Nearly every business in the world has considered using social media for their brand or at least been told by someone to do so. It's an important concept because social media has all of the characteristics of an excellent set of venues for getting out a brand message - popularity, ease, reach, and interactivity. The challenge is that with so many businesses doing it, many messages start with great intentions and end up falling on deaf ears but it does not stop them from attempting it.

After GM demolishing all the pillars of trust on social media by pulling ads from Facebook, a report suggests that automobile sector has lot of benefit from social media reviews.

The report says that Social media and review sites are driving consumers' dealership choices, but dealerships with in-house social media management aren't keeping pace.

An automotive social media consultancy Digital Air Strike, highlights the importance of social media among car buyers. Of the 275 car buyers surveyed, over two-thirds (69%), used social media when choosing a dealership.

Reviews, in particular, played an important role when deciding on a dealership to visit.

Over two-thirds of car shoppers said that dealership reviews impacted which dealership they visited while half said that reading reviews affirmed their original choice of dealership.

Almost 1 in 5 said they selected a dealership based on social media reviews or changed their choice of dealership based on those reviews.

Despite the importance of social media to consumers looking to purchase a car, a whopping 90% of dealerships that manage social media marketing in-house did not respond to negative online reviews. Even more, 95%, didn't respond to positive reviews.

"This groundbreaking study highlights the importance of social networks and review sites in the car- buying process,"said Alexi Venneri, co-founder of Digital Air Strike. "Dealers who work with a social media partner can gain a significant advantage from increases in consumer engagement and related website traffic."

The study revealed the top four review sites used to determine dealership selection, as ranked by consumers in the study, were Edmunds (22%), Cars.com (20%), and Yelp (19%) and Google Reviews (19%).

Certainly social media is not a broadcasting tool for businesses but rather a venue through which traction comes from the stories surrounding goals and not the goals themselves.

With 60 percent of brands planning to increase content market spending in 2012, as reported by “B2B Content Marketing: 2012 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends”, marketers will be looking at ways to maximize their content efforts. If you think social marketing is better suited for B2C brands, consider this: on average, B2B marketers spend over a quarter of their marketing budget on content marketing and employ 8 different content marketing tactics to achieve their goals.