Depending on the amount of friends you are connected with on the social media sites, often the thought of reviewing the posts of others seems daunting. Even with Facebook, for instance, sorting through friends’ posts (even with FB determining what you want to see) brings with it a myriad of issues. Being connected to businesses on these sites makes finding engaging content even more difficult. How much is truly relevant to you? Your consumers are asking themselves the same thing before they even decide whom to follow and unfollow. So how do auto dealers stay intriguing and worth following? By offering a social media smorgasboard of postings.
Many social media experts have their own ideas (or acronyms) about what content your dealership should be sharing with fans. The truth is, short of a running stream of your inventory, all answers are correct. There could be someone that follows your page that finds value in every piece of content your dealership posts. Or you might update your status with something that only one person “Likes”. Or no one. While there are some statistical reports citing the most engaging items to post, we at DealerKnows believe you should simply blend together a little bit of everything. Post together a smorgasboard of soc med-style content.
When choosing what to post, realize that you shouldn’t act like a dealership, but still remember that you are a dealership. Don’t be pitchy. Don’t feed into stereotypes. Don’t be too “sales-oriented”. Instead, be brand, community, fun, and familial in orientation.
Here are a few things that we see consumers and “fans” responding to, commenting on, sharing, retweeting, and “Liking” across the social channels.
(In no particular order)
- Philanthropy and Charitable involvements
- Photos of new customers with their vehicles
- “Caption This” pictures
- Video customer testimonials
- Random pics of humor, quotes, or thought-provoking imagery
- Questions to engage (think Trivial Pursuit, 1st date-style questions, Family Feud, or hypotheticals in orientation)
- Reviews/Ratings from happy customers
- Service Discounts, Coupons – Not ‘sales-related’ content. (No “3.9% on Tiburons until month’s end”-style posts)
- Upcoming community events (and your involvement in them)
- Good staff bios
- Job openings
- Very odd vehicles taken in on trade (a 2006 Chevy Malibu isn’t a worthy vehicle to share on your wall regardless of the “low miles”, but a DeLorean would be).
- Interesting facts based on that date in history
- Service department and vehicle maintenance How-To Videos
- Very high profile OEM/Dealership updates that are actually in the news (with your dealership’s response to it)
There are countless others (though, as I mentioned, I recommend that almost no inventory is ever scene or discussed.) You’re a dealership so you don’t need to remind them that you have cars for sale. Truth is, to be successful on social media, you have to stop thinking about yourself as a dealership, but instead, think of yourself as a company that helps out the local community. Carry that underlying mindset and you’ll be well-served delivering posts so full of likable, yet different content that you’ll see a wide array of people sampling your social profile.
Giving people a social media smorgasboard of posts to review makes you more well-rounded. Like any delectable sampling of food does.
