The Ultimate Guide to Social Media for Car Dealerships: Drive Sales and Build Community

In today’s automotive landscape, the showroom isn’t the only place customers are making decisions.

Long before they step onto your forecourt, they’re scrolling, researching, and forming opinions online – often on social media. Unlike websites, users can see the new offers and models, but also read genuine comments by other users, and get that first feel of whether or nor a car is worth their attention.

But we get it. Managing social media for a car dealership – or worse, a group of dealerships with different brands and locations – can feel like navigating rush hour in a sports car with a flat tyre. From staying consistent to proving ROI, the challenges are real.

This comprehensive guide is your roadmap to mastering car dealership social media. We’ll explore strategies, content ideas, and essential tools you need to accelerate your online presence and translate digital engagement into measurable business growth.

Why social media matters for today’s car dealerships

Forget the outdated stereotypes. Social media for car dealerships isn’t just about flashy ads – it’s about:

• Building trust and credibility: Showcasing your team, your values, and your happy customers.

• Reaching the modern buyer: Meeting potential customers where they spend time – often hours a day – on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.

• Showcasing inventory: Bringing vehicles to life through engaging photos and video, well beyond static website listings.

• Driving traffic and leads: Directing interested buyers to your website, specific vehicle pages, or test drive bookings.

• Managing your reputation: Responding to feedback, addressing concerns, and promoting positive reviews.

• Fostering community: Becoming a local resource for automotive news, tips, and events.

Common social media challenges for car dealerships

Many dealerships face similar roadblocks when trying to harness the power of social media. Do any of these sound familiar?

• "We struggle to post consistently." Without a clear plan and the right tools, maintaining a regular posting schedule can feel like a full-time job, especially when you're already wearing multiple hats.

• "Managing multiple dealerships or brands is a nightmare." Different branding guidelines, unique inventory, and varying local needs make a unified, yet localised, approach incredibly complex.

• "The person in charge of social media is stretched thin." This role is often shared by someone with many other responsibilities, making efficiency and streamlined systems paramount.

• "We're drowning in passwords and lost access." Juggling logins for multiple profiles across different platforms and ensuring the right people have access (especially with staff changes or acquisitions) is a constant headache.

• "Our current solution is overpriced and underperforming." Many platforms promise the world but deliver fragmented features, poor usability, and little tangible value for the investment.

• "Customising posts for different locations is manual and time-consuming." Ensuring each post includes the correct address, phone number, and local offers for every dealership in your group is a significant drain on resources.

• "Providing content and ensuring brand compliance for internal teams is tough." For dealerships with their own internal social media managers, how do you empower them with content while ensuring everything aligns with brand guidelines and gets approved?

• "How do we prove social media actually drives sales?" Owners and stakeholders need to see tangible ROI, not just likes and shares. Connecting social efforts to leads, test drives, and vehicle sales is critical.

These challenges are precisely why a strategic approach and the right social media management platform are essential.

4-step social media strategy for car dealships

To overcome these hurdles and see real results, focus on four key steps.

1. Set SMART goals and track ROI

Before posting a single image, define success. Your social media goals should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART).

Examples of car dealership social media goals

• Increase website traffic to new and used car inventory pages.
• Generate X number of test drive inquiries per month.
• Grow local brand awareness by Y%.
• Improve customer service response times on social media.
• Increase leads from social media by Z%. 

How can car dealerships measure social media success

Tracking the right metrics is crucial for proving value. Look beyond vanity metrics (likes, shares) to focus on:

• Referral traffic: How many visitors come to your website from social media?
• Conversions: How many of those visitors fill out a form, download a brochure, or call your dealership?
• Engagement Rate: Are people interacting meaningfully with your content?
• Lead generation: Are you capturing contact information and generating leads directly through social channels?
• Cost Per Lead (CPL): For paid campaigns, what's the efficiency of your ad spend?

How Sendible helps with this

Sendible offers in-depth reports and analytics, providing a clear overview of your social media performance across all profiles. Any stakeholder can keep an eye on how their social media strategy is performing, giving them the data needed to show real business impact.

2. Build a content strategy that fuels engagement

Social media content is how your target audience finds you. It's important that it's authentic, reflective of your brand, that it offers value, but also that it's optimsed for search.

