Bringing Social Media to the Automotive Industry

While the retail industry sees the most chatter about the benefits of social media, it's important that other industries don't underestimate the value that social media brings to the digital table.

Outsell, a digital marketing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company for automotive brands, has announced the availability of Outsell Social 2.0 as a standalone solution.

For those unfamiliar with the solution, Outsell Social helps dealers engage with their consumers across various social media sites including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, among others, in order to attract more buyers to their dealerships. The solution has a variety of helpful features for automotive brands including Social Scheduler, which allows brands to schedule social postings, and Social Scorecard, which performs sentiment analysis on customer comments as well as analyzes how the dealer's posts are performing.

Yet, perhaps the most interesting feature is its Social Status. Through this feature brands are able to monitor popular automotive review websites such as Edmunds and Cars.com and alert dealers to new reviews and comments.

"Dealers ignore social media at their peril," said Dan Smith, CMO of Outsell. "Because social media has a such a huge influence on shoppers' purchase decisions, dealers need to be constantly monitoring social sites, responding to reviews, and keeping their online presence current."