Owning, managing, or simply working in a car dealership keeps you busy. You spend your days helping customers find the perfect vehicle, promoting the cars in your garage, and closing sales. 

Car buyers use social platforms to research vehicles, compare prices, and read reviews before visiting a dealership. Customers expect to see your cars (new and used, including deals and upcoming models) and customer reviews on their social media feeds. 

This is why you need an effective, easy-to-use, and affordable social media management tool for your car dealership. 

In this post, we'll review and compare the 9 best social media management tools for car dealerships.

Below are our top 9 social media tools for car dealerships, along with a comparison of their key features.

#1 Sendible

Sendible is a market-leading, top choice for car dealerships. It offers a complete, professional social media management solution. 

Sendible offers powerful features within a user-friendly design, making it ideal for car dealerships and franchises. 

For car dealerships, Sendible's visual content scheduling is incredibly useful. A powerful calendar view displays exactly how your posts will appear in people’s feeds. 

Sendible's priority inbox ensures you'll never miss a potential buyer's question or someone inquiring about a specific vehicle. 

With customisable response time tracking, you can ensure you stay responsive in the way car buyers expect.

Why car dealerships choose Sendible:

• Bulk upload allows social media management teams to upload all of the relevant vehicle photos, offers, and information together.
• Smart queues allow teams to schedule posts across multiple dealerships to maintain social media calendars. 
• Visual scheduling helps teams plan content mix with a clear view of how your feed will appear to potential customers.
• AI assist helps teams ensure they never get stuck on what to publish. A prompt can help generate or repurpose a caption for different social platforms while maintaining brand voice. 
• Custom reporting allows you to create professional reports showing how your social media drives showroom visits and sales.
• Content library storage keeps vehicle images, dealership photos, and promotional graphics in one organized space.
• Affordable pricing plans ensure Sendible can grow as your needs change while working with your budget. Plans start at just $29/month for 6 social profiles, making it perfect for multi-location larger dealerships.

#2 Buffer

Buffer is known for its simplicity and clean interface. Making it an appealing choice for car dealerships that want straightforward social media scheduling without too many features.

It's useful if you mainly want to share vehicle photos and basic promotional updates. Buffer's affordability makes it budget-friendly for new dealerships. Plans start around $5 per social channel, so if you manage multiple platforms, costs can add up.

Key features for car dealerships:

• Simple, easy scheduling interface
• Basic analytics and reporting
• Affordable pricing structure
• Easy access for teams

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#3 Hootsuite

Hootsuite has been a leader in social media management for years. It offers strong features that can work well for larger car dealership groups or franchises with multiple locations.

Hootsuite's analytics are detailed. They offer deep insights into post-performance and audiences. Larger dealership groups might find this valuable for strategic planning across multiple locations.

However, Hootsuite's older user experience and interface can feel overly complex for individual dealerships. It has also become more expensive over the years and can feel outdated compared to newer, more user-friendly tools. 

Key features for car dealerships:

• Bulk content scheduling for planning marketing campaigns
• Advanced analytics for multi-location dealerships
• Integration with multiple social platforms

#4 Sprout Social

Sprout Social can provide deep insights into your dealership's social media success and performance.

For dealers who want to understand exactly how social media helps generate leads and drive showroom traffic, Sprout Social's detailed reporting is useful.

However, Sprout Social's pricing is much higher than other options. It starts around $199/month, which may be too expensive for smaller dealerships. The feature set is comprehensive, but it may be more than most car dealerships require.

Key features for car dealerships:

• In-depth analytics and lead tracking
• Social listening for brand monitoring
• CRM integration capabilities
• Advanced team collaboration features

#5 Later

Later specialises in visual content planning. Making it appealing for car dealerships that focus heavily on Instagram.

However, Later's focus on Instagram and other visual platforms means it's less complete for dealerships that need strong Facebook or other platform management. The analytics are more limited than full-featured platforms. Also, there's no unified inbox for message management.

Key features for car dealerships:

• Visual Instagram planning and scheduling
• Vehicle photo grid planning
• Hashtag suggestions and analytics
• Story scheduling capabilities

#6 CoSchedule

CoSchedule helps car dealerships manage every aspect of content creation and distribution, from blogs to social media, without extra stress.

It's a great product for streamlining workflows and ensuring all content types are organized, scheduled, and executed with ease.

