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The Number One Social Media Secret For Your Dealership

By Christine Rochelle on Jul 5, 2012

Defeated.

 

That is how I would describe many dealers who believe they are “doing social media” but aren't getting the engagement they're looking for. Whenever I sense that a dealer is starting to feel that their time is being wasted on social, I have two options:

 

  1. I could whip up a fancy report with strategies, social tips, graphics, pie charts and stamp it with the PCG logo to let them know that I am an “expert” and as long as they follow this “strategy” they too, can win!

  2. Or, I can admit that there's no such thing as a social media strategy and many dealers are looking at social the wrong way.

 

No social media strategy?! You're probably thinking that I got way too much sun this July 4th and must be totally out of my mind for saying such a thing.

 

Here's why I say there's no such thing as a fancy-pants social media strategy (pie charts and all): Because social isn't a strategy, it is a communication plan.

 

If your dealership is looking to “do social” then I translate that into “we want to expand our communication plan.”

 

Of course none of the above exactly helps you. So here is my #1 social media secret: Get your staff involved.


 

The rationale behind that is that no one wants to be first to bat. For PCG, our engagement levels skyrocketed when PCG employees would engage with our posts because then other fans would follow suit.

 

We started this by posting more and more photos of our employees online in an effort to better communicate to our customer base what it is like to work at PCG. We didn't sit down and say, “okay team, what is our new Facebook strategy?” - we were simply pumping up our existing communication plan with one message in mind: "who is PCG?". 

 

From company BBQs, holiday parties, weekly training meetings, or community service photos – we put it all online. The employees would notice immediately, and start “liking”, commenting, or sharing the posts.

pcg digital marketing

 

 

Our next step was to amp up our blog content with employee posts that we could then share on our social networks. Again, we would tag the employees when we shared their blog post and even email it to the entire staff.

 

The employees immediately reacted, and engagement grew even more.

 

Like I mentioned before, after each employee-driven post, we have other fans who will go ahead and comment or share our message we were pushing out through this new communication plan of showing who PCG was.

 

There is a lot you can do with social media, but my biggest piece of advice is to take it one step at a time and don't overwhelm yourself with “social strategies” that you can't commit to.

 

Take a step back, and start to think about social as a communication plan. Get your employees on board and the rest will start to fall into place.

 

What other social media communication plans have worked for you?

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