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Social media has become a critical way for many businesses to get the word out about their product and services and reach new customers before their competitors do. Often, however, time can be our enemy. We realize this is ever true in the automotive repair industry, where time is directly related to money.

But here are some tricks many companies, including the large and successful ones, are using to get around this time barrier. Good news right? The even better news is that almost all of these tactics are FREE. Below are both a quick view infographic as well as the fully-explained text version.

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Social media as an influencer in our everyday lives is here to stay. What started as a way for small groups or networks to share ideas has expanded into billions of connected users across the world.  According to Statista, Facebook alone has two billion users —not to mention all the other social networks that allow people to share ideas. This accessibility is very important to your auto shop, since 65% of social media users indicate using social networks to learn about brands, products and services [Nielsen].

You may think, “I don’t have the time for that!” But let us show you why you should make time and share some tips on how to drastically minimize your time spent. After all, social media brings in new customers and also helps you retain existing customers.

Why invest the time?

1. Build customer relationships – Engaging with your followers online by commenting, sharing, responding and liking content makes your audience feel appreciated and builds a connection with them, increasing their brand loyalty.
2. Create authority and build your brand – Creating a brand image and delivering valuable information through posts and comments boosts your credibility and authority in automotive repair.
3. Stimulate Word of Mouth – Encouraging your customers to talk about your auto shop, whether it is sharing their experiences or your content or any other way you can get them to talk about you, is a great way to spread your business’s name.
4. Promote your shop –
5. Promote products, services and promotions – communicate what products and services you offer. This can boost sales and draw new customers in, especially when they are looking for local businesses like yours.
6. Promote with paid social advertisements – target and reach specific groups of people who may not be aware of your business and are not following you. They may be in the market for an auto service, which would be great! If not, it helps get your brand name out there, so you are top of mind when they are looking.

How to do social media even when you’re busy?

Use a content management system – These systems allow you to load a bunch of posts at one time, and you can schedule what days and times they will be automatically posted. This way you only have to sit down once a week, schedule your content and let it ride the rest of the week on its own. (Free: Hootsuite, MavSocial or Metigy)

Share other’s content – If you don’t have time to create your own original content, share or retweet other useful content created by other users that your audience would find interesting.

Capture videos and photos while you go – Capturing images of your staff, quick videos of auto repairs or a short, live video about car maintenance or some other useful piece of information can be highly engaging and quick to do. This content does not have to be perfect or rehearsed. In fact, it’s better if it isn’t.

Delegate pieces to different people – If you can spread the workload, do so. Put someone in charge of making the video or scheduling the posts using the content management system.

Stockpile evergreen content – As you come across evergreen content, content that is always relevant, make a list. Then during times where you are short on content, you can quickly pull from these.

What SocialCRM does to make it even easier?

• Build a Facebook page for your business
• Identify and push content to Facebook and your consumers’ OwnerAutoSite.com on a weekly basis
• Facilitate SureCritic review social media sharing – socially engage with shares from SureCritic
• Automatically showcase your SocialCRM reviews on Facebook
• Identify opportunities for you to share content on Twitter and Facebook
• Provide tools to walk through claiming your Google+ Local Page and Google Reviews
• Work with a dedicated support agent

9 Additional fun facts about social media effectiveness

1. 84%of consumers say they trust recommendations from family, friends and colleagues, making peer recommendations the highest-ranked information source for trustworthiness. [Nielsen]
2. The average consumer mentions specific brand names 60 times per week in conversations. [TalkTrack]
3. 92%of consumers trust referrals from people they know. [Nielsen]
4. The average small business gets 60%of its customers from referrals. [Kissmetrics]
5. Referred customers are 400% more likely to refer customers to your brand than non-referred customers. [Extole]
6. 43% of social media users report having purchased a product after sharing or favoriting it on Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest. [VisionCritical]