Events
It’s easy to promote an event in advance on social media, but you can do so much more than that. For example, if your dealership is co-sponsoring a wine tasting event to benefit a local charity, your employees could search for keywords in their friends’ posts. This does not work for a Facebook page, but people in the dealership who have an individual Facebook account could do this. By using keyword searches, your employees can find individuals who “like” the local charity (if it’s on Facebook) or wine; then they can send invitations to these people. Twitter can be searched via twitter.com/search-advanced. The best part about the Twitter search is you don’t have to be connected to these individuals to find them. You can search for people who tweeted about the charity or wine within a set distance from your location. Then, you can connect with them and invite them to the event.

Once people are invited, update posts as the event draws near. Provide details of what attendees can expect, who will be there, or even the goals of the event (e.g., raise XX dollars for the charity). When the event rolls around, allow someone to post updates during the event, and once the event is over, post photos of it.

Consider an event like the BMW Ultimate Drive to benefit Susan G. Komen for the Cure, where BMW donates $1 for every mile driven during the test drive of a new BMW. In this case you have the opportunity to drill down into your CRM to target individuals who are good candidates for the event (past customers who purchased or serviced a BMW). Then, email those individuals an opportunity to connect with you on social media for ongoing updates about the event. Use the photos you took at the event to share after the event in a thank-you email campaign.

Customer Service
Do your customers know they can contact you at any time via Twitter? Although individual posts are limited to 140 characters, Twitter can be a great place for customers to reach out to you. “Mr. Customer, we value your business and we want you to know that we are available at any time. You can always send us a direct message on Twitter if a question arises about your new vehicle.” Twitter is simple enough to monitor that this wouldn’t be a huge time investment.

You can also announce recall campaigns on Twitter and share quick tips for maintenance. You can even monitor or search for tweets regarding vehicle repairs and offer advice or service to those individuals.

Owners Club
Create a Facebook group (or a LinkedIn Group if you discover a worth-while segment of your customers are there) for a specific subset of customers in your market area, especially if you have a particularly loyal model group that is socially active. Drill down in your CRM to find all current owners of that model, and invite them to join the group. Also invite everyone who purchases that vehicle to join.

Post information that relates to that model (ways to accessorize it, how to use all of the gadgetry in the vehicle, recalls, safety information, recommended maintenance, special financing available for current owners). The best person to monitor this group is someone in the service department who is also an enthusiast.

Related: Transitioning to Social CRM in your Dealership

Vol. 9, Issue 2