Social Media in Your Web Content Strategy

[David]

Having a sound automotive Web content strategy is truly the key to success in today’s competitive auto environment. With the demands of consumers always changing, it’s crucial that dealers adopt as many innovative online marketing tactics as possible to get the most leads for the money.



Part of a successful content strategy should include social media. Social media websites are places on the Web where people communicate. Perhaps you’ve heard of the some of the biggest sites, such as Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, and Reddit, but there are numerous websites that can all help leverage your dealership’s online content in new and exciting ways.



Despite the surge in popularity of social media, many businesses including car dealerships still have yet to adopt it, and many others are curious but just not sure how it could be utilized. Think of social media as just another way to connect with potential customers and even your colleagues and competitors. In the offline world, dealers don’t always just pay for advertising and sit back and wait for customers. Dealers attend industry conferences, interact with consumers at auto shows, and network at a range of other events outside of the dealership. Social media is the online equivalent of these activities, where dealers can venture beyond their own website and promote their dealership, their specials, and what sets them apart from their competitors.



Where to Begin Your Social Media Strategy



Open communication via social media can be a valuable tool for car dealers. Rather than staying apprehensive about social media, believing that just kids use it or it’s only a place for the tech-savvy, a social media strategy is about communication: it’s as simple as that.



Existing Web content can easily be incorporated into a basic social media strategy. There is no need to fret about creating all-new content since the best route is to start with what you already have. Many car dealers already possess video of advertisements or testimonials, photos of your latest trip to an auto show or industry conference, or perhaps even a blog that dealer personnel update regularly.



Social Media and SEO – A Match Made in Heaven



Once a wealth of quality content is gathered, it’s now time to consider where to place it on the Web. Dealer videos are perhaps one of the best and easiest ways to utilize social media. Almost everyone at this point has heard of YouTube, and it’s extremely easy to use and upload recent advertisement. What’s great about YouTube is that your video can also be optimized to be found in search engines, just like your website!



Flickr is perhaps the best known photo sharing website. Creating an account is both fast and free, and uploading photos of your dealership, new vehicles, or of the latest conference, can be uploaded and exposed to an active and growing community that could lead impressions from potential car shoppers. Just as YouTube videos have potential to be incorporated into Google search results, Flickr photos are the same way. Not only do Flickr pages have the potential to be incorporated into organic results, but nearly all search engines, including Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask, offer image search capabilities that often incorporate photos from Flickr.



There are numerous other sites that can compliment your dealership blog or other news content. Reddit is a site where users determine what should be considered “news.” As such, users can submit links to new content and vote on content submissions. The more votes your content gets, the more visibility it gets by the Reddit community. Having a blog entry about the arrival of an all-new model, new incentives, or even something that is truly unique to your dealership, can easily be submitted to Reddit and help it gain added reach and impressions for free! Best of all, new content can often be indexed faster by search engines such as Google when leveraging social media.



Benefits of Social Media for Car Dealers



Social media can significantly help dealers improve communications: after all it is called social for a reason. When social media is part of your long-term Web content strategy, it can significantly help to boost your dealership’s profile among potential and existing customers, as well as in the industry in general. That being said, creating numerous accounts, spamming social media sites, and generally taking a one-off or short-term approach to social media will simply have little effect, and could even cause more harm than good. That’s why social media marketing has become a subtle art practiced by a new breed of specialized savvy marketers. When done right, it can easily generate more leads and traffic, and even translate into greater SEO results.



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