In the past, anyone managing an Instagram account for a dealership, if they had a personal account, had to log out and log back in to switch accounts.

This was a tedious process. Now, that is no longer the case. Instagram announced that users can now quickly and easily switch between multiple accounts.

How to add multiple accounts

1.  Go to your profile and tap the settings button in hte top right

2.  Scorll down and tap Add Account

3.  Enter the username and password of the account you'd like to add 

To switch between accounts you've added:       

1.  Go to your profile

2.  Tap your username at the top of the screen

3.  Tap the account you would like to switch

You can add up to 5 accounts. 

Social media has been a hot topic of discussion for car dealers even before Facebook overtook MySpace. There are plenty of gurus, vendors, experts, and in-store personnel who have different opinions on the topic of posting inventory. To us, the answer is very clear.

Studies show that people do not go to social media to search for vehicles, which is the primary reason that many believe it's not a good idea to post inventory there. The reasoning is sound, but there's an important flaw in many of these studies. They will ask if people go to social media to search for vehicles. They don't, just as people don't go to television or turn on their radio to search for vehicles, either. That doesn't make it any less valid.

Here are three reasons that we believe dealers should post their vehicles on sites like Facebook and Twitter. Not everyone will agree, and that's the wonderful part of social media. Nobody has a definitive answer. They only know what has worked and what hasn't worked for them. For many of our clients, posting inventory to social media works for the following reasons. These are simply opinions and we respect everyone's stance on the issue.

Relevant Content Trumps the Fluff

It is still very popular for some dealers and vendors to post content that doesn't necessarily apply to a dealership's core business. The idea is that by posting content that has an opportunity to be appreciated by the masses, that they will become more popular and visible.

We have found that the decline of organic reach has put a damper on this strategy, particularly on Facebook. We position our dealers with content that is relevant to the dealership and the automotive industry. Inventory is very relevant and people expect to see car dealers posting their cars just as they expect to see the Sears Facebook page posting information about their merchandise.

Social Signals for Organic Search Rankings

This is the most controversial of the reasons. Depending on which SEO expert you ask, they will usually either dismiss social signals based upon information given by Google or they'll embrace social signals based upon their experiences or studies by other SEO experts.

We are not SEO experts, but we have discussed the idea of posting inventory on social media and the potential benefits. Even those who were skeptical of the practice said that it definitely wouldn't hurt. Those who believe in social signals for organic search rankings tell us that it's a great idea as long as it's not overdone.

People DO Get Buying Ideas from Social Media

The people who are seeing your social media pages and profiles often do so because posts appear in their feed. Others visit the pages directly from links of the dealership's website or from search engines since many social media sites rank well for the dealership's name.

Is posting inventory going to generate a tangible bump in traffic, leads, and sales? No. Will it have a chance of doing so? Yes. As with all of our tools, it all comes down to time spent and since we believe that social media is important without being something that demands a ton of time, we believe that inventory is a great way to make the pages productive without being a hassle.

They might not be going to social media sites to search for cars, but if they're in the market and they end up seeing it, there's a chance that they will click and inquire.

As we posted on our blog, we believe that there are strategies dealers can implement to do even more with social media, but doing so requires a greater investment of time and energy. By keeping it simple, relevant, and effective, we know that an alternative to the big investment is to keep your presence strong through good content and the occasional inventory post.

The automotive industry has been abuzz for the last couple of years with the rise of hyper-local marketing. It's a trend that has helped to bolster the importance of search and social, but most 3rd-party sites have had to use filters to localize their listings. That is changing in 2015.

Craigslist has always been a leader in hyper-localization. Their core has been to be the online equivalent of the local newspaper classified advertisement sections since the beginning. They have been the largest hyper-local website in America, coming in at #11 on the Alexa website rankings. That distinction has changed, at least in the automotive arena. eBay Motors Local is the latest variation on the hyper-local theme.

Dealers who want to take full advantage of the rise of hyper-local advertising need to embrace both of these tremendous sales platforms. We're proud to be one of the few in the industry to offer a tool for publishing to both.

