Do you have a social media page for your dealership? Do you have an active social media page? Dealers use social media in one of three ways: they have engaging social media pages which spread their brand and attract customers, they have social media pages that are not used very much and do not attract customers, or they have no social media pages at all. If you have a reason not to use social media, you may want to read on and reconsider.

Why You Should Use Social Media

Social media can help you reach more customers, build loyalty and grow your business. You can gain valuable feedback from customer comments, engage new potential customers with great posts and even (shocker!) have fun with your dealership marketing.

There are lots of automated social media solutions that dealerships can use effectively to reduce time and cost, provide valuable data for analysis of their customer base and increase customer interaction. There’s really no good reason for dealerships not to be on social media.

1. But I Already Have a Great Customer Base! (It Can be Even Better)

Even if you already have dedicated customers, you can always grow your business and further engage your current customers. Social media enables you to reach out to an entirely new audience who may never have found out about your dealership otherwise. It helps spread the word about your great customer service, awesome sales and promotions, featured vehicles and so on. Social media posts can be easily shared by visitors to the page so you can quickly increase the amount of people who view your messages.

You can also use social media to build loyalty with your current customers and encourage them to come back for regular maintenance. Provide helpful resources like vehicle guides, maintenance tips, recall information and more in order to establish yourself as a trustworthy automotive expert. Offer exclusive social media coupons, discounts and contests to get customers interested and drive business.

2. But I Don’t Have Time! (You Don’t Need Much)

Maintaining an active, engaging social media page doesn’t take that much time out of your day anymore. Whereas you used to have to post messages manually and take time to update your page every day, it’s now very simple to automate the entire process. With an automated social media solution, you can create a series of messages whenever you have a few minutes then schedule them to go out throughout the month.

Automated message posting helps you keep your social media pages active while dramatically reducing the amount of time it takes to build a strong social media presence. In addition, an automated solution provides useful report data so you can see when the best time is to schedule your posts to go out.

3. But it Doesn’t Have a Significant Impact! (Actually it Does)

Many dealers don’t believe that social media really makes a difference to whether or not they gain more customers and grow their business. In today’s automotive industry, this is no longer true. Most customers now expect dealerships to have a social media presence.

It’s similar to a dealership not having a website, which makes customers wonder if it’s a legitimate business. If your dealership is not active on social media, customers often interpret it as your dealership not being successful or serious, or not focusing on growth. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to connect with customers. Show off your dealership on social media!

And, as we have mentioned, you can review your report data to see exactly how much interaction each social media post is getting and who is seeing it, liking, retweeting and commenting. This means that you can see exactly which posts are making an impact and which posts are being passed over.

4. But I Don’t Know How! (It’s Really Simple)

Social media is not a mysterious puzzle. It’s basically about creating messages that will inform your audience with relevant information, engage their interest and entertain them, or promote your dealership in an indirect way. Think about what you would like to read about or view.

• Pictures and videos are great and get high interaction rates
• Customer reviews and customer success stories are useful for building trust
• Contests and coupons get customers interested, draw business and steer them away from competitors
• Links to relevant resources that will help customers manage their vehicles or make automotive decisions help build loyalty and establish trust
• Event promotions increase attendance at dealership events

You can find many more social media tips by searching for automotive social media tips on a search engine.

If you use an automated solution, it’s easy to create, edit and post messages. Managing your social media pages with automation doesn’t take time out of your day, and automated solutions are designed to be simple to use for non-technical users.

So, are you active on social media yet?