Holidays are a time for giving!!!

The holiday season is a great time to combine “giving” and your dealerships social media presence!

While I am sure you and your dealership have your own charities that you give to during the holidays, a sure fire way to expand your social media footprint is to contribute to the charities of your customers!

A great way to do this is to simply ask your customers if they would like to be involved in a special “Dealership Charity contribution” contest! This contest will have 3 prizes. First, second and third place winners will receive ($X)…..

The contest will take place on Facebook. The charity that receives the most “likes” for their charities video will win!

Send a message to all of your customers soliciting them to send you a message back, (in less than 100 words), why their particular charity should be chosen for this special contest. My suggestion is you narrow it down to 10 or less charities.

Here is where the fun begins!

After having it narrowed down to 10 or less charities invite each one of them into your dealership and produce a 60-90 second video. This video should include the person whose charity is being promoted and the Dealer or General Manager of the store. Have fun in the video and keep it short and to the point!! The more fun the video is, the more “likes” it will receive!!

Each video that is taken can then be tagged correctly for SEO, (search engine optimization).

You can then upload these videos to your dealerships website, dealerships Facebook page and YouTube.

Have a “special page” for these videos to reside on your dealerships website!

The video that gets the most “likes” wins….so encourage your customers to view the videos and vote for the video or charity that they like best! Encourage your customers to “share” these videos on their own pages to gather more “likes”!

Of course, the person whose charity you are promoting will “share” this video on their own personal Facebook page and encourage all of their friends to “like” and “share” the video as well! The more it is shared and liked…..the better!!! The videos will go viral very quickly!!!

This will be a great promotion for you and your dealership! The whole idea of social media is to be SOCIAL! The last thing you want to do with social media is to constantly promote yourself and the dealerships “specials” or events.

The amount of exposure for your dealership will be tremendous! It is the kind of “goodwill” exposure that you want to create with social media! ALL of these videos will have a tremendous amount of “views”, “shares” and “likes”!!! It is also important to continue to promote the charities yourself! Continue to re-post the videos on your dealerships Facebook page. Get the word out!!!

When the contest deadline is over, invite the 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd place winners to the dealership to receive their prize. Make sure you produce another 60-90 second video of you giving a check to the charity and congratulating them on their success! You can then use those videos to once again promote the goodwill of your dealership!!

Let me make one last suggestion. Please make sure you make a small contribution to the other charities that didn’t win. After all, it is the season for giving…..and everyone wins that way!!

Combine the “Season of giving” and your social media campaigns to get the very best advertising for your dealership!!

Happy Holidays everyone!!!

This blog originally appeared in the December 2011 issue of “The Social Dealership”

Here is the link:

http://socialdealershipmagazine.com/the-social-dealership/the-socia...

About the Author: From a Salesperson to a Dealer, I have a vast amount of experience in all areas of the automotive environment.

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