Social media cheat sheet for your dealership, part two

It can be tricky to navigate social media as a business. There is a balancing act between posting too much or too little, it can be tough to predict what kind of content will best resonate with your followers, and social media algorithms are always changing – so even if you do create a high-quality post that your followers would love, how can you make sure it shows up in their newsfeeds?

As much as social media “rules” are ever-changing, there are a few constants. These proven rhythms allow you to leverage your social strategy as much as possible despite the challenge of keeping up with social media trends.

Read part one of this blog post.

General best practices for social media

• Don’t post too often, especially if most of those posts are focused on selling. For example: “End of summer discount on our pontoon models! Hurry in – sale ends Sunday!” While you may be providing your followers with valuable information that many of them will be interested in, you don’t want to overwhelm your audience with too many promotions. At best, they’ll start ignoring them because you post them so often. At worst, they’ll get annoyed and un-follow you. 

• Make sure to post enough. If your followers barely hear from you, they’ll be confused when you do post. Social media is a huge piece of advertising, and if you’re not regularly showing up, your potential customers may forget about you or get the impression that you don’t care enough to make the effort. Try to achieve a good balance by posting once per day, with only 1-2 promotional posts per week. Look at your engagement to guide your strategy from there – if you’re getting tons of “likes” and comments on every post, consider bumping up your number of posts. If engagement per post is beginning to wane, it might be a signal that you are posting a bit too frequently. 

• Engage with your followers. The whole reason you’re on social media in the first place is to connect with your followers, AKA potential customers! If people are commenting on your posts and especially if they’re asking questions, you need to respond to them! Not only will your participation help your followers and make them more likely to follow through on a purchase, but it will also help you drive further engagement, earning you even more followers.

There’s no secret trick to mastering social media as a business, but there are a handful of proven methods and best practices that can give your dealership a leg up. Use this blog post as a “cheat sheet” to best leverage your activity on the most popular social media platforms, but also use your best judgement. No one knows your business and your customers like you do, so don’t glue yourself to any “rule” that isn’t a good fit. Whatever you do, make social a priority for your dealership – it’s an important aspect of marketing and keeping you in touch with your customers.

Thank you to research from MarketingProfs for platform-specific statistics.

Lauren McLean is the public relations manager for Dealer Spike, a company that provides innovative websites as well as a suite of powerful online advertising solutions that help marine dealers help increase sales and service profitability. For more information, visit www.DealerSpikeMarine.com or call 800-288-5917.