5 Star Reputation – Digital Experts for Independent Dealers

Top 10 Tips For Dealers Using Instagram

Social media is a minefield these days with so many different platforms to think about!

As one of the most visually focused social media platforms, Instagram can be incredibly effective for dealers as a tool for showing just how great your vehicles can look!

Without further ado, here are my 10 top tips for dealers using Instagram:

1) Show What you do in a creative way

Every dealer wants to be memorable and what better way to promote yourselves than on Instagram? Customers and followers will view your profile in order to gain a better understanding of your business, this can be gleaned from your photo uploads, bio, or even your display picture. Your Instagram profile allows you to adopt your own unique approach and stick in your follower’s memories! Don’t forget to be creative!

2) The photos that you upload

How do you want your business to be seen?

If you want your business to be seen as professional and hard-working, then it’s best to avoid uploading images similar to the photo on the top. Customers will more likely appreciate a photo that has had some effort put into it like the one on the bottom featuring a nice background and a clean car. This helps make your cars look more attractive as well as making your business more approachable and should help you to achieve an increase in sales and profits over time.

3) Display picture and bio

Dealers should always have a good display picture and this is usually your brand logo. Your display image is another way to represent your business and if it’s an image of something irrelevant to your company, then people won’t want to click on your profile! Your display picture needs to be something which people will associate to your business, therefore most dealers use their own brand logo. A dealer’s bio should always have a link to your website for easy access for customers. This also allows clients to access your website from different platforms which gives your business a better chance of gaining customers. It’s also worth mentioning your tagline which should be used to help people understand your business better as well as setting the scene for how you want to be perceived.

4) Expand your business with #hashtags

This is your opportunity to gain more views and customers! It’s so simple, all it takes is a hashtag of something relevant in the caption of a photo you’ve uploaded. If your business is selling a Fiat 500, then relevant hashtags would be #fiat500 or #carsforsale. This helps increase the reach of your post because a lot of people are likely to search for a Fiat 500 and this hashtag allows people to find the image more easily as it acts as a filter.

5) Likes and followers

To gain more profile views and recognition, dealers should click like on more photos that are relevant to your business or that have something to do with the automotive industry. This behaviour intrigues people and encourages them to view your profile. Believe it or not this simple trick works regularly and is used by many successful businesses. The same concept applies for followers, if a dealer follows lots of related businesses and people, then they will become a lot more well noticed and will receive more followers as well as creating a bigger fan base. This is something that works surprisingly well!

6) Maintaining credibility

Credibility is everything on social media. No one wants to follow an account that is inconsistent and posts once in every blue moon. Uploading and keeping a consistent schedule is important and is something that audiences will appreciate. Having good credibility can be achieved by liking and following people on a regular basis so that you are always becoming more well noticed. Listening to what your followers and customers have to say is also an important method to use, this is because they tend to give some very helpful advice.

7) Exclusive offers

Who doesn’t like an offer? Dealers should try out this tactic as it’s something which social media users LOVE. It’s definitely a very good method to maintain followers as it keeps them interested in the offers and prizes available through following your account. This will also serve to promote your business through word of mouth as people seek to win prizes and helps your dealership to gain more attention as well as increasing your popularity. Having your own unique selling point (USP) is also a great way to heighten brand awareness, this could be things such as giving a percentage of every sale to a specific charity or promising your customers that every purchase comes with a voucher or a free MOT. This will impress people and is another way to encourage purchases!

8) Link your social media accounts

This is very simple to do, go on to your settings and click on ‘Linked accounts’ after that, click on any platform that you wish to link. This is effective as you can then publish your upload to other platforms at the same time which makes your life a whole lot easier and saves time. Many people may just see your dealership on one platform and if they follow you, they will see your other platforms as they will be linked together which helps to boost your social following.

9) Exchanging shoutouts

Do you want your dealership to become more popular? Then try and get others to shout you out. Followers will see most posts that you upload on Instagram, so a shout out (an image of a different company or person thanking them for their goods or services) would be very effective for your business as well as someone else’s. To be able to do this you will need to contact another related industry business and ask if they are willing to exchange in shoutouts, this will ensure that the other business’s followers see your profile and will help you to gain more views.

This works very well and most businesses use this technique, however, a lot of customers don’t appreciate shout out’s all of the time because this then takes up a lot of your business’s news feed, so in short, don’t overuse them!

10) Analyse your success and build on it

This is something pretty much every successful business does. You will then be able to see how many people view your profile and how many more followers you are getting each day. If you aren’t improving in numbers then this will help you realise that you need to change your Instagram and customise your profile differently so that more people are engaging with your content.

Good luck!



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