Native advertising is hot right now, even if nobody seems to know exactly what it is. Solve Media, a digital advertising firm, has attempted to solve that problem with this infographic, which takes a stab at a standard definition: "Native advertising refers to a specific mode of monetization that aims to augment user experience by providing value through relevant content delivered in-stream."

Actually, that's pretty good. As the rest of the graphic shows, native advertising is clearly where the money is going in the industry. At the very least, when ad execs are throwing the term around at Christmas parties, they can be on the same page.

It's a question that is raised from time to time, particularly by sales managers and internet managers. Should employees, in particular the sales team, be allowed to connect with their customers through Facebook and other social media sites? It's not a question of whether or not they should encourage their customers to like the dealership's Facebook page or follow the dealership's Twitter account. It's about a personal relationship. Should employees become social media "friends" with customers?

For some, the answer is a clear "no". There is simply too much turnover in the automotive industry and allowing connections with customers can be akin to allowing a book of business to walk out the door. This is silly for many reasons but it's not the type of opinion that can be easily changed, so we'll leave it as an opinion with which I disagree.

The other big reason is time and distraction. Some dealerships and businesses in general do not allow their employees to use social media on company time. It's a time waster, after all, and one that cannot be easily monitored or controlled.

The argument against that thought is that unless you're willing to take everyone's smart phone away during business hours, you aren't really taking them off social media. They're still checking. They're still updating. They're still "LOLing" the viral cat picture that's circulating on any given day.

If we can assume that the negatives associated with allowing social media to be used as a business tool by individual employees can be outweighed by the positives, then you can continue reading. If you are unwilling to accept it, then there's no reason to read on.

Here, we get into actual strategies...

How Employees Connect with Customers

The toughest question asked about connecting through social media also has the easiest answer. "How can my salespeople connect with their customers on Facebook?"

The answer: "They ask."

The action is easy. As long as they give them a reason and use their sales skills to make it happen, they'll be surprised at how well it works. Here's a sample talk track:

"Mr Customer, I follow up with those who buy a vehicle from me from time to time, usually just a few times a year. What's your preferred method of contact? For me it's Facebook."

"I won't bug you on Facebook - I know it's a personal thing and I treat it as such. You won't see much of me other than an occasional follow up message and some pictures of my kids. Can I add you as a friend?"

You'll be shocked at how often they say, "Sure."

We're Friends. Now What?

This is where the real magic can happen. First and foremost, the employee must follow through with what they promised. If they said they're going to follow up with them from time to time, they need to do just that. Don't send a message the first day of the new friendship. Wait a week. Wait two weeks if you're organized.

Just send a quick message, "Hi Mr Customer. I just wanted to check in and make sure that the Mustang was still cruising along nicely. Did you get your free oil change certificate in the mail yet?"

From there, it's a matter of acting normal and NEVER overposting. Two or three updates a day. All natural content. Thoughts, pictures, etc. - keep the business components away from your Facebook profile the vast majority of the time.

Once, maybe twice a month, put out a call for referrals. "It's been a slow month so far which is weird because we're loaded with inventory. Anyone in Cincinnati know someone who needs a car. We're dealing right now and I have some referral money to give you if you send anyone my way!"

That's it. Rinse. Repeat. Be a good social media user most of the time. Be a salesperson some of the time. Be a networker all of the time. Don't forget birthdays - Facebook tells you everyone who has a birthday today. Send them all messages. Post interesting content. Be real.

But, My Facebook Profile is MY Facebook Profile

Some people hold the sanctity of their social media profiles in high regard. If they love their Facebook and do not want it polluted with customers and promotions, so be it. Never force it. For decades, there are sales people who sell cars from 9 to 5 and there are sales people who sell cars anywhere and everywhere at any time.

You can't force one to become the other. It's inherent.

This stuff works. It's no different than keeping a rolodex of customers with pictures, birthdays, and the names of their kids on an index card. Facebook and social media in general can be your rolodex, but you have to be willing to make it happen.

This is Part 5 in a 5 part series. Please read the previous posts first or none of this will really make any sense.

