When diving into social media, dealerships can run the risk of sounding like spam. Nobody will want to follow your dealership if they can’t distinguish you from the junk mail they receive in their email inbox or the never-ending advertising messages in their social media streams.
You can get around sounding like spam by following a few simple rules:
1. Quality not quantity. Social media is a tool for developing relationships with your customers. Make sure that what you have to say is valuable to them and promotes a conversation. Is what you’re saying interesting to you? Would you ignore, listen, or respond? Go for quality posts.
2. Use variety. Re-posting something you have already said can be a good trick, but sometimes people see that as spam. Work on rewording and repurposing your content before re-posting something too similar.
3. Ask questions. Remember that social media is a conversation with your customers. When you ask questions, you are giving customers an easy opportunity to interact with you. Ask them questions. Be personal. A back and forth conversation is rarely seen as spam!
4. Be careful with punctuation. Nothing screams spam more than the overuse of exclamation marks. When you are overly enthusiastic in your social media it can seem fake. You want to be as real and personal as possible, so limit those exclamations.
5. Don’t be too self-promotional. You want to use social media to build a relationship with your customers; social media is not like traditional advertising, it is not simply venue to sell your product, but a way to meet and learn about your customers.
As your dealership develops social media goals be sure that you keep these anti-spam guidelines in mind. Remember: If it sounds or looks like spam to you, then it will definitely look like spam to your customers.
*photo by Robert Hruzek
Filed under: Quick Tips, blog content, Getting started, how to, Listening, social media strategy, what to write