With ebay Motors Local, dealers will be able to target the bulk of their inventory to local buyers within a 200-mile radius. Selling cars on eBay has always been important, but many have used it to only promote their more exotic vehicles or hard-to-find cars. Now, they can get incredible exposure to their entire inventory.

Now, eBay Motors is great for more than just shipping vehicles across the country. The rise in popularity of the hyper-local model is why eBay Motors has embraced it and it makes perfect sense for the consumer as well. As we all know, most people want to touch and feel a vehicle before buying it. The biggest challenge with eBay Motors has always been that it can only appeal to a certain type of buyer. Thanks to the new model, it can appeal to anyone.

Initial numbers have been extremely favorable and it's an exciting time for dealers who are taking advantage of all of these incredible hyper-local venues while they're still relatively wide-open.

In an atmosphere where dealers are rightfully searching for demonstrable ROI, it's our task to make sure they understand the numbers behind sites like Craigslist, eBay Motors, and posts on social media. We dive into the numbers constantly and if there's one unquestionable trend we've seen, it's that Craigslist results are better now than they've ever been.

Is the site getting more popular? Did many dealers stop using it when they started charging for the listings? Are consumers relying more on classifieds today than they have in the past?

The answer to all of these questions is, "yes." The site continues to grow. Despite its age and the way that the internet tends to like newer sites and services, Craigslist has remained in the upper echelon of sites like eBay, Amazon, and AutoTrader as maintaining strong numbers regardless of age.

When Craigslist started charging $5 per listing, many dealers left. For a while, its free listings meant that many companies were able to "spam" the listings sites. This completely reversed once they started charging for it. Those who have continued to take advantage of Craigslist are realizing that the "thinning of the herd" has allowed them to get much more exposure for each individual listing. More people searching plus fewer listings on the site means a greater chance. In a way, charging for listings has made Craigslist automotive classified listings more powerful than they've ever been.

The last piece of the puzzle, reliance on classified listings, is one of those trends that ebbs and flows. It goes up and it goes down. Today, we're definitely in an upswing. For the rest of 2015 and into 2016, we expect more customers to be flocking to the classified listings rather than going directly to manufacturer or dealer websites because of the state of the market. It's currently in that uncommon situation of being both a buyers' market as well as being a sellers' market.

These three trends combine to make Craigslist the best bet for true ROI in automotive sales. Dealers that "get it" are really starting to get it.

There's something strange happening on Craigslist, eBay Motors, social media, and other inventory listings pages. More dealers seem to be trying to highlight their listings by use all caps. Let's see how that looks in the next paragraph.

THIS IS WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS. WE SEE STUFF LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME ON THESE LISTINGS SITES. IT IS MORE THAN JUST ANNOYING. IT MAKES THE LISTING HARDER FOR MANY PEOPLE TO READ. IF YOU'VE MADE IT THIS FAR, THAN YOU'RE PROBABLY NOT ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE, BUT SCIENCE HAS SHOWN THAT SOME PEOPLE HAVE A DIFFICULT TIME READING IT. EVEN IF THIS LOOKS OKAY TO YOU, IT DOESN'T LOOK OKAY TO SOME OF THE PEOPLE VISITING YOUR LISTINGS.

This isn't even as long as some of the paragraphs we see on dealer listings.

There is an argument that can be made that all-caps can be effective in headlines. For this, we have no objections because it's much shorter. In fact, it may very well have an effect, though our data shows little difference. The words themselves are what really matter.

On listings sites, having the right message is more important than how you publish it, so if you're dead set on all-caps, we won't object. With that said, we recommend against it.

In the car business, we often look to increase sales while decreasing spend. We're a budget-conscious industry, so that normally means spending less money and doing things manually. In many cases, that's fine. In some instances, the money saved by doing things manually actually costs a dealership more in the way of time spent.

Time is money. We've all heard the idiom. It's very true, particularly when it comes to automotive digital marketing. It's very easy for dealers to fall into the trap of cutting costs for the sake of cutting costs, but when does the cost savings actually start costing you money?