7 social media content pillar ideas for car dealerships

1. Vehicle showcases: Beyond static photos, use videos for walk-arounds, highlight specific features, and demonstrate performance. Focus on benefits, not just specs.
2. Customer testimonials: Real stories from happy customers (especially video testimonials) are incredibly powerful social proof.
3. Behind-the-Scenes: Introduce your team, show the service bay in action, or share a glimpse into a community event your dealership supports. This builds trust and humanises your brand.
4. Educational content: Offer car care tips, explain financing options, demystify electric vehicles, or provide seasonal driving advice. Be a resource, not just a seller.
5. Local and community focus: Share local events, sponsor a high school team, or highlight local landmarks. This anchors your dealership within the community.
6. Interactive posts: Ask questions, run polls, host live Q&As, or use quizzes to boost engagement.
7. Service department focus: Promote maintenance specials, highlight the expertise of your technicians, and explain the importance of regular servicing.

How can Sendible help you with social media content

• Consistent posting: Schedule posts up to 2 years in advance. Use features like Smart queues, repeat posts, and RSS feed auto-posters to automate and supplement your posting schedules, ensuring you never miss a beat.

• Centralised content management: Build a content library filled with pre-approved posts and visuals so your teams can publish content that’s always on-brand. They can also contribute to the libraries through our Google Chrome extension, Smart Compose Box, email uploads.
  
  

• Team empowerment: Sendible's approval workflows and content libraries ensure only approved, on-brand content is shared. Dealership groups can provide pre-approved content that individual dealerships can use, streamlining content creation while maintaining brand guidelines.

3. Manage multiple locations and brands with ease

This is where many dealership groups hit a wall. Managing unique identities for multiple brands (e.g., Honda, Ford, BMW) across different platforms, all while maintaining a consistent overall group image, requires a specialised approach.

Key challenges to managing multiple car dealership social media accounts

• Maintaining distinct branding for each car manufacturer.
• Ensuring local relevance (addresses, phone numbers, localised offers) for each dealership location.
• Dealing with countless login credentials and permissions.
• Coordinating content calendars across numerous entities.
• Ensuring newly acquired dealerships integrate smoothly without access nightmares.

Solution: Centralised control with local flexibility

A robust social media management platform allows you to oversee all your dealerships from a single dashboard while empowering each location with the tools they need.

How Sendible excels as a social media management platform for car dealerships

• Dedicated calendars and content libraries: Sendible offers the ability to provide each dealership with their own calendar, dedicated content libraries, and reports. This allows for customised content strategies per location/brand.

• Streamlined centralised management: Manage all social media profiles from one centralised calendar, eliminating the need for constant switching and password juggling.

• Automated localisation with custom fields: Post the same core content across all locations while automatically injecting personalised, localised information like names, phone numbers, addresses, or unique links using Custom Tags. This saves immense time and ensures accuracy.

• Flexible access and permissions: Grant the right people access to the right profiles. Whether a central marketing team manages everything or individual dealerships have their own posting access (with or without approval workflows), Sendible provides granular control.

• No more password sharing: Connecting profiles to Sendible eliminates the need for password sharing or adding additional admins to your business suite, enhancing security and organisation. This is especially useful as dealership groups grow and acquire new locations.

4. Choose the right social media platforms

While your strategy might involve several social platforms, your focus should be where your target audience spends time and where your content naturally fits. Here’s how to approach the most relevant channels for car dealerships — with real-world examples of those doing it well.

Facebook: Community hub and trust builder

Facebook remains a vital platform for local engagement, customer service, and building a loyal community around your dealership.

Dealerships that succeed on Facebook often post engaging questions like “What was your first car?”, share updates on charity events they support, and feature staff profiles to humanise the business. Many also use customer spotlights to share heartwarming “new car day” moments – these stories are aspirational and relatable, helping prospective buyers imagine themselves behind the wheel.

Some dealers are also using Facebook Groups to build niche communities around specific models or local interests – creating safe spaces for car enthusiasts to connect and build loyalty around your brand.

Instagram: The visual showroom and storyteller

Instagram is the go-to platform for showcasing vehicles with eye-catching photography and short-form video.

Take inspiration from EchoPark Automotive, who have built a strong Instagram presence by using a consistent brand colour palette and a video-first content strategy. They frequently spotlight real customers, encouraging user-generated content through branded hashtags, which helps bridge the online and in-person buying journey. It’s a great example of how to use Instagram to humanise your dealership while staying visually polished and on-brand.

Imagine your own dealership doing the same: a Reel capturing the excitement of a customer picking up their dream truck, or a quick walkthrough of a newly arrived EV using trending audio. These small touches go a long way.

