Interview With Wei Yang - Atlanta "Tweeting" Company Easy Auto Sales
06/26/2008
Earlier this week I posted about Atlanta Companies that are micro blogging using Twitter. Toss of a pink boa to Will Fleiss, director of organic search for Easy Auto Sales, who was not only listening but joined in on the conversation. He was the only person out of the 34 companies that were included in the post who dropped a comment. He even said thank you. Nice.
So I asked Will how he found the post and why he commented.
Will Fleiss: As far as how I came to comment on your post about companies using Twitter, we use utilize Google Alerts to monitor mentions of "easyautosales" online. Your blog post appeared in our alerts, and of course I had to check it out. Our business model is based primarily on Ad revenue, so as you can imagine we rely heavily on traffic to our site.
Well girlfriend, I was so impressed that I wanted to know more about how Easy Auto Sales was using social media and in particular Twitter. Wei Yang, co-founder - business development, kindly agreed to share a few insights. 
About EasyAutoSales.com: My favorite line from the website -
Since we're just a small group of entrepreneurs with crazy dreams; we figured we'll aim high and hope for the best.
EasyAutoSales.com is America's fastest growing, web 2.0 automotive service designed to help auto dealers and private sellers pinpoint qualified buyers. The website now lists over one million vehicle listings from 9,000 dealerships and private sellers. EasyAutoSales.com provides support for video, interactive questions & answers, and unlimited pictures for all vehicle listings. Private sellers and dealerships are encouraged to advertise their vehicles on EasyAutoSales.com for free.
Toby/Diva Marketing: Why is the Easy Auto Sales Twittering?
Wei Yang: EasyAutoSales is a startup that embraces social media and we are using Twitter as a medium to build relationships with early adapters in the auto industry.
Toby/Diva Marketing: Who are the people you hope to reach and have you had any response from them?
Wei Yang: We originally used Twitter to reach social media people as well as using it as an extension for our blog advertising.
To our surprise, we were also able to build informal relationships with various auto bloggers and industry leaders in the autos field.
Toby/Diva Marketing: Who is/are behind the "tweets?"
Wei Yang: @wei_yang and @willfleiss - who are both co-founders of EasyAutoSales.
Toby/Diva Marketing: Is Twitter part of a larger marketing/social media/marketing strategy and if so how does it integrate?
Wei Yang: Twitter has the potential to be a part of our larger marketing strategy. However, we are waiting to see how Twitter works out their scaling issues before committing to the technology.
Toby/Diva Marketing: Are you promoting the Twitter imitative and if so how?
Wei Yang: At this time, we are exploring options using Twitter to help our users extend their experience on our website. However, we're still ironing out the features we have in mind so that it would make sense. As for promoting the fact we use Twitter - that is not something we're actively doing yet. Many of the dealers in the industry still do not know what Twitter is and for the ones that do, we are probably linked already in some way.
Toby/Diva Marketing: Can you share any innovative ways you'll be using Twitter?
Wei Yang: Soon! Hopefully very soon. =)
Toby/Diva Marketing: How have you gone about identifying "followers?"
Wei Yang: Using Twitter based search engines, we have been able to identify users who have shown interest in cars or are related to the autos industry. From there, it's just a matter of seeing what these users have in common and who they are following, etc.
Toby/Diva Marketing: One more .. Why do you think Twitter works on a local level?
Wei Yang: Twitter works on a local level more so due to the people using it than
the platform itself. The people who first jumped on board are mostly
social media experts, teens or early adapters. I think people on line
who are always seeking out other like-minded individuals is what makes
Twitter unique. However, the unstable platform is definitely a cause
for concern and as more and more general public people use the
platform, its uniqueness may fizzle like Facebook.
