How Important is Social Media to Collision Repair? Part I

Over and over I hear PDR Technicians and Body Shops ask if they should waste their time with Social Media? If you have never used social media then chances are that you come from a generation that didn’t have it. Today’s generations from the ‘Baby Boomer’s’ down to the Millennials (34 and under), are very familiar with social media but may have chosen not to get involved. Proof of the correctness on their stand against it would be such stories as you hear on the news all of the time on how a person’s words and thoughts are scrutinized by the whole of society. It is true that you have to mind your manners and change the popular thought that ‘Any attention or press, is good press.’  Meaning, even if you get bad attention it’s better than none. I can think of many in the last five years who doesn’t wish they would have just kept their mouths shut. Now social media can be toxic and destructive. There are so many self-appointed judges and juries that scan the internet just looking for the simplest of words to be turned into a world crisis. These are your life long troublemakers and pot stirrers who hide behind the safety of their computer and speak and say whatever they want with absolutely no consequences. You can’t even post a picture to Facebook without the possibility of it going viral if it was questionable.
So what should you do? How can you possibly make any strides for your collision repair business in a world of hostile buzzards? It’s easy, you simply write about your business, take videos and tell stories. Leave out the sensationalism, don’t be crass and keep it professional. You may have the greatest personality in the world but if you turn your comments on social media towards, what you think are funny jokes, you’re doomed.