Best Social Media Practices for Car Dealerships

Most car dealerships run on a B2C basis, which means that they have to go to where the customers are. That means you need a strong online presence. According to a study posted on Digital Journal, two-thirds of car buyers use social media and review sites to select a car dealership.

However, it’s all too easy to get a reputation for being boring or pushy on social media. Car dealerships already have a stereotype of being pushy. We shouldn’t feed into that! Instead, follow these best practices for using social media to sell cars.

Make inventory posts count

Repeat after me. Social media is not a billboard! Don’t just throw up every piece of inventory you get on the web. Instead, hype up the best cars you have, no more than 2-3 per day. The way to do it is to use photos and video to do a walkaround and limit the car jargon. Save the full spec sheet for the link back to your website’s listing.

Show happy customers

Sharing the experiences of happy customers who just purchased a vehicle from you is a powerful piece of social proof. With the new customer’s permission, take a photo of them with their new purchase and tag their image. Put the image on your social media feeds with sincere thanks for their purchase. The tagging will help notify that person’s friends on Facebook.

Manage your reputation

All businesses should consider each social media channel they use as an opportunity to polish their reputation through good customer service. If someone says something good, thank them. If they ask a question, answer it. If they have a problem, fix it. Pretend these channels are like a customer service call with your boss and your customer base listening in. Actually, that’s exactly what it is like.

Post car news

There’s nothing wrong with using industry articles to talk about the brands and models you carry. The trick is to be selective about your curation. Pick things you think your customers will find interesting. Also, comment on the piece when you post it with your opinions so it doesn’t feel like lazy copying, and don’t make this trick the majority of your posts. You’re selling cars, not reporting on car news.

Use those metrics

Finally, learn how to use social media metrics to determine just how well your posts are performing. There’s no sense in putting in a ton of effort for posts that don’t show up for anyone. You may need to do a push to get more people into your channels, either through asking customers to sign up or by using PPC ads to encourage people to come to your pages. Over time, these metrics will reveal whether or not people are using your social media channels as a source of information before purchase.

If you follow these tips, your pages won’t be just another billboard of listings. You’ll create a mini-showroom where you can talk with your customers about your inventory before they buy, as well as a place where customers know they can give feedback about their experience and get an answer. These things keep people coming back to a business’ social media pages.