How far does your dealership’s message reach on social media? Do you think you’re reaching as many people as you could be right now? What if I told you that there was a way to expand your reach on social networks by 10-, 20-, or even 50 by adding just one key element to your social strategy?
It probably wouldn’t surprise you to learn that a vast majority of adults are active on social media. More than half of the people on social media are active on more than one social network and have over a thousand direct and indirect contacts each. Your employees are no exception to this rule, which is why you should be actively involving them in your social strategy.
Now, before I go any further, let me add a quick disclaimer. If you decide to implement any of the ideas I’m about to share with you, please do so in a manner that respects your employees’ privacy and personal preferences. No one should be forced to advertise your business or even endorse it on their own time, and it is never good policy to dictate how people use social media that is not directly tied to your business.
That said, if you have happy, enthusiastic employees working for you, it is reasonable to assume that at least some of them would be happy to help you promote. You want enthusiastic participation with this, so don’t ever make people feel uncomfortable about promoting your business … unless, of course, you want that sentiment coming through in their posts (because that is precisely what will happen if you force the issue). Keep reading this article to its end, and when you’re done, you will have a solid action plan that has the potential to explode your social audience.
Mobilizing Employee Social Media
There are several ways you can approach employee involvement in your dealership’s social campaigns. The three key methods are:
• Encouraging Sharing of Company Posts, Pins, and Tweets
• Posting Directly from Employee Accounts
• Sharing Employee-Generated Content on Your Social Channels
Let’s take a closer look at each so you can decide which of the above will work best in your workplace.
#1 – Encouraging Sharing
The easiest way to mobilize your employees to communicate your brand message over social media is by simply asking them to share out the content you post to the various social networks. Vigorously encourage re-pinning, retweeting, and sharing. Send email or text reminders that alert employees to new content, and progressively seed those messages with calls to action to like and share.
If you are using Twitter, leave enough characters off your tweets to let employees make a personal appeal to their friends and contacts to do the same. Now that Twitter has expanded its character limit, you have the opportunity to send a more comprehensive message while still leaving enough available characters for your employees to send a more personal appeal. It will mean more to their friends if the call to action comes from them, and more of them will be likely to heed the call.
#2 – Posting Directly from Employee Accounts
This one is a bit more controversial, but in a more close-knit workplace, it can work well. Ask permission to post content directly from your employees’ user accounts and push posts via a platform like Hootsuite, SocialHP, or another application designed for social media broadcasting.
Posts will appear on your employees’ timelines at intervals you designate. Some applications will even allow you to generate personalized messaging on behalf of the employee, so it looks like they posted the content directly. As long as your messaging is truthful, factual, and positive, there are no ethical questions. Anyone who agrees to donate space on their social accounts should be onboard enough with your messaging to feel comfortable letting you speak for them or through them to their friends and contacts.
#3 – Sharing Employee-Generated Content
Again, with their consent, scour your employees’ social pages and see if there is any share-worthy content that would be of interest to your own followers. If you are already encouraging employees to post, tweet, or pin content that relates directly to the dealership, you should have plenty of content available for this purpose.
Keep in mind that the content you share doesn’t necessarily have to be sales oriented or even related directly to the dealership. Seeing the people who work for you in their own element, enjoying family time, or just sharing things that are interesting to them create a mosaic in the customer’s mind of a workplace that takes a genuine interest in the lives of its employees.
That familial kind of messaging makes people more comfortable dealing with you because you aren’t simply presenting your company as an entity; you are showing its human side and giving people the opportunity to find points of relatability that can easily close sales. This is the type of branding that sells cars, and you should definitely consider leveraging it as part of your social media strategy.
Keeping Up with Content Creation
If you don’t have an active social media management team in place, you might want to consider getting some help. The most important part of any social strategy is the content. It is always in your best interest to enlist the help of content creation professionals who are familiar with your industry and can deliver the kind of content that converts.
At BeezContent, we work with a talented team of writers, both in-house staff and freelancers. Some of our writers have extensive experience in auto industry copywriting and can supply everything from social media posts to blog articles to sales copy that suits the needs of your dealership.
If you haven’t considered working with a copywriting agency before, now is a great time to consider it. We can help you implement all the above ideas and set up a success-driven content strategy your employees can participate in with confidence and enthusiasm. Contact us now to learn more and discuss your next project in detail.
