If you could let your Twitter followers know what vehicles you have in stock, would you?

It is an exciting time at Dealer Specialties for many reasons and the most tangible reason is the release of our new Inventory Management Software, IVM 3.0. With an incredible amount of new tools enhanced by a new customizable user-interface, IVM makes inventory management easy and robust at the same time. The press release with more information can be found on our website. The most recent feature is the ability to post vehicles to Twitter which will be available next week in IVM 3.0.

There is a cautionary tale to be told about this, however. This is similar to giving my son a $300 baseball bat. Used under the right circumstances, he’ll have great results. However, my son is seven and left to his own devices, I’m quite certain there wouldn’t be a piece of furniture, door knob or light fixture without significant damage. There needs to be some rules or at least some guidelines in place before he takes possession.

So, let’s say you don’t want to damage your furniture with your new bat… how do you utilize Twitter without messing stuff up? Here are some things to do:

1) If you don’t have an account, get one. Easy to do. Go to www.twitter.com … you’ll figure it out on how to sign up. If you struggle with this… seriously… give up. Spend a couple minutes uploading a photo and putting your information in your profile.

2) Figuring out what to do on Twitter seems difficult at first… that’s why a lot of people quit quickly. Try to find some folks you know to follow. Follow @getauto @dealrspecialts @ggarvin for sure (duh). Follow people and they’ll start following you back… some will anyway… people are cool like that.

3) As much as you want to play with your new toy… you really can’t make much use of it yet… sorry. You need to start listening, following conversations and watching news items. Explore. Search. Try http://search.twitter.com/ and type in some topics of interest. After you listen, then engage…

4) Once you understand the landscape, you can start to post some stuff where you might be able to make some money… but don’t think about the goal of selling a car. Think about engagement and how you can help people. For instance, winterizing tips or other points of value…this will engage more people.

5) So, you want to sell a car on Twitter? Think of a win-win scenario… are you the type who walks into a cocktail hour or happy hour and announces that you have cars for sale with a megaphone? I hope not. Same thing here…do you have a nice car for sale? Maybe one that stands out, one that is unique, one that is specially priced or in high demand? Well, then… now you’ve got something. Post it out there… just don’t do it too much or people will stop following you. Who wants to be solicited all the time? Maybe one a day or 3-4 specials per week? It is easy to do in IVM, just set your Twitter account up under settings, then click on the vehicle to post to Twitter. It’ll give you the default information for the vehicle like the year, make and model and a shortened URL… be sure to add some description to why it is a special vehicle or special price.

Just realize that even a $300 bat sometimes misses the ball… so just keep swinging – just not too often