This is a case study about what happened when a large automobile dealership, ranked in the top 50, with more than a dozen rooftops, established a "community site" for its customers, employees and vendor but left the site unmonitored and untended.

1. AUTOMOBILE DEALERS:

2. Social media for automobile dealers has been a frequent topic at industry conferences, in blogs, and discussion groups over the past 18-24 months Less a question of why than how Auto dealers recognize the need to be present in social media Challenge to establish appropriate goals and to balance the time commitment of content production, community management, reputation management and review strategy with dealership operations

3. Social media sites are an excellent vehicle for increasing visibility in organic search results Publishing fresh content on blogs, PRs, pages on Facebook/Twitter/YouTube/other social media sites result in these sites showing up on SERPs helping your dealership dominate Page One organic search results Establishing your own community site also helps with SEO

4. If you want to be a virtual real estate mogul, don’t be an absentee landlord Establishing a social media presence without monitoring it is worse than not having a presence at all “Set it and forget it” mentality is dangerous

5. Example of a large automobile dealer group ranked in the top 50 with more thana dozenrooftops that established a “community” site for “Customers, Employees and Suppliers”

6. When this dealer’s own name is Googled, the community site comes up as the #4 organic search result.

7. The site was invaded by squatters and turned into a link farm. The discussion forum was taken over and hundreds of entries offering various prescription drugs, including Viagra, were posted. The activity had been going on for more than a month indicating that the “community” site for “customers, employees and suppliers” had gone unmonitored and unvisited by anyone associated with the dealership group

8. The squatters who invaded the site were not limited to online purveyors of prescription drugs

9. Any prospective car buyer clicking on the #4 organic search result would potentially find these graphic images on the community site

10. Strategy of using community site to automatically push content to other social media sites extends the reach of the SPAM-mers messages to other sites

11. There are no short cuts in social media Having an unmonitored social media presence is potentially more damaging than having no presence at all If you don’t have the time, energy, interest or resources to manage your dealership’s social media presence and reputation, get help