Five years ago Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, sent out the first tweet launching a new form of communication that became a revolution in 140 characters or less. This year, Twitter posted a blog reporting that it only takes about one week for users to send 1 billion tweets and last February an average of 460,000 accounts were opened per day. In the automotive industry, we should all ask ourselves, are we utilizing the fundamentals of Twitter to best engage current and potential buyers on this social network?

Create some personality on your Twitter page. Instead of using the generic templates Twitter provides, invest some time to brand your profile. Make sure to maintain the brand consistency but have some fun with it in order to distinguish yourself from other dealerships. Go beyond just displaying your manufacturer’s logo and make the page reflect the dealership as a whole.

Use Twitter to strengthen your traditional marketing efforts. This does not mean to fill your Twitter feed with constant inventory updates (trust me, people won’t want to follow you if you spam them this way!) but using it to mention new service specials, newsletters, blog posts, vehicle launches etc. Don’t forget to add some fun and humor occasionally to your Twitter Feed as well to keep people engaged. Use content that creates a call to action, for example ask a question that entices people to read your tweet, respond to your tweet and possibly find it interesting enough to re-tweet.

Use Twitter to monitor how people feel about your dealership. Twitter is where more and more customers go to leave a tweet about their negative experiences. Especially with more and more people using Twitter on their mobile and smartphones, if someone is upset it is easy for them to immediately Tweet about their negative experience. By immediately responding to these tweets (as well as to the positive ones) your letting the customer know you are not only listening but that you care about their experience at the dealership. If done correctly chances are you might be able to win the trust back of the disgruntled customer or increase the loyalty of current customer. It’s faster and easier to respond to angry customers via Twitter if you have a daily monitoring process in place.