Google, Facebook and your customers

Sept. 12, 2013

What does all the Google goop and Facebook fodder mean to an independent tire dealer? Modern Tire Dealer columnist Wayne Croswell says you may decide to ignore one or both, but the user communities won’t, especially if they have a bad experience.

Google has taken the approach of “Build it and they will come.” It’s apparent they have the largest collection of business listings and access to millions of online reviews from all the various social media sites, says Croswell.

Instead of building the entire information database, Facebook taught their users how to fish. They built the infrastructure and their users built the vast collection of information. Facebook has become the most extensive site on the Internet for people communicating with people and businesses about everything.

Heard of Open Graph? It is Facebook’s newest offering for sharing recommendations on customer experiences with friends and friends of friends.

Croswell says Google and Facebook are fighting it out in cyberspace for supremacy. To find out what camp you should be in, see “Google vs. Facebook: The battle lines have been drawn” in the electronic or print version of the August issue of Modern Tire Dealer.