The biggest benefit of Twitter is that it allows anyone to engage with everyone on the network. You don’t need to be a fan, or even a follower to reach out to someone in real time — just find someone you’re interested in and send them a “mention.”
Here are a few Twitter marketing tips that you, as a car dealer or local business, can use to encourage an increased response to your tweets and Twitter activity.
As a local business, you can take advantage of the interactive nature of Twitter to find and engage local tweeters interested in your services, including car finance, used cars etc.
Click here to find some useful tools to start engaging users here…
I also suggest connecting with active local Twitter users as often you can. After all, pretty much every adult or teenager will need a car at some stage. So connect with them now and continue to build relationships with them via Twitter to engage them for both short- and long-term gain.
Here are some tools that you can use to track down your local twitter community…
You can also use Twitter’s Advanced Search tool to identify local targets – its operators are not delivering totally perfect results at the moment, but it’s still worth giving it a try.
Follow Twitter users that your competitors are following and being followed by. After all, those users might not know that you can offer them better deals and offers. So reach out to those people you already know are showing interest in your industry by dint of their following your competitors.
For this I also suggest searching tweets based on your competitors’ names, making doubly sure to connect with any users whoa are unhappy with their service.
The rise of Twitter has enabled us to find companies and individuals using by searching by keywords, tags or other category tactics that can be geographically targeted and used in real time. There are various Twitter tools that can help you in identifying customers and how close they to actually buying a used car by simply looking at their search behaviour.
The most effective tool, or feature, that you can use to find real-time customers on Twitter is its Advanced Search tool, which is often underestimated and therefore not used as much as it should be. I would definitely recommend my clients to use this tool frequently – on a daily basis if possible.
You can find more detail on Twitter’s Advanced Search and other tools to find real-time customers on this blog post “6 Powerful Tools to Find Your Customers on Twitter”, written by Jeff Bullas.
More than 70% of corporate Twitter users are either not using Twitter backgrounds at all, or just in an ineffective way.
You can use the background picture to help your Twitter followers understand what you do, where you are based and how to reach you.
One way to present the most effective background possible is to add a picture of your dealership, along with relevant contact details, address etc.
Twitter recently released a new feature called “Twitter cards” to help provide a deeper and more visually rich content within tweets.
The basic idea behind a Twitter card starts with someone copying and pasting a link into a tweet. Then, well-formatted information (including images, special text, etc.) will appear below the tweet to give the reader a preview of the link’s contents. For example, there are six different types of cards that you can use. Here is an example of a “Summary card”.
Here, the person originally tweeted a link to the article. That article webpage was pre-loaded with special Twitter card code, so that when it was copied into a tweet, all this additional information showed up: image, summary text, title and original author attribution.
In addition to Summary cards, Twitter offers a selection of other “cards”…
For businesses that already have a strong Twitter following, employing Twitter cards may be a great way to drive an increase in follower growth and conversion. For those businesses still struggling to find their footing with Twitter, cards won’t necessarily equate to more dollars in the door (initially), but it could be a great way to attract followers in the medium term.
Here are few useful links that can help you get started with Twitter cards
When you tweet, make sure you cover local news and focus on local content. Try to avoid tweeting content that is not relevant to your ultimate audience. Share news of local festivals, events, deals and offers, as well as local area achievements and gossip, so that your tweets can help you connect with your audience on a deeper level too.
No one likes to follow dead Twitter accounts. Be active and always response to any comments, questions and mentions raised within your Twitter activity.
