Shasta Haddock on Visibility, Authenticity, and Influence

When was the last time you watched a commercial all the way through? Not because you had to wait for your show to come back, but because the ad actually held your attention. If you're struggling to answer that, you've already made Shasta Haddock's point for her.

Attention has moved. It's not on television screens, not in print ads, not in traditional outreach. It lives on phones, inside social feeds, inside short-form video, inside the content people scroll through before they've had their first conversation with you. And in an industry that still allocates enormous budgets to channels consumers are actively tuning out, the gap between where automotive is spending and where customers are actually paying attention keeps growing.

You probably already know this. You've thought about posting more. You've drafted something and deleted it. You've told yourself it's already been said, or nobody would care, or you'll figure it out next quarter. And while you've been waiting, the professionals who decided to show up online, imperfectly and consistently, have been building the trust and visibility that you're still hoping will come from your work alone.

Shasta Haddock is the CMO of SCP Agency, a Women In Automotive Board Member, I’m A Car Chick Podcast host, and a former dealership BDC professional who has been in automotive since 2014. She started on the dealer side, moved to the vendor side in 2016 doing social media marketing before it was a buzzword, helped build the largest outsourced BDC in the country, and is now back to social media full time because that's where the work matters most. Her panel at the 2026 Women In Automotive Annual Conference, July 17-20 in Austin, TX, "Out of Sight, Out of Mind: How Social Media Is Driving Today's Automotive Business," brings together four women who have each built real influence on different platforms, from TikTok to Instagram to Facebook Marketplace, to show the rest of the industry what's actually working.

The Person You Remember Is Rarely the Title You Forgot

Shasta has attended conferences for years. Digital Dealer, NADA, Women In Automotive. She's met hundreds of people at those events and she'll be the first to admit she forgot most of them. Not because they weren't impressive, but because impressive and memorable aren't the same thing.

"You meet 17 CMOs at an event and they all blend together," she said. The job titles disappear. The company names blur. But the woman who posts about her kids' soccer games, her aging parents, her terrible taste in reality TV, her honest take on a bad day? That person you remember. You remember her because you saw her life between the conferences. You commented on her daughter's birthday post. You laughed at her video about surviving a work trip without coffee. By the time you see her again in Austin, she's not a stranger with a lanyard. She's someone you already know.

That's the power Shasta is talking about. Social media doesn't just extend your visibility. It builds familiarity, and familiarity builds trust. In an industry built on relationships, the professionals who let people see who they are between transactions are the ones who stay top of mind when it matters.

The Speaker Who Never Wanted to Be Unreachable

Shasta's approach to social media is inseparable from her approach to leadership, and both are rooted in a decision she made years ago after sitting in conference audiences feeling like she didn't belong.

"I would go to those and feel like they're not talking to me," she said of her early experiences at industry events. The speakers looked polished, corporate, buttoned up. They spoke to C-suites and executives. Shasta was a BDC professional who showed up in jeans and wondered if anyone in the room had a career that looked like hers. She couldn't see herself reflected on stage, and it changed how she decided to show up when she eventually got there.

"Subconsciously, I never wanted to be that speaker or that voice for somebody else where they looked at me and couldn't relate to me at all," she said. So, she made a deliberate choice to stay organic, accessible, and real. That choice has earned her some labels. She's been called abrasive. Unprofessional. Too much. And it's also earned her something far more valuable: trust. The kind of trust that makes people message her privately to share things they've never told anyone else in the industry.

The Posts People Are Afraid to Make Are Often the Ones That Matter Most

Shasta is currently going through a divorce, and she's shared parts of that experience publicly on social media. While the backlash is real, the private messages have been overwhelming; and they far outweighed the criticism by a wide margin.

"People I've met in the industry, or have never met in person but were connected through social media, are spilling their entire guts to me," she said. Women sharing stories they've never told their colleagues. Men admitting they're struggling with things they've been hiding for years. People who saw Shasta's willingness to be honest and recognized a version of their own experience they'd been carrying alone.

This is where social media transcends marketing and becomes something else entirely. It becomes connection. And in an industry where so many professionals are quietly dealing with pressure, isolation, and the expectation to always appear in control, that connection isn't optional. It's lifesaving. Shasta doesn't use that word lightly, and she shouldn't have to.