In our segment of the industry, the easy example is to look at Craigslist, eBay Motors, and social media as places where dealers can post inventory manually. It's not hard but it does take time. Obviously, we like those examples because they fall in line with our inventory posting tools, but they're just a handful amongst dozens of examples of tasks that dealers can do on their own but probably shouldn't.

There's an easy way of calculating the true cost of time. It's not just a matter of taking an hourly wage times the amount of time spent. You have to take into account the loss of productivity that can be spent on more lucrative tasks other than uploading photos and putting together text for an eBay Motors ad.

Once you understand how much time-money is being spent on a service, it's important to consider the other factors as well. Consistency can be an issue, particularly with repetitive and constant endeavors like posting to Craigslist. It's not a matter of feeding in the inventory like you would with AutoTrader. On Craigslist, adding vehicles manually can be a tedious process, one that internet managers can often push to the wayside when they get busy.

Another issue to consider is that quality can deteriorate over time, particularly on the tedious tasks that we've discussed. Humans have a tendency to rush through things they don't enjoy doing and posting to these third-party sites definitely qualifies as something that people don't enjoy. Tools, on the other hand, never get bored. They stay consistent with the posting style and keep the quality level steadily high.

It's important to be aware of the ROI on all of your services and products, but don't forget about the time factor when replacing them with in-house activities.

If you've been following the trends for the last year in the automotive industry, you’ll note that there are some dealers that are pushing all of their advertising dollars towards driving traffic to their websites. It’s a strategy that was made popular when a large dealer group declared that they were going to focus on generating their own leads and wrote an interesting piece about why they were doing it.

Unfortunately, the strategy that they’re adopting has been misunderstood by many. The idea is that they wouldn't be buying leads from other sites anymore. They never declared that their inventory wouldn't be available on other sites. It’s a concept that makes sense – generate your own leads, whether they’re coming from third-party sites or the dealership’s website.

In an article titled, Why Car Dealers Should Adopt a Modern Digital Merchandising Strategy, we went into detail about why many consumers prefer to shop on third-party sites rather than on a dealership’s own website. The perception of competition and choice has made many consumers today skeptical of the isolation that happens on a company’s own website. The diversity they get on the third-party sites is ideal for many modern shoppers.

This modern strategy translates into companies doing what they can to have their merchandise show up on Amazon and Newegg. It’s why airlines and hotels work with Priceline and Expedia. It’s why dealers should have their inventory on Craigslist and Autotrader.

We all know that the best leads are the ones that come directly from your own website, but you can’t force people to go there. You can put all of your marketing budget into promoting your own website and you’ll still miss out on a good percentage of people who simply won’t go there, at least not initially.

A best practice is to cast the widest net possible. Get your inventory in front of more people regardless of where they’re searching. Whether they go to Google, eBay Motors, or Backpage, you want your inventory to be in front of them. Posting to other sites will increase the number of people who then visit your website for more information on the cars they find.

We aren’t going to argue against the concept of pulling back on buying third-party leads, but we want to make sure that everyone knows that the strategy being discussed is not one that abandons the use of third-party sites altogether. Regardless of whether you’re buying leads or not, you want to have your inventory visible to as many people as possible.

Even CarMax, one of the first large companies to completely abandon posting inventory to third-party websites, has recently began adding their inventory back into the mix. There is simply more reach available to dealerships and dealer groups when they cast a wider net.

Put your inventory in front of more people on or off your website and you’ll generate more leads for yourself. That’s the modern strategy.

When social media started picking up steam in the automotive industry in 2008, the idea was that since more people were getting social and communicating on these public arenas, it would be a great medium through which to get more customers. Fast forward to today and we’ve found that it can be more challenging than most expected.

The lack of social media ROI has prompted many dealers to abandon social media in general. Sure, they’ll post every now and then on their Facebook page or put out a Tweet before a big sale, but for the most part the broken promise of social media delivering the masses to the showroom has many dealers pulling back. This can be a mistake.

