Many car dealers wonder if twitter even matters for their dealership so lets talk about WHY twitter matters for automotive dealerships. Twitter is the social media platform that panders to short attention spans. It’s trained a generation of people to prefer snippets of information in 140 characters or less. People who dismiss Twitter as not important because of that factor are missing out on the fact that it has over 500 million active users.
Because of the number of accounts and the sheer volume of tweets daily, as an automotive dealer you want to be on Twitter yesterday. But don’t despair if you’re not currently on twitter. You can easily join and have your voice heard and your car dealership found.
Why should automotive dealers be on Twitter, instead of Facebook or any other social media platform? Well, really, you should be on Twitter in addition to your other social media platforms. Twitter, like your other platforms, should be directing traffic back to your blog or your automotive dealership site. Since tweets are 140 characters or less, people are more likely to read them. People spend time on Twitter with the understanding that they’ll see easy to read texts that are entertaining from people they’re interested in.
It’s important to make sure that the content your dealership shares on Twitter is engaging. While you certainly want to drive traffic to your site with Twitter, you want to make sure that you’re posting things people want to read. If your automotive dealership writes a ‘how-to’ post about “choosing the right car for you”, it’s a great thing to share. But in addition to sharing your content, you should share other relevant content that fits your niche (more on finding your niche in another post). So if you see a great post elsewhere on the internet, share it and cite the source.
It’s also important that you respond to your customer base on Twitter. So if someone tweets an issue at your dealership, you need to respond in a professional manner. Having a savvy social media specialist working for your dealership to handle these praises or complaints will make a world of difference. Announcing issues, such as if your automotive dealership was affected by a hurricane, is good to do because it will show your business as being proactive in addressing issues. Since Twitter has the potential to make news go viral, it can really drastically improve your reach if you release a potent tidbit of information. It also will help in getting your name out to new people.
While you can directly interact with customers, announce key news pieces, and share engaging content, you can also network and build real relationships. You can search hashtags, tweets and users to find people to follow and engage with to help you grow your followers. While you might be tempted to buy Twitter followers, don’t fall into that trap. You’re better off building real relationships with real followers than buying them.
You may ask yourself, “how is Twitter going to help my automotive dealership” if all of my customers are local? Well, you can use Twitter to reach out to potential customers within your geographic region. You can search by interests, hashtags, geographic location and more to directly interact with people.
Twitter can really pack a punch if you’re willing to put in some time to learn it. Using it for your car dealership is truly a must. Your competitors certainly are using it to their advantage. Don’t be left behind!