Social Media 101 for Auto Dealers

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that social media isn’t going anywhere, so today we offer Social Media 101 for auto dealers. For a car dealer, the social media arena has created new and interesting opportunities … along with new and not-so-interesting potential issues. While it has created the opportunity to communicate with customers in ways that never existed before, it also means dealers must be prepared to know how to communicate with customers – and know how to do it in multiple platforms.

When most people think of social media they think of Facebook, and it’s no wonder. In the last quarter of 2013, Facebook passed 1.23 billion monthly active users, 945 million mobile users, and 757 million daily users. Today’s computer-savvy consumer quite often prefers communicating through social media even more than via the traditional phone call. In other words, they will often go to a company’s Facebook page to ask a question rather than picking up the phone to get their answer.

Another upside (or downside, too) of social media can be the online review Websites. Studies done by companies such as dealer.com show that online reviews and ratings carry a lot of weight with a prospective customer. It’s of utmost importance that you check all these sites to see how customers are rating you. Review Websites include Yelp, Edmunds, Cars.com, Google+ Local and Yahoo! Local. Your customers are checking them – and more often than not they’re checking more than one of them.

In today’s day and age, it is also important to make certain your dealership’s Website is configured to be seen correctly on mobile devices. A good Web programmer will know how to do this, and this exercise is known as setting up a “responsive” Website – which means it adjusts itself depending upon the size of the screen on which it is being viewed.

Last, here’s an important question: What should you put on your social media pages (such as Facebook, Twitter and the like)? The simplest way to answer to this is asking yourself what will interest the reader. It shouldn’t be all hard sell, or you’ll scare people away. Instead, mix things up a bit. In addition to the hottest new cars, include some money-saving maintenance tips, information on something going on in your community, and even display the human side of your employees. Give them reasons to keep coming back!

Social Media 101 Help

If you don’t have a good handle on social media, don’t worry. Instead, give us a call here at JKR Automotive Advertising. JKR Advertising is offering a FREE AUTOMOTIVE SOCIAL MEDIA REVIEW. Contact us today, and we’ll give you our expert recommendations, no strings attached! All it takes is one call to Eric Tigner at (321) 397-0777 to get things started.

JKR Automotive Advertising: We Move Cars.