The Toyota Digital Dealer Social Media Publishing Program with the SimpleFeed Social Syndication Hub

As part of its successful social media marketing activities, Toyota Motor Sales USA makes considerable investments in Internet content to build relations with its current and prospective customers. However, Toyota owners purchase and service their vehicles through third party dealerships who are the primary owners of the customer relationship. Due to lack of time, technical expertise or marketing content, many dealers did not have adequate resources to build online relationships via Internet marketing channels, such as their web site, RSS Feeds, Facebook and Twitter. Toyota wants a steady stream of content to these channels to keep Toyota and their local dealer in mind when it comes time to purchase a new vehicle.

Working with SimpleFeed Toyota began to specify requirements for a new program to support its Dealer’s social media marketing. Since many dealers lacked resources, the solution had to be extremely easy to set-up and use. The solution needed to determine which of the dozens of pieces of new content daily would be most successful for each of its 1,2000 dealers across the USA. Finally, Toyota needed analytics on the program to measure success for Toyota and each of its Dealers.

In July, 2012, Toyota launched, The Toyota Digital Dealer Social Media Publishing Program using the SimpleFeed Social Syndication Hub. After a simple one time set-up, the Program automatically publishes Toyota approved content to the dealer’s social and web sites. From the a page off the Toyota Dealer Extranet a user (a Dealer or website provider) can chose to set up a “channel” – RSS Feeds, website publishing, Twitter publishing or Facebook Publishing.
The user chooses a channel, specifies content of interest and, if desired, a landing page on the dealer website for incentive offer leads. The user is then guided through a simple process to have the specified content automatically published to the channel. Channels are automatically updated as Toyota adds new content providing current and relevant information to the Dealer’s customer base. SimpleFeed algorithmically predicts the optimal content, publishes the content to Social Networks.

Users can select from content which includes:

  • Toyota Social Content
  • Toyota News by Vehicle
  • Local Special Incentive Offers on New cars by Zip Code
  • Local Special Incentive Offers on Used cars by Zip Code
  • Local Special Parts and Service Offers by Zip Code
  • Toyota Corporate News
  • Toyota Manufacturing News
  • Toyota Racing News
  • Toyota ESQ (Environmental, Safety and Quality) Communications
  • Toyota YouTube Videos

The above content is published to four channels:

  • Dealer’s Facebook timeline(s)
  • Dealer’s Twitter account(s)
  • Dealer’s RSS Feed
  • Dealers Website
    (via RSS Feed Creation, iFrame or JavaScript hosting)

The Toyota Digital Dealer Social Media Publishing Program includes an Admin for use of Toyota Motor Sales, USA (TMS). Via the admin, TMS can review and publish content to the above channels, and view reports. Top level reports include performance by Region, Dealer, Content and Channel (Facebook, Twitter, Web RSS). For example, the Dealer Report lists every active dealer during the reporting period, their Facebook timeline and content Likes, Twitter Followers, Web and RSS Views and Click Throughs. Click throughs on TMS content go to the respective property with Omniture campaign IDs attached to the link for tracking by TMS/USA.