When astronauts look down on our beautiful, fragile planet, they often experience the “Overview Effect,” in which previously held notions of human differences melt away and a feeling of oneness prevails. At DSES, speaker Cam Chell brought up the concept, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.
On an admittedly less cosmic level, your dealership social media profiles provide a sort of overview effect for your customers, whether you intend for it to or not. The pictures, videos, links and text you post works together to create those concepts that are difficult to quantify, like aesthetic and tone.
A dealership’s social media profile is not an art museum, but hopefully should convincingly answer the question of “do I want to do business here?” when someone consumes years of your history with a few swipes of a finger.
Instagram is great for this. Each picture/video you post shows up individually in your followers’ feeds and then is placed in those lovely rows of three, which make it part of a larger assemblage that tells your story.
I’ve found Instagram to be the perfect platform to showcase the vintage Subaru brochures I collect, and enjoy posting clusters of pictures that share the same quirkily dated camera techniques. While we did not create this content, it offers value to the large community of vintage Subaru enthusiasts on Instagram and establishes us as a brand authority.
Check out these 8 motion shots from the late 80s, which frame our salesperson Demetrius in all of his exuberance:
Take your pick of platforms. When ingested altogether, your talent for content creation and curation tells a story. The question is—is it the story you intended to tell? Is it a true story?
Jessica Caldwell, a senior data analyst for Edmunds, sent us a message complimenting us on the spirit we put into our Facebook page. She had looked us up for a piece she was writing, and then admitted that she and her team had spent the better part of an afternoon sharing some laughs by scrolling through our page.
Her admiration spilled into the article, as well: “If you have five minutes,” she wrote, “check out their Facebook page; it’s quite entertaining and looks like a pretty fun place to be!”
What’s the ROI on a mention like that? Who cares — I’ll take it!
Each post should absolutely work hard on its own, but as you plan out your social media calendar, also try to think in terms of creating an Overview Effect for your followers. Let them enjoy the progression from one post to another, and remember to periodically scroll through your own pages, enjoying the rich layers of history you helped to document.
Happy New Year!