Whether people are using social media to buy cars or not can be debated, but what cannot be debated is its influence on perceptions. Page views on social media pages, particularly Facebook and Twitter, are going up. Some of this can be attributed to more dealer websites linking to their social profiles. Another reason for this, which can be clearly seen through Facebook Insights, is that people click from search to check out what a dealership is doing on social media.

They are looking at dealerships’ social pages for a reason. They want to know more about your dealership. What are they seeing when they look at your profiles?

In general, most experts would agree that it can be a bad idea to automate your social media. You want to express the personality of the dealership and share content that is meaningful to your customers. For the most part, this is not achievable with automation tools, but there’s one instant when it’s okay.

Our philosophy regarding social media is simple: personalize easily. We know that it can be a challenge for dealers to find the time and content necessary to make a strong social media presence, so having the ability to control the content that’s being syndicated to Facebook and Twitter is the only way to automate without having a robotic page. There are tools like Hootsuite and Buffer that do part of the job, but they do not make it easy to post dealership-relevant content like inventory and industry articles.

We will be posting best practices about social media in the coming weeks, but for now we encourage you to check out our post about why a social media presence is important even if you don’t believe ...

Savvy dealers are turning to low cost alternatives like Facebook and Twitter and other social media outlets as their alternative. Not only is it free, but it can help you interact with your future and existing customers in real-time. It's no secret that Dealers will do just about anything to gain new customers by any means necessary. Radio, Print and TV ads can all have tremendous results but at what cost? Those traditional marketing mediums and budgets are dying. 

As we know, today’s consumer researches their next purchase online and wants to share their thoughts online to get their friends opinions before making the purchase. Why not help them by giving them all the information they are looking for and a way to communicate with you at the same time.

Social Media Grows Followers

This starts with your own staff.  Do they follow the dealership themselves?  Do they ask their friends to like their company?  Encourage the staff to talk about the company and tag the organization on Facebook and Twitter.  This is free advertising for the dealership.

Engage your Audience

This starts with posting relevant information to your Facebook fans and twitter followers.  Let them know about the upcoming specials or just reduced inventory.  What better way to do this then with photos and descriptions of the inventory?  Make the posts likeable, sharable, clickable and able to post comments.   When a consumer clicks on the inventory, bring them to your landing page inside the Facebook application.  Furthermore, utilizing the Inventory applet to display all dealership inventory on Facebook.

Convert

Once a consumer is interested in the vehicle, what are you doing to convert them into a lead?  Make sure your landing pages give multiple options to gather more information about the consumer including credit applications and appointment setting.  Connecting all of this back to your CRM gives you the ability to manage everything from start to finish.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.  If that’s the case, what is a video worth?  46% of people say they’d be more likely to seek out information about a product or service after seeing it in an online video.  As an RV dealer, are you leveraging the use of video to help sell more vehicles each month and engage your customers?  Video marketing and YouTube in particular, can help bring your dealership to the next level in getting more customers and ultimately selling more inventory.   According to Alexa.com, YouTube is the #3 ranked website in the world.  The average user spends 18 minutes on the site.  It’s 20% easier to rank #1 with a video result as compared to a website. Video is a major influence on consumers making a purchase decision.

Drive More Traffic

If you want to drive more traffic to your dealership, utilize a software company that can take your dealership’s data, stitch together photos and descriptions while adding a Human Voiceover all in one video. Taking it to the next level and creating a YouTube channel with consistent brand imaging, a video library, and dealership information will give you even more exposure. 

Capture the lead! 

YouTube videos should engage the consumer to want more information. 

Providing the consumer with an embedded phone number in the video and a link to a landing page with all the details about each vehicle will only increase the customer interaction. Each landing page should also contain additional calls-to-action ranging from financing options to trade in forms along with the dealership’s contact information.

Next Level

Taking it to the next level means ensuring everything you do is mobile.  40% of YouTube views are by mobile users.  Are you utilizing a mobile strategy to engage your customers or are you giving them a poor experience from their phone? 

There are many ways to spend an advertising budget today and a multitude of websites to advertise your inventory.  Making an investment into a video product should be one of these discussions for your dealership to give yourself the opportunity to convert more ads into leads and sell more vehicles.