Secrets to a Social Media Success Story

There are many stories describing dealerships that went from good to great when they implemented a social media plan. Many dealerships merely have a basic website. Most are not using social media at all and don’t even have a regular blog. The main difference between a dealership benefiting from Social Media and one who is just hoping that things will swing their way is planning and implementation.

So with a little help and an organized plan, you can turn your dealership around and increase Internet sales and change your dealership’s culture. Build your success around a strong website and different social media channels. Listed below are social media channels; it’s important for you to find out which channel work for your dealership.

• Blog
• Facebook
• Foursquare
• Google+
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• Tumblr
• Twitter
• YouTube

A simple and easy plan is listed below, you can adapt it to fit your situation. Do not hesitate to contact us support@AutoJini.com if you need any help in deploying this plan.

 

Build a Quality Website - Start transformation by updating your website, prominently featuring social media icons and search engine optimized content. A nicely laid out website is very important for branding and a key component for linking your social media channels with your website. First build your brand image and maintain it on your website, and then branch off into social media channels.

Design Your Social Media Strategy -

• Use Facebook as your major social media channel as it is most popular
• Use YouTube to capture attention and interest of your site visitors
• Use Twitter to reach a wide variety of users
• Start a blog on your website to share important content with your clients and others, educate them, entertain them, and help them. Sales will follow.

Social media tools should be used together rather than as stand-alone channels. Write a strategic plan that uses all of your social media channels together. Ask yourself why your customers are following you. Now answer this question across all mediums. Let’s consider this example. Say your dealership specializes in selling vehicles to families. You can write blog article about the importance of keeping tires in good shape and its safety aspects, do a 90 second video showing what to look for when trying to see if the tire needs to be changed, post the video on your business page of Facebook, and tweet the blog article on Twitter. You see you can take simple, everyday issues and help out your clients and social media followers.

 

Social media is a way to humanize a dealership. You can retweet and post other people’s material, but focus on creating your own content and integrate the dealership’s people and news into your blog, Facebook posts, and Twitter posts. Another approach your can take is to encourage your employees to talk about your dealership and the brands you carry, and discuss daily life working at the dealership, using their personal accounts on Facebook and Twitter. It gives people a real feel for your dealership which is a lot more effective than speaking as just the ‘dealership’. Customers like to put faces with conversations, and they have a lot more trust when the person they are interacting with is an individual rather than someone hiding behind a brand.

Develop a Solid Following - Although Facebook “likes” can be a great thing at a glance, you want your followers to do more than just “like” your page. You want them to engage with your content and communicate with you and spread the word about your dealership. It takes time to build your fan base on Facebook and Twitter as it is mostly due to ‘word of mouth’ marketing, not paid advertisements.
Success on Social Media is not a lofty goal, requiring huge budget. Dealerships have had success using social media and it is possible for your dealership, too. It’s important to obtain the right resources and take the necessary steps needed to make you social media campaign successful; otherwise you may be disappointed and abandon social media. Social media for businesses takes effort and thought, but most of all it should be fun. After all, that’s why it got started in the first place.