Midlands Honda and Midlands Hybrid have embarked on a new journey in the world of social media. You have to go where the people are and social media has survived the initial novelty where people would post things like “Just finished a bowl of cereal” or “My cat fluffy looked at me funny”. Those constant streams of useless information bites have been replaced with actual content worth reading and useful status updates like this one from Paul Thurrott on twitter, “At Logan for flight to Denver. Hate United. Fees for 1st bag & seat w/extra legroom (incl exit row). Would never fly this carrier by choice”, it lets us know a couple of things, he has arrived at one point on his journey safely and, we now know how he feels now, short and sweet.
Midlands Hybrid will be using more sources to make it easier for club members and our readers to stay up-to-date on club happenings and our articles and news postings. Midlands Honda will reach out to their customers on their turf rather than forcing them to pay attention with the annoying screaming car sale ads. In all fairness in the year or so, that I have known them they have not ever resorted to any useless advertising tactics like shouting at the customer.
Twitter is a way to post short messages and is a leader in the new trend of Micro-blogging, on twitter you can post short messages of 140 characters or less, as seen in Thurrott’s message above, the beauty of this, it forces users to keep messages simple and to the point. Another nice feature about this limitation is that it is shorter than the length of a SMS message (texting from a mobile phone) so even though Thurrott posted that message from a computer or smartphone, he could have easily texted that in and it would automatically notify those that care about him, what was happening immediately. I am still getting started with twitter and I will integrate it in a way I feel comfortable. I have know about them for ages but every time I heard anyone talking about it all I could see were the constant useless status updates , none of the people and publishers I am following through twitter give that kind of information overload though, so I am late to this party.
Facebook had the same problem for me with the constant status updates but I have been a member there for a while and would try to maintain a profile periodically, but they have the same advantages as twitter but not as light and portable. It is very easy to keep up with friends, family, and long lost acquaintances, any retirees who have met up with grade school friends through Facebook can tell you have nice that is. The reason I had been reluctant to fully embrace Facebook was that there would often be a good amount of information overload there, but I have refused to install most every Facebook application my Facebook friends have offered and that helps to keep the chatter down. Another thing that helps is that the Facebook team has been making steady progress to allow people to get in and get the updates they want while toning down the chatter, their difficulty was leaving the extreme details available for those members that had time for more than just the cliff notes.
Blogs, blogging was something I made the right call on early; I started back in 2002 and since learned to make proper backups periodically. On February 4th 2006, I launched the Gainesville hybrid club, and learned a fair amount about running a club. When I moved to Columbia, I took what I had learned and applied it and collaborated with a strong corporate sponsor. Then I founded the Midlands Hybrid Club in March of 2008 (the planning and groundwork were laid back in December of the previous year) I learned that planning your region was important and instead of focusing on just one city we decided on all of the Carolinas and parts of surrounding states.
Text Messaging & Chat are pretty much the only reliable way to reach today’s youth and while Midlands Hybrid does not use this as a primary method of interacting we do use it for planning and organizing frequently. Midlands Honda has proper resources to do texting on a massive scale and they have put systems in place to allow the customer to interact with them on their own terms. They have also added chat framework to their web presence so the customers can use that medium instead of having to come right in or use the telephone.
Become a fan of the Midlands Hybrid Club on Facebook, or join our Facebook Group. Also, feel free to follow me on Twiter. You can find Midlands Honda’s social media presence here:
Twitter: http://twitter.com/midlandshonda
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Columbia-SC/Midlands-Honda/51543844162
Blog: http://www.midlandshonda.blogspot.com/
If you were wondering why my posts seem different, my laptop has been in the shop having warranty work completed.
Don’t be shy, post a comment.
Kacey Green
for the Midlands Hybrid Club
"Promoting the spread of clean personal transportation technologies."
My fuel economy, tracked at every fill-up since purchase, your mileage will vary.
The Midlands Hybrid Club, the home of the hybrid club and hypermiling of the Carolinas, based in Columbia, SC.
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