• Part I: The Key to Search and Social in 2013 and Beyond
• Part II: Picking the Power Accounts at Your Dealership
• Part III: Building Your Dealership Power Accounts
• Part IV: Wielding Your Power Accounts Properly

Fast forward to today and many of the promises are still on hold. Facebook has emerged as the primary network, something that most who were watching believed would happen, just not to the degree that it has. Despite the broken promises of social media curing all challenges, it is finally, in 2013, ready to become the hub through which the real world and the online word can meet and grow as a result. Some people knew from the start the lesson that is becoming crystal clear today - social media can connect people to businesses, but it's much more effective at connecting people with other people.

That's the key to success in 2013. The sooner that businesses realize that they can and must let their humanity shine on social media, the better their social media strategy will be. Done right, social media can become the venue through which nearly every aspect of business can flow.

It can become the hub. I'll go over how in a bit, but first let's talk about why.

Where's the Value in Focusing on Social?

When I asked a dealership if they would be willing to offer a $5 discount on service to anyone who mentioned on Facebook that they were getting their oil changed or brakes done or whatever at the dealership and were pleased with the experience, she said she would not. When worded differently, it made more sense to her.

"Would you pay a happy service customer $5 to tell five of their friends that they had a good experience getting their service done there and you could verify that they did just that, would you?"

That's the minimum that can happen when people talk about your business on social media. The average Facebook user has 140 friends. Over 70% of these friends are within driving distance. Of those, 47% check their Facebook at least once a day and a post by an active Facebook user will reach 42% of those people. That means 19 local friends saw that Jimbob enjoyed his service and received a $5 discount for telling everyone about it.

Let's take a step further while staying in automotive. If Supreme Honda's Facebook page tells people that they have great deals, nobody will believe it. If Jimbob bought a car at Supreme Honda, felt he received a great deal, and was treated with respect, his friends and family will believe it when he posts that on Facebook. It will register with them. The brand. The name. The fact that Jimbob had a great experience. All of these things leave an imprint on the minds of his friends and family. If they're in the market to buy a Honda or a used car today, they'll likely check out Supreme Honda immediately. If they enter the market in six months, they will be more inclined to check out Supreme Honda whether they remember what made them check it out or not. It's basic psychology, but it works.

All of this is easy to understand once you're seeing it from the right perspective. The challenge is having the willingness to commit with such a murky arena. Social media has not proven itself to a good chunk of businesses and dealers in particular. This is our fault. It's the fault of the vendors out there selling products that didn't work or never achieved the goals. This is changing. In 2013, it must change. There's too much being left on the table. One of my goals in writing this fifth installment was to find real-world examples of car dealers that were truly successful at using social media the right way. I assumed that I would surely find a few. After looking at 229 dealership Facebook pages (yes, I counted them up in my history), I realized that I was mistaken. Nobody is doing it right as far as I'm concerned.

This will change.

How to Make Social the Hub

This isn't a tip. It's not a collection of techniques, tricks, or best practices that a dealership can plug into their current social media strategy and expect success. It's a commitment. It's a paradigm shift. It's about understanding that when you center the online portion of your business around social media and enhance it with offline activities, that you can build a self-perpetuating marketing, branding, and communication system.

This cannot be stressed enough - if you want to be truly successful with social media, you will latch onto an individual at the dealership, preferably the owner or general manager, who can act as the representative of the dealership in all online activities. That doesn't mean that this person has to do all of the work. It means that they have to represent the communication centerpiece for social media, reputation management, and engagement activities such as charitable efforts. The majority of the most successful dealerships around the country have already done this with their advertising. Many do this at the dealership itself, having the "power personality" touch many of the deals and talk to a lot of the customers. This needs to translate over to social media as well.

You're building a local celebrity. You're branding the way that people crave in today's uber-social world, with real people and actual communication back and forth. It's where social media's power is derived. It's where the dealership's next level of success can be achieved.

Once this commitment is made and the power personality is selected, it's time to get them out to the social world. They should (through a representative managing the accounts) touch as many people as possible. They should be on videos, at events, participating in discussions, replying to reviews, and expressing opinions that align with the dealership but that add humanity to the way the dealership is perceived. People want to talk to other people. They want to interact with people who have power. They want to be heard, to be made to feel special, and to know that their actions are reaching the highest levels.

At this point, it's time for discussion. I have ideas about how this can best be accomplished, but upon learning that finding real life examples was a challenge, I decided to hold my specific recommendations for now and let the conversation center around the concept itself. What can dealerships do to truly become successful on social media through these power accounts? How can someone be truly elevated to the point that they are online and offline celebrities in the local area? What are some ways that this can be leveraged?

Let's talk.

There are two truly valid ways to post on social media. It depends on the personality, goals, and bandwidth available within your business. Both have pros and cons. Both have chances of success and failure.

This is Part III of the series on timing. Please read Part I and Part II first.

The Business-Only Personality

It's a little surprising that more businesses haven't adopted this style. It's likely that a "guru" or two has spread the word that you can't only focus on business if you want to be successful on social media. This simply isn't true.

The business-only personality type will do just as the name says: stick to business. They should post infrequently, perhaps 2-4 times a week, and support their posts with ads on Facebook. Twitter, Google+, and the other social networks cannot benefit from ad support and are likely only seen occasionally in feeds and mostly as a destination, i.e. when someone visits the business website and then follows links to Twitter, Pinterest, G+, etc.

This is effective in one scenario and safe in another scenario. In the scenario where a business has established a strong fan base of customers, prospects, and industry people, the business-only personality can be extremely effective. It doesn't flood people's news feeds with daily posts that can often encourage them to unlike, remove from the news feed, or report as spam. Because there is a reduced chance of getting an EdgeRank boost (though a case could be made that it can actually improve the chances, but that's for a different debate), it is basically a requirement to support the posts through Facebook ads. As long as the content is useful, not spammy, and relevant to fans, a sustained Sponsored Stories strategy can work very nicely.

Fan growth is often slowed as a result of this type of strategy, but there's an upside. If a business is using their page for a particular business-related focus such as a car dealership that posts social-media-only service specials weekly, the quality of the fans can be stronger.

The other scenario where this strategy works well is for the "safe" social media business type. Those who are either not bought into social media as a marketing tool or who do not have the time or resources to manage it properly can use this personality type to keep a strong presence without putting much effort into it. It's not a growth strategy. It's a "checkbox" strategy. The good part is that it's safe. As long as the page doesn't go dormant, those who are somehow able to stumble upon the accounts will not be turned off by what they find.

The Engaging Personality

This is much more common by businesses that are trying to use social media for branding, marketing, and communication. It's also the more botched approach. If there's only one piece of advice that businesses get from this article, it's that you don't have to rely on internet memes and cat pictures to be engaging. If you're a car dealership, you should be posting about cars. Period. Pictures of cars, stories about cars, useful information about cars... stay within the industry. There are plenty of engaging pictures, interesting pieces of information, and personal business anecdotal stories that can be told to stay focused on your industry without being "all business".

For local businesses, there's another realm that help them to stay on topic without diving into memes to stay interesting: the local area itself. A Seattle business can occasionally post images of the Space Needle, for example. Nothing wrong with that to "mix it up" but don't rely on these types of posts. Stay relevant as much as possible.

The engaging personality type on social media strives to be a part of the conversations within their market. They post daily, often more than once a day, and do so in order to get more people to like and interact with their content. This style relies on the interesting aspects of their business to feed content to their social profiles in order to set up the "money posts" that they put up from time to time. The money posts are those ones with practical business applications whether it's to directly promote and event or to highlight a benefit of their business.

By engaging with the various communities, they are increasing the exposure of their money posts. On Facebook, for example, the goal is to play the EdgeRank game. In other words, be as interesting as possible throughout the week in order to make certain that the important posts get maximum exposure. On Facebook and Google+, a business can increase the exposure of their money posts by posting content ahead of it that their fans like, comment about, and share.

This is viewed by many as the free technique. In other words, if you go with this strategy, the need for Facebook ads is alleviated. That's not true. The Facebook advertising strategy for the engagement personality is different from the strategy for the business-only personality, but that doesn't mean that you don't have to spend any money at all. The way that Facebook pages appear (or don't appear) in fans' news feeds makes advertising a necessity regardless of personality type. The difference is in how much and how often.

Scheduling Based Upon Personality

Now that we have an understanding of the personality types, how does this affect scheduling?

Business-Only:

• Schedule consistently from week to week. If you have a coupon or offer that comes out weekly, it should be scheduled at the exact same time every