According to a recent report by Statista, 69 percent of Americans ages 18-29 are active users of social media, making highly targeted social media strategies necessary, in order to create dealership exposure. On today’s show, we speak to Cathy Nesbit, Social Media Director at Harry Robinson Buick GMC in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Cathy discusses the unique and creative ways she is increasing social media engagement, and bringing in more customers.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Jim Fitzpatrick: Hi everyone, I’m Jim Fitzpatrick. Thanks so much for joining us in another edition of CBT News. Today, I’m excited to have Cathy Nesbit who is a social media director at Harry Robinson Buick GMC. Thank you so much for joining us, Cathy.
Cathy Nesbit: Thank you for having me.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Talk to us about some of the ways in which you do use Facebook to increase the brand exposure of the store.
Cathy Nesbit: To gain likes, we do monthly giveaways, which helps increase our audience. We do video series for brand loyalty, for dealership loyalty and for educational purposes for our customers. Everybody in the dealership gets involved with our video series because everyone sees, the more that they’re in the videos, the more exposure they get and everybody shares that and people come and ask for them. We’ve got a really good group of people that are onboard to do videos anytime we need one.
Jim Fitzpatrick: And then you’ve got a thing called Free Gas Friday. Talk to us about that.
Cathy Nesbit: Yes, it’s a video series that we created several years ago to just build brand loyalty and give our customers something back for being loyal customers. And we go out every Friday, we find someone with either the front license plate or back sticker with Harry Robinson. We go find them, give them a goodie bag, thank them so much for their business. Give them $50 in free gas, put them on a video, and then they share it and tag their friends and they love it and we love it. And it’s been a great series for us.
Jim Fitzpatrick: And what do you feel are some of the benefits and payoffs to these strategies?
Cathy Nesbit: Well, I think the biggest benefit is anytime you’re on social media, it’s all about putting out there who you really are and what you care about. If you’re a person who cares about homelessness or education or cars, you can connect with other people that have those same likes. We put out there who we are and we’re big into the community and supporting local, shopping local and keeping everything local. And we do a lot of giving back to our community. We have people come up to us and say, “We love you for what you do in our community.” And it just gives us a platform to show people what we care about and if they connect with us because we care about the same things, then it’s a win-win for everybody.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Sure, sure. What do you say to the dealers out there? What are some of the tips that you would give dealers listening about the do’s and the don’ts with regard to social media and how to drive your likes up and your fans up on social media?
Cathy Nesbit: I would say that the most important thing is to be true to who you are and who you all are as dealership and not to try to be something that you’re not, first and foremost and just to put yourself out there. Be who you are and as far as tactics, giveaways are a good way to gain likes and gain exposure. And I would say that being targeted in what you put out there is very important just because if you’re a local dealership, you want local people to care about what you care about and you want your audience to be local people. You don’t want to be out buying likes in Delaware if you’re in Arkansas and you don’t want to pay for likes. You want to get people that genuinely want to connect with you. And so giveaways is a good way to get more exposure.
Cathy Nesbit: Doing events in the community. We go out and do a lot. We are partners in education. We just did a Car Care Clinic for single parents and the service drive. That was a big thing for us and just getting people involved and getting yourself out there. The real you.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Well, Cathy Nesbit, Social Director at Harry Robinson Buick GMC. I want to thank you so much for joining us on CBT News. It’s been very enlightening. Congratulations to all your success there at the dealership, and hopefully we can have you back in the future to talk about this very hot topic.
Cathy Nesbit: Thank you so much for having me and I’ll be happy to come back anytime.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Thanks so much.
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