We all know Facebook is right now for dealerships around the nation the #1 choice when trying to engage with customers off-site, next to the biweekly or monthly ownership email marketing “blast” (my God do I hate this term “blast”) and/or dealer newsletter provided by IMN, Outsell, 3Birds Marketing or OnStation.

But I could discover throughout my held trainings and seminars that we as dealers very rarely know about the motives of consumers, why they are following us or a brand – why do they like us. What make fans and followers click?

A recent conducted research of Co-Tweet and ExactTarget came closer to provide an answer. The following motives and answers will possibly help dealerships to adjust their engagement level on Social Media Networks. It will help us further in creating new approaches to “catch” potential customers’ attention.

Were you in the social-media-webosphere in 2010? Did you tinker with Facebook or Twitter? Well, the numbers show — yes — you were.

Facebook profiles are like belly buttons: Everybody’s got one. Perhaps that statement’s still a bit of an exaggeration, but by the numbers, we (that is, Internet (Internet) users around the globe) are becoming more obsessed with Facebook (Facebook) by the day. One out of every 13 Earthlings and three out of four Americans is on Facebook, and one out of 26 signs into Facebook on a daily basis. We could rattle off stats like that until the cows come home, but instead, we’d like to show you this fascinating infographic from SocialHype and OnlineSchools.org.

Location based services are by no means a new thing, but BusinessWeek and Entrepreneur place services such as Foursquare and Facebook Places at the top of their social media trend prediction reports for 2011. Rather than increasing web traffic, location based marketing focuses on actually increasing foot traffic to a business, which is the ultimate goal of any type of marketing.

Bloomberg TV did an excellent 1-hour special on Facebook’s recent investment by Goldman and Digital Sky, which valued the company at $50 Billion. Admittedly, I was skeptical when I heard the figure. However, upon closure examination, $50 Billion seems logical.

The real kicker of this piece, however, was not all of the discussion about Facebook’s revenues, or the 30-minutes mind-reading of Mark Zuckerburg (shudder), but the final 10 minutes of the program. in this final segment, the video examines the “what next” for Facebook.

80% of GenerationY visits Facebook at least once per day, and spends more time on Facebook than watching television.

70% of all U.S. Internet users logged into their Facebook account in 2010.

When it comes to social networks on advertising, 78% of customers trust word of mouth while only 14% trust advertisements.

Universal McCann reports that 77% of all active Internet users read blogs.

To reach an audience of 50 million, radio took 38 years, Terrestrial TV took 13 years, and the Internet just four years.  But in less than nine months, Facebook added 100 million users.