The automotive industry spends more on video to build our brands than any other industry except travel – even more than media and entertainment.[i]The heavy spend, though, makes it harder for a dealership to set itself apart amid a sea of video content. Here’s one way to do so: share your brand through people, not cars. Here are a few suggestions for how to make your dealership stand apart through the power of people:

Shine the Spotlight on Your Employees

Video snippets that give an inside look at the lives of your own people can make your dealership more authentic and approachable. Employees at many dealerships post videos that reflect the many dimensions of their roles as brand ambassadors, whether they’re on the lot with a customer or participating in a community event. Usually employees post this kind of content on socials such as Facebook or Instagram. 

For example, we recently wrote about Rudy T. “El Patronn,” managing partner/general manager of Brooklyn Mitsubishi. He has become a one-person content machine as he shares livestreams and video segments that give an inside look at the life of an automotive executive. He even gives you a look at his family life and personal travels. 

Tip: to empower your people to use video to blog about their lives, set some ground rules on considerations such as posting content on dealership sites and personal pages. 

Celebrate Your Customers

Nothing says “visit our dealership” than videos of happy customers meeting the car of their dreams. Consider doing livestreams and recorded videos of customers picking up their cars and driving off happily with their new purchase, as Honda of Staten Island does on Instagram and “Honda Rick” Kruger of Ayres Honda in Fort Wayne, Indiana, does.

Tip: the key is to be brief. All you need are a few moments of the customer sharing enthusiasm and voicing their excitement. You don’t need to do a customer testimonial, per se, for this kind of video; but do ask your customer for permission to post.

Share Your Ideas

Video blogging tips and ideas for customers provide value and establish your people as authorities for car purchases and service. Examples include brief how-to videos from your service lane or the sales floor on topics such as proper car care. Jason “HondaPro” Richmond, formerly of Schaumburg Honda Automobiles, built a name for himself by creating videos of car tips. He became so popular he created a second career as a consultant.  

Tip: publish how-to videos across multiple platforms such as your website and socials to optimize your findability for customers who might be looking for answers to questions about car ownership. To do them right, you’ll need professional equipment, planning, and rehearsing with someone on your team who is willing to learn how to engage an audience as a teacher in a brief video. 

Considerations to Keep in Mind

In all cases, it’s important that you:

• Define your strategy for why and how you will create video, including measurable goals.

• Practice. Never wing it. Get comfortable with basic ways to speak to a camera, for instance. 

• Do your homework. Research proper video creation and production tips (Launch Digital Marketing, part of the Cars.com family, is a good resource) including proper use of equipment and tips for doing a Facebook Live right. 

Video is a rapidly evolving format. Instagram, for instance, just launched IGTV, a mobile-first video creation feature for longer-form content on the one-billion-member platform. Be willing to learn, experiment, and grow.

Auto dealerships that want to be relevant in the mobile era are turning to Instagram, as well they should. The mobile-centric platform recently celebrated an incredible milestone by reaching one billion monthly active users[i]. To put that number in perspective, Instagram now has roughly half as many monthly users as Facebook even though Facebook has a six-year head start on Instagram[ii]. No wonder Facebook bought Instagram in 2012 (when Instagram had fewer than 100 million users)[iii]. And Instagram continues to give businesses tools to engage with customers – so long as you know how to use them. A case in point: the new Instagram IGTV feature.

IGTV is a video uploading and sharing option that makes it possible for Instagram users (both people and businesses) to create longer-form content. Until Instagram announced IGTV on June 20, users were restricted to posting one-minute videos on their main feeds or 15-second snippets to their Stories. With IGTV, users can post video content that is as lengthy as 10 minutes (even longer for larger and verified accounts). 

In addition, IGTV is designed for recording on a mobile phone, meaning you record videos in vertical (or portrait) format, or the way you naturally hold your phone. As a result, the video content fills the screen instead of having awkward black borders appear around the content as happens when you record a video by holding your phone vertically instead of tilting it horizontally (or landscape style). 

At Cars.com, we’ve blogged about dealerships successfully using Instagram, and we’re eager to see how dealers embrace IGTV. As you use IGTV to build your dealership’s brand, we have a few tips for you:

1 Tell Stories Intelligently

Just because users can record as much as one hour of video content on IGTV doesn’t mean you should. First know why you want to use IGTV, what story you want to tell, and how you will tell it. One natural temptation is to do an in-depth lot tour with IGTV. But how many of your customers really want to tour your entire lot for an hour? Don’t exhaust your viewers.

If a 15-second tour of your lot has been getting great engagement via Instagram Stories or as a one-minute post on your main feed, don’t stop doing them. Resist the temptation to pile on more content through an expanded IGTV segment. Instead, perhaps IGTV might be a good opportunity to give an in-depth tour of your hottest-selling vehicle with some explanation provided; or to provide an interesting glimpse at a community event your dealership is part of, to name a few examples of where it might make more sense to provide content that breaks free of the constraints of Instagram video.

2 Understand How to Use the Format

One of the joys of using a format like Instagram is that you can represent your business in an organic way. As we have blogged, dealerships have made their brands more authentic by capturing images and video of their customers and employees as they interact with each other and explore the cars of their dreams. You don’t need to create slick content to engage people – all you need is a mobile phone. 

But you do want to be professional. Remember, how your content looks and sounds reflects on your brand. An Instagram video with muffled sound and poor lighting is like a dealership lobby with a broken window: ugly and uninviting. So make sure you get the basics right. For instance:

• Avoid the temptation to re-purpose video you have taken on other platforms such as YouTube unless you have tested the content for IGTV. Remember, IGTV is formatted for a vertical view. If you created video holding your phone horizontally, that content is probably not going to look good on IGTV. 

• Consider your audience viewing your content on their mobile phones. Everything you create needs to show up well on a tiny screen held in portrait mode. Think through the shots you are going to take before you take them. Favor tight, simple close-ups that fill your screen, and use IGTV’s cover-image editing function to display a thumbnail from your video that will really pop on a tiny screen.

• Understand IGTV’s features. Get familiar with the tools IGTV provides to make your content more accessible. For example, you’ll need to give each IGTV segment a title and a brief description. Write something that would be as catchy as the best tweet you’ve ever seen. As noted, edit your cover. Understand also that your viewers can post comments on your content. Be ready to engage with them.

To capitalize on a new tool such as IGTV, cast your nets far and wide for ideas. Look outside the automotive industry for inspiration. On your personal account, watch the IGTV content that Instagram suggests for you, and explore other accounts for ideas. If you find someone’s IGTV segment to be a boring turn-off, ask yourself why – and when content engages you, think through the reasons you were engaged. Learn from your own experiences. 

IGTV is already proving to be a compelling way for people and businesses to engage audiences with content. Learn from the early adopters and make your brand shine for the mobile generation.  

For more tips, check out the IGTV Help Center.