20Nov

How Do I Get Started With My Social Strategy?

Over the past 6 weeks we have introduced you different social media platforms that can benefit and compliment your dealership’s marketing strategy. And you are probably wondering, “They want me to manage 6 different platforms! I can barely keep up with my Facebook page.”

Before you get too overwhelmed, this is not what we are saying at all. We don’t manage an Instagram account, and our YouTube channel could definitely use some new content, but we are active on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn. Why? Because those platforms work for our business at the moment.  Our focus has been on growing our current following on these platforms and engaging them with the content they want.

Social MediaOur advice to you is to find 2-3 platforms that work for your dealership and perfect them before adding on others. Quality trumps quantity when it comes to social media. Devote your time to learning more about each platform, what works well for each, and what your followers want to see, then begin using them. Social media doesn’t happen overnight. Be patient and enjoy it. It is a fun way to develop a personality for your dealership and engage with your followers in a more human-like way.

Here are some other ideas to help you manage your accounts:

  • Create a Social Content Calendar. Spend 2-3 hours at the beginning of the month developing what messages you want to get across to your followers that month and on what platforms. Keep track of any holidays, dealership events, employee anniversaries, etc. and use these key dates for content ideas. You don’t have to stick to what is on the calendar when it comes to posting, but it will give you guidance and make posting each day not seem like such a chore.
  • Utilize Social Media Management Tools. Doing everything  manually and switching between platforms can become very time consuming. There are a lot of tools out there that can help you manage your different platforms. We use Hootsuite to schedule tweets when we are out of the office, but there are a lot more tools out there. Research to find the one that meets your needs.
  • Get Support. Use your employees and customers for content creation. For example, around Thanksgiving, why not ask employees to share what they are thankful for? You can use this content for multiple days and on multiple channels, too! On Twitter, tag the employee (if they have an account) and post what they said. On Facebook, each day leading up to Thanksgiving, you can post what your employees said with a picture of them or what they are thankful for. On YouTube, you can take short videos of each employee talking about what they are thankful for. There are so many possibilities!
  • Hire an Intern. Marketing students in your area are looking for opportunities to get involved with businesses trying to grow their online marketing efforts. Why not take advantage of these eager, and usually unpaid, interns to help with your social media strategy? We have even provided you with a sample job description so you can get started on recruiting one!

We hope that this series has taught you a few things that you can start implementing in your social strategy. But there is even more we want to share!

Forget why you should be using Facebook? Or how to even set it up? Click on the image below to see our guide on setting up a Facebook business page.  Facebook Guide

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Does Social Media Really Benefit My Search Rankings? | Commercial Web Services Blog / April 10, 2015

[…] traffic to your website and increase your search engine ranking, check out our recent blog post “How do I get started with my social strategy?”.  For those of you with a social strategy in place, we want to know what ways you have seen […]

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