such as Microsoft and IBM will soon add links to internal and external social networks from within email clients and servers, making services such as contacts, calendars and tasks shareable across email and social networks.

Gartner also predicts that by 2012, contact lists, calendars and messaging clients in smartphones will be social-enabled applications.

Now You Can Have An @Facebook.com email Address

Facebook are expanding their Messages system. Now you can decide how you want to talk to your friends; via SMS, Chat, email or Messages. Well, you could do that previously, or even face-to-face, but now you can make contact via the first four methods in one place on Facebook.

Your friends will receive your message through whatever medium or device they prefer. Essentially, Facebook are promoting the ability to have a conversation in real time.

The biggest news from Facebook this week is that they are now challenging Gmail and other email providers by providing an @facebook.com email address to everyone on Facebook who wants one.

Although it's not strictly an email account, Messages is now even easier to communicate with your friends. All of your messages, whether they are sent via chat, email or SMS will be in one place; you can now see everything you've discussed with each friend as a single conversation.

Messages and email addresses are gradually being made available to everyone over the next few months.