GM Goes From Blog to Community

Posted February 12th, 2008 by admin

General Motors first delved into social media with the GM Fast Lanes Blog, a success by most standards of corporate blogging. GM is posting, podcasting and even Twittering regularly, and people are commenting. But apparently all this is just a warm up. Recently they’ve decided to build upon the open dialogue principles of their first blog by creating GMnext, a new online community focused around technology, innovation and collaboration.

Adding Your Story

Once you register you can participate in the GMnext community in many ways. GM invites people to help them tell a story by contributing content through guest posts on the blog, videos, photos and even the GMnext Wiki. Frank Oresnik, a Chevy truck owner, reached the million mile mark on his 1991 Chevy Silverado and posted his compelling stories on the GMnext blog. The story was recently covered in CNet, NPR, AP and several other news sources.

The community is divided by Stories, Thoughts, Videos, Photos, Events, Chat, Podcasts and Feeds. Content within these sections is labeled by categories aimed at communicating automotive innovation: Design, Technology, Green, Ideas and Reach.

Bob Lutz, Chairman, GM North America recently introduced a rather unique community feature called Our Thoughts/Your Thoughts in which a GM executive offers his thoughts along side a post by a third party source. Larry Burns VP, GM R&D and writer/director Chris Paine went face to face about GM’s approach on global energy issues in the first dual post. There are 120 comments so far.

The video section is designed similar to YouTube with a way of sorting through clips by Most Viewed, Highest Ranked and Newest. You can rate and comment on videos, bookmark them and explore links and other multimedia related to the video. You can tune in for a live talk through the Chat section with Carl Zipfel HUMMER Director of Exterior Design on February 14th at 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. EST.

GMnext shows a true commitment for taking the corporation-to-consumer conversation to the next level. After seeing success with Fast Lanes, they identified an opportunity to further leverage social media to involve the masses in the creation of the GM story. I learned tons about GM and their proactive position in innovative technologies while writing this post – more than I have from the years of commercials and Transformers product placements. Hopefully their commitment to innovation and their ability to communicate it will turn around this classic American company from its 2007 losses.

Entry Filed under: Blogs, Online Communities, Interactive Marketing, Social Media Marketing