Key features for car dealerships:

• A visual content calendar
• Team workflows
• Social automation

#7 SocialBee

If your car dealership is looking for a way to save time while keeping social media feeds consistently active, SocialBee could be a good choice. This tool is all about content automation, helping dealerships recycle and repurpose top-performing posts instead of constantly creating new content from scratch.

One of SocialBee's standout features is its evergreen content categories, which allow you to organize posts into groups and set them to reappear at optimal times. This is perfect for dealerships that want to regularly promote different vehicle models and services.

Key features for car dealerships:

• Good for content recycling
• Evergreen content categories
• AI-powered scheduling
• Automatically reuses top-performing posts

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#8 Agorapulse

Agorapulse focuses heavily on community management and engagement, making it excellent for car dealerships that need to focus on customer relationships and reputation management.

Having a unified inbox is useful, allowing you to manage all social media conversations in one place. 

Key features for car dealerships:

• Unified inbox for message management
• Community management tools
• Detailed engagement analytics
• Social listening capabilities

#9 SocialPilot

SocialPilot offers a good balance of features and affordability. It provides solid scheduling capabilities and team collaboration features at a competitive price point.

It comes with basic analytics and supports all major social media platforms. It's good for dealerships that manage multiple social accounts or work with a sales team that needs access to social media tools.

Key features for car dealerships:

• Multi-platform scheduling
• Team collaboration tools
• Client management features
• Affordable pricing for small teams: Get up to 7 channels for the $30/month package.

Why your car dealership needs a social media management tool

Social media marketing for the car dealership and car sector is a bit different from other businesses. Every post and video needs to feature stunning vehicles, new and used car updates, behind-the-scenes, meet-the-team, and customer success stories. 

It’s also helpful to include posts about the latest financing offers, as well as content from related or partner businesses, such as repair garages or insurance providers. This content mix makes planning and scheduling content for all of the relevant social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Threads, TikTok, YouTube) challenging without the right system.

A car dealership's social media strategy should actively do the following: 

• Builds trust with potential car buyers
• Showcases the cars you’ve got and are coming soon 
• Demonstrates your expertise in cars, including after-care and what drivers need to know 

Which social media tool is the best for car dealerships?

The ideal social media management tool for your dealership depends on your specific needs, goals, team size, and budget. 

Many tools share core features, such as post scheduling and analytics. Some offer unique features that are better suited to car dealerships, like unified inboxes. 

Based on the criteria that the majority of single or multi-location car dealerships need, Sendible would do a great job. From easy content management to a priority inbox so you know when potential customers have sent a direct message (DM), Sendible offers a complete solution to help your dealership thrive.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs) about social media management tools for car dealerships

How can a car dealership use social media to sell cars?

Car dealerships can use social media to sell cars by showcasing their inventory with high-quality photos and videos. Post virtual tours of popular models, highlight special features, and share customer testimonials to showcase your products. 

What kind of content should a car dealership post on social media?

Car dealerships should post a diverse mix of content, including high-quality photos and videos of new arrivals, featured vehicles of the week, customer testimonials, delivery celebrations, behind-the-scenes content, educational posts about car maintenance and financing options, community involvement, local events, special promotions, and limited-time offers. 

You should also produce seasonal content, such as winter driving tips or summer road trip recommendations. The key is to strike a balance between promotional content and valuable, engaging posts that foster relationships with your community.

Which social media platform is best for car dealerships?

Facebook is typically the most important platform for car dealerships because it allows detailed posts with multiple photos, has a large local audience, supports Facebook Marketplace for direct sales, and offers powerful advertising tools. 

Instagram is excellent for showcasing beautiful vehicle photos and reaching younger buyers. 

How do you respond to negative reviews on social media?

When responding to negative reviews on social media, always respond quickly and professionally. Acknowledge the customer's concern publicly, apologize for their negative experience, and invite them to discuss the issue privately through direct message or phone. 

Can a social media tool integrate with my CRM?

Yes, most of the leading social media management tools integrate with popular car dealership CRM systems. 

Tools like Sendible, Hootsuite, and Sprout Social offer integrations with various CRM platforms commonly used by car dealerships. 

These integrations allow you to track leads generated from social media, automatically add social media contacts to your CRM, monitor customer interactions across all channels, and create targeted marketing campaigns based on CRM data. 

When selecting a social media tool, inquire about its CRM integration capabilities and verify that it is compatible with your dealership management system.