The amount of "best practices" and "tips" involved with social media marketing can be overwhelming to say the least (and yes, I'm guilty of sharing my own).  In the spirit of KISS (Keep it Simple, Stupid), here is a short list of Must-Do's for dealerships using social media as a part of their online marketing efforts:

Have a Plan: Before starting any marketing campaign, your dealership should have a plan.  When it comes to social media, make sure you consider (and answer) things like:

• What is your goal?
• Why are we investing time and resources into this particular social media site?
• Who are we trying to reach with this campaign?

Optimize: As with your auto dealer website, your social media efforts should have search engine optimization as a focus.  This not only means the content you post, but also your profiles.  Use keywords that your customers are using to search for your dealership online in your summary, backlink to your website with keywords, and make sure your contact information is accurate across all platforms.

Measure Everything You Can: At the very least, use Google Analytics to measure your efforts.  Your dealership should investigate the free and paid tools that are out there as well.  Some things you should be keeping track of:

• Engagement-How many people are interacting or sharing your content
• Conversions-You'll have to determine what this mean for your dealership; for example, is it clicks, shares, or comments?  Once you've established that, you can measure it.