Case Study: Ford’s Approach to Social Media

Great interview of Scott Monty by Amber Cadabra from Altitude Branding. Scott is head of social media at Ford Motor Company and he had some very interesting things to say about how Ford uses social media.

Three interesting points that Amber and Scott discussed were:

What do you believe is the single biggest mistake companies make when integrating social media into their efforts?

Ah – you’re assuming they integrate. In my time working in social media, I’ve seen too many examples of companies saying “We’re ready to launch the campaign – now what are we doing to do for social media?” It’s not an add-on or afterthought. It should be completely integrated from the beginning. Just because much of the interaction occurs online does not preclude offline components of social media. And if you’ve effectively planned from the beginning, you can integrate such ideas early on.

This is such a good point. Social media marketing should be a part of your marketing strategy, just like SEO, PPC and online advertising are. It is not a stand alone product.

With the overwhelming amount of tools available, how do you determine which fit with your overall outreach strategy?

For us, it’s largely about mainstream. Joining a large company has helped me to understand that much of the social media experts/evangelists have their heads in the clouds with respect to the technology. We’re so far ahead of the curve, it’s not funny. For my audience, blogs & Facebook are safe havens, and Twitter is pretty advanced. If I said “Plurk” in a meeting, I’d be laughed out of the room (or asked if I was feeling okay). And for our customers – people who buy cars – are the mainstream.

So often we try on be on the cutting edge of social media running to the latest and greatest site that nobody else has used. Look at the sites that teens and college students are using. They are all the traditional social media sites like Facebook, YouTube and MySpace.