YouTube: Searchable, evergreen vehicle content

YouTube is an essential channel for longer-form content like vehicle reviews, feature demos, service explainers, and customer stories. Not only does it support SEO and long-term visibility, but it also helps buyers build trust with your team before ever stepping foot on your lot.

Consider creating series like:

• “Used vs New: Which Is Right for You?”

• “Service Tips from Our Technicians”

• “5 Things to Know About the 2025 Model Range”

Even a simple walkaround of a newly arrived vehicle can become a top-performing video when optimised for search.

TikTok: Authenticity, humour, and hyper-local engagement

TikTok is quickly becoming one of the most effective platforms for dealerships to break the mould and reach younger, more engaged audiences.

A great example is AutoMaxx (@843auto), a family-owned dealership in South Carolina. Their TikTok strategy combines relatable humour, behind-the-scenes moments, and “Meet the Team” content – all delivered in a light, authentic way. They participate in trends with a dealership-specific twist, and they frequently use local hashtags to ensure content reaches nearby audiences.

Other dealerships are finding success by posting quick tutorials (e.g., “How to check your oil in 60 seconds”), myth-busting videos, or joyful customer delivery moments backed by trending sounds. The key is not to overthink it – TikTok rewards authenticity and consistency more than perfection.

Threads: Conversational, text-first engagement

Though still emerging, Threads presents an exciting opportunity for dealerships and brands to engage in real-time conversations in a more informal, direct tone.

Dodge is a prime example of a brand adapting perfectly to Threads’ style. Rather than polished promos, they post quick updates, jump into trending conversations, and engage their audience with humour and relatability.

Their Threads presence feels personal and community-driven – proof that even legacy brands can find success by adapting their voice to new platform cultures. For dealerships, Threads offers a way to build daily familiarity with your audience without needing polished visuals.

Google Business Profile (GBP): The local SEO essential

Not technically a social media platform, but absolutely essential for any dealership’s online visibility.

Think of your Google Business Profile as a mini social feed. Regularly posting updates (special offers, new arrivals, events), responding to reviews, and answering customer questions can dramatically improve local rankings and trust.

Treat it like you would any other channel – consistent, engaging, and aligned with your broader social strategy.

LinkedIn: Professional reputation and recruitment

LinkedIn is often overlooked by dealerships, but it can play a big role in attracting talent, building partnerships, and sharing company culture. Showcase your employer brand, post behind-the-scenes team updates, and highlight leadership perspectives to establish your dealership group as an industry thought leader.

Advanced car dealership social media strategies

Once the basics are in place, consider levelling up with:

• Paid social advertising: Leverage highly targeted ads to reach specific demographics, retarget website visitors, and promote specific inventory or offers.
• Influencer marketing: Collaborate with local automotive nano, micro, or macro influencers or community figures to reach new audiences.
• User-Generated Content (UGC): Encourage customers to share their new car experiences and repost their content (with permission).
• Live video: Host Q&As, launch new models, or offer virtual tours for real-time engagement.
• Social listening: Monitor conversations about your brand, competitors, and industry trends to inform your strategy and address customer feedback proactively.

Why Sendible is built for car dealerships

You've got the vision, the goals, and the content ideas. Now you need the powerful, intuitive platform to make it all happen efficiently. Sendible is built to address the unique demands of the automotive industry:

• Cost-effective and scalable: Unlike overpriced, underused solutions, Sendible offers flexible and scalable pricing designed to allow dealerships to pick the package that is right for them, ensuring you only pay for what you need.

• Centralised control, local customisation: Manage all your dealerships and brands from one dashboard, while still providing individual calendars, reports, and the ability to localise every post with Custom Tags.

• Streamlined workflows: From content creation and scheduling to approvals and reporting, our features are designed to minimise manual effort and maximise efficiency.

• Secure access management: Eliminate password juggling and ensure only authorized personnel have access to specific profiles, making staff transitions and acquisitions seamless.

• Powerful analytics: Provide comprehensive reports that demonstrate the real impact of your social media efforts, so owners can clearly see how social media is driving new business.

Drive your dealership’s social media forward with Sendible

The road to social media success doesn’t have to be bumpy. With the right strategy, strong content, and a platform like Sendible, you can turn social media from a chore into a powerful tool for growth.

Ready to take control of your car dealership’s social media and drive real results?

Discover how Sendible can help your car dealership.