Stop Being a Commercial

If there's one mistake Shasta sees professionals make more than any other, it's turning their social presence into a nonstop advertisement. The salesperson who posts nothing but inventory. The vendor who shares nothing but product features. The manager whose entire feed is corporate announcements.

"Just because you sell cars does not mean I should trust you," Shasta said. "That doesn't tell me anything."

Trust doesn't come from repetition of what you sell. It comes from giving people a reason to remember who you are. Shasta rattles off the content that actually creates connection: your pets, your kids' sports, the small businesses you support, your parents, your sense of humor, the things you care about that have nothing to do with your job title. Those are the posts that make someone think of you when they need what you offer, because they already feel like they know you.

Don Brady signs every post with "PS, I ship cars." Shasta has watched his content for years. She knows about his daughters, his Cleveland Browns fandom, his habit of showing up to conferences in costume. And the moment someone mentions shipping a vehicle, his name is the first one in her head. Not because he advertised the hardest. Because he was memorable.

Trust Happens Before the First Conversation

The shift Shasta wants the industry to understand goes beyond content strategy. It's about how buying decisions actually happen now. You already know this because you do it yourself. You checked reviews before you picked the last restaurant you tried. You scrolled someone's LinkedIn before a meeting. You watched three TikTok videos about a product before you bought it. Now turn that mirror around and ask yourself: what do customers find when they research you? What do potential employers find? What do the peers and leaders you want to work with see when they look you up?

Consumers research everything before they make contact. They're on TikTok watching reviews. They're on Reddit reading experiences. They're checking Glassdoor to see how a company treats its employees. They're scrolling your social feed to decide whether you feel like someone they'd want to do business with.

"I can spend as many hours as I want scrolling, learning about that product before I ever make a purchase," Shasta said. That research is happening whether you're participating in it or not. The question is whether your name and your story are part of what they find, or whether you're invisible in the space where the decision is already being made.

This applies equally on the vendor side. NADA alone had over 750 booths. How many of those companies can a dealer name with confidence? The vendors who build recognition through consistent, authentic social presence are the ones dealers remember when budget decisions are on the table. The rest are just another booth they walked past.

Everybody Has Information Somebody Else Needs

Shasta's message for anyone who thinks social media isn't for them is characteristically direct: "Everybody has information that somebody else needs. Whether you realize it or not, there's information that you have somebody else needs and you just don't know what it is until you say it."

You don't need millions of followers. You don't need polished production. You don't need to post every day, and on the days when you have nothing authentic to say, Shasta's advice is simple: say nothing. She practices what she preaches. There are weeks where she goes quiet without even realizing it, until Facebook sends her a notification that she posted 800% less that week. "Oops," she said. "Guess I had nothing interesting to say." That honesty about her own inconsistency is part of what makes her advice trustworthy. Good social media isn't constant performance. It's consistent authenticity.

A Panel Built to Show You How It's Done

Shasta was deliberate about who she put on this panel. All four women have built real, measurable influence on different platforms, and each brings a specific expertise the others can't replicate. Attendees will hear from women dominating TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook Marketplace, alongside vendor-side social strategy. The result is a session that covers every major platform with real-world examples from women who are actively doing the work, not theorizing about it.

This is not generic "post consistently" advice. It's not influencer fluff. It's not a vanity metrics discussion. It's a practical, relationship-focused, business-driven conversation about how visibility creates trust and trust creates opportunity.

If you've been telling yourself that social media isn't part of your job, or that you'll get to it eventually, or that what you have to say has already been said, Shasta has a counter for every one of those objections. And the woman sitting in her audience who has been quietly watching from the sidelines, afraid to post, unsure what to say, convinced nobody cares? That's exactly who Shasta built this panel for. Because you never know who's watching. And you never know who needs exactly what you have to say.

Join Shasta Haddock and her panel at the 2026 Women In Automotive Annual Conference, July 17-20 in Austin, TX, for "Out of Sight, Out of Mind: How Social Media Is Driving Today's Automotive Business." Register today, and stop being invisible in the space where your customers are already making decisions.