Bought a car yesterday. Okay, let me rephrase that: the bank bought a car yesterday and is letting us use it as long as we give them some $ every month. I’m okay with that because we saved a lot this time. How can you save money on a car? Connections. How can you make good connections? One really great way is through social media. We didn’t use social media to buy a car, we used it to get info to refi a house which led us to actually refi the house because of a great deal which led to a connection for a car after ours decided to toss a transfer case. A bit convoluted I agree but nonetheless.

For those unfamiliar with that piece of machinery, “A transfer case is a part of a four-wheel-drive system found in four-wheel-drive and all-wheel-drive vehicles. A transfer case synchronizes the difference between the rotation of the front and rear wheels in much the same way the differential acts on a given axle. This is necessary because the front and rear tires never turn at the same speed when front and rear tire sizes differ” (source: Wikipedia). The cost of a transfer case? $3200.

So we needed this $3200 transfer case a few months after the warranty expired. But you expected that, didn’t you? Unfortunately, the car wasn’t worth more than the cost of the transfer case. So the decision was to get a new car rather than a new transfer case and that’s where the connections came in. Social media isn’t just for checking up on friends, checking out possible people to hook up with, or reading stuff an old high school acquaintance (who you didn’t really like very much) thought was funny enough to post (and we all know it wasn’t). Social media is also for business.

So a question: how do you buy a car? Do you read ads in Craigslist or in a paper and buy that way? Do you do long global searches for “just the perfect (fill in the blank)?” Do you seek input from friends, family, neighbors, clerks at 7/11, hair stylists and others? Or do you approach it as you do so much of your life, through social media? A good answer (not the only one but a good one) is SM. Connections.

Social media gives you more control over your life. Yes, I realize that there are those who think the opposite. They think that SM gives you less control. They’re wrong. It can give you more information, more connections, more ways to do whatever it is you need to do. That means more control. Use it any way, every way, and whenever you can.

Photo courtesy Nissan