The Top 5 Social Media Sites for Car Dealerships

Social media seems to be the topic for discussion everywhere I go. 20 Group after 20 Group, dealers want to know about social media and how they can leverage it for their dealerships. It can be confusing with all of the sites that are out there. So, I decided to pick the top five social media sites for car dealerships and give you a brief overview.

FaceBook
FaceBook is the leviathan in social media, websites, and communication period. FaceBook has even surpassed Google as the number one website on the planet! You need to make sure that you not only have a FaceBook profile and fan page; you need to make sure you use it to the fullest potential. It is that important for you to master. For example, you can create custom pages, branding, and graphic design to be consistent with your dealership. You can create detailed pages and have your inventory displayed, customer testimonials/reputation management, specials, and more.

YouTube
YouTube is the number two search engine on the planet. Not just video search engine, but search engine period. More than Bing, MSN, Yahoo, AOL etc. So, you need to make sure that you have a YouTube strategy. You should create a library of video content on new and pre-owned vehicles, walk a rounds, comparisons , “our team”, about the dealership, virtual tours of each of the departments, how-to videos (how to buy a car, how to properly service your car etc.), and testimonials!

Create a free YouTube channel and start to upload all of your videos. Optimize all of your videos. Proper geo-targeted titles, descriptions with anchor text/back links to your dealership, meta tags and key words, proper category tags, and geo-stamp. You have to optimize your videos. Simply uploading them to the internet is not enough. Video content is not Video Search Engine Optimization unless you optimize the content.

Once you have your video content uploaded and optimized you can use those videos for video emails, video examples, video communications. Remember YouTube allows you to extract the “embed” code and URL for each individual video!

Flickr
Flickr is to photos what YouTube is to videos. A lot of dealers still do not understand the power of Flickr. I blow people away when I show them this example. Type “Ford Davenport” in Google, out of 2,200,000 results on the first page organically in the top three listings is Dahl Ford’s Flickr site!!

You should create a library of photo content on new and pre-owned vehicles—walk a rounds, comparisons, “our team”, about the dealership, virtual tours of each of the departments, pictures of your clients and their new vehicles!

Create a free Flickr account and start to upload all of your pictures.
Optimize all of your pictures. Proper geo-targeted titles, descriptions with anchor text/back links to your dealership, meta tags and key words, proper category tags and geo-stamp.
Optimize your pictures; simply uploading them to the internet is not enough. Photo content is not photo search engine optimized unless you optimize the content.

Twitter
Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging site that if used properly can seriously enhance your dealership’s digital marketing initiatives. For example, if you were looking for a Toyota Camry in a certain city and the dealership was active on twitter and digital press releases, for example, you might see in your organic Google first page a box that looks like Twitter (twitter branded and integrated with Google) a scrolling box that has live news feeds and Twitter discussions about that dealership. Talk about real time information and results.

Take content from your website and cut paste that URL into Twitter.

Take content from your YouTube channel or specific videos on YouTube and cut paste that URL into Twitter.

Use content from your Flickr and cut paste that URL into Twitter.

Take specials and cut paste that URL into Twitter.

You want to take digital press releases and cut paste that URL into Twitter.

What you are going to do is re-index your content, website(s) via these Twitter posts!

You are going to want to communicate with people in your network and build your Twitter network.

You also want to retweet other people’s posts.

Remember social media is not shoving your product and service down other people’s throats. You need to be an active member of the social community. Answer questions, offer new ideas, insight, comment on other people’s posts, tweets etc. Most of your efforts will be in Building the social network/relationships and keeping them. A small part of your efforts will be in branding or pushing your products, specials, services etc.

Ning
The Ning platform allows you to create your own social networking community. Basically you can be your own FaceBook! You can fully integrate ALL of your other social media platforms to this one consolidated platform:
Face Book
YouTube
Twitter
Flickr
MySpace
Word Press
Tumblr
BlackPlanet.com

RSS Feeds from the OEM, Enthusiast sites etc…
You can fully design the Ning platform to look and feel just like your website and other branding.

You can build your own social community for your dealership and invite all of your past and present customers as well as all of your prospects. If they join your social community they will be able to create their own profile (just like on FaceBook). They can create a bio, add pictures, video, post articles, blogs, as well as ask questions to the dealership and other community members. The possibilities are endless for marketing, branding etc. What would you do if you were the owner of FaceBook? Well you can be the owner of your own social community for your dealership!

There are so many other amazing sites and information to share with you. If you have any questions about this article or you would like some help creating your free social media Strategy please feel free to call me or email me!
Sean V. Bradley is the founder and CEO of Dealer Synergy, an award winning training,consulting and digital marketing company. For more information call 856-264-0564, email seanb@dealersynergy.com, or visit www.internetsales20group.com.