Ford Motor Company, who recruited 100 bloggers for its Fiesta Movement social media initiative in March has posted a 5% increase in year on year car sales for Q3, representing a 2.2% increase in U.S. marketshare.

While the bankruptcies of GM & Chrysler and the government’s trade in initiative ‘Cash for Clunkers’ no doubt had an effect, Ford’s bold social media initiative has been a runaway success with figures last month showing 4.3 million YouTube views, 500,000+ Flickr views, 3 million+ Twitter impressions and 50,000 interested potential customers, 97% of which don’t own a Ford currently.

Speaking at Blogworld & New Media Expo in October, Scott Monty, Ford’s multimedia communications manager said ”Companies that don’t acknowledge and engage in this new social media do so at their peril, I mean who would have thought Ford would have someone at this show. I mean, wow. We’re showing up in a lot of places that most people wouldn’t have expected.”

Ford are reported to be spending 25% of its marketing budget on digital this year, twice that of its car making rivals.