Most businesses today have a Facebook or other social media accounts and are always looking for positive content that will bring a smile to their followers’ faces, raise community awareness of their business, and drive customer loyalty. So, tell success stories about helping develop students’ careers, and tag the school to drive engagement.
Here are some tips for your social media posts:
• Keep videos to 30 seconds or less
• Make pictures “action” shots that tell the story, rather than staged shots
• Be sure taglines/descriptions are included
• To promote interaction in your posts, end taglines or descriptions with a question to get your followers to engage.
Promote all events and activities that support of your local schools. When posting about events, be sure to include pre-event/planning meetings, photos during the event and post-event messages.
The posts should show professionalism of technicians, your business’s contributions to the community, emphasize technician careers as good career options, cool cars, students having fun, proud parents, and teachers. Of course, local newspapers (yes, some still exist) also like to share this sort of positive activity. Look for opportunities to be published there as well.
You should also promote automotive/truck/collision repair as great career options for any student. Posts that show the professionalism and value you place in your technicians will elevate technicians and make people more interested in becoming a technician. It might encourage parents to prompt their children into a technician career.
Example of ideas to promote automotive careers:
• Training to be a technician is a great career choice. Meet our latest hire, ______, from {local school}
• Earn a good living as an automotive technician. {Local student} is paying his/her way through college while working in our shop.
• {Your company} supports local automotive (collision, heavy truck) program with {equipment donation, speaking in classroom, participating on advisory committee, hiring students, etc}
• Meet our intern, {local student} from {local school} automotive (collision, heavy truck) program. Upon graduation, he/she will join our team.
• Learn a trade and grow with our team. Did you know, automotive (collision, heavy truck) techs make $$$$ on average? {fun photo of techs}
• Meet our mentor and ASE Master Technician, ________. She/He is helping to train {local student} from {local school}
• Meet
• Posts about the knowledge required to fix today’s cars. Photo could feature tech working on a scan tool or computer to diagnose a vehicle.
• Feature your techs with ASE certifications and Master status or feature techs who just earned ASE certifications, OEM certification or Master status.
• Feature technicians and their project cars, motorcycles, anything vehicle related that they do for fun in their past time such as racing, off-roading, boating.
One of the biggest challenges to getting more technicians is getting students in the pipeline. Help them identify with being a technician so that they want to either become a tech or investigate technician career options. Helping parents understand that their son or daughter could have an excellent career as a technician or use it as a steppingstone into other automotive careers. This will further help young people feel comfortable with the decision to pursue a technical career.
Example posts that "build the pipeline":
• {Technician} loved video games as a kid. They now get their technology fix working on vehicles.
• As a kid, {Technician} was always busy tearing things apart and putting them back together (or some variation of that). Now they do that working on cars. (Excellent opportunity to showcase a project vehicle or personal vehicle).
• {Technician} was active in Robotics Club. They transferred those problem solving and technical skills into working on cars. (You could feature a robotics photo and current photo of tech working on a car)
• As a kid, {Technician} learned everything there was to know about cars (trucks, race cars, etc). Now as a technician, they use that knowledge to help car owners by keeping their vehicles in peak condition.
• {Technician} and their mom/dad/grandparent were always working on cars and then found out that they could make it a career. It was a no-brainer, so they signed up for the automotive/collision/heavy truck program at
• {Technician} loves attending the local car shows. Now they are making an excellent living as an automotive/collision/heavy truck technician.
• {Technician} has always been fascinated by cars/big trucks/equipment and then found a great career working on those vehicles.
Each of the above can be flipped around to tell the parent’s side of the story:
• My kid was always taking computers and appliances apart and then putting them back together. Now they are making great money as an automotive technician. In fact, they worked through school (and had financial support from their employer – if applicable) and has no college debt.
Feature students in high school and college technician programs. Have a few prepared questions for the student to create either a written post or a video. Here are some possible questions:
• Why did you decide to take the automotive/collision/heavy truck program?
• What do you like about working on vehicles?
• What are your hobbies?
• What are your future goals (ideally centered around an automotive/collision/heavy truck career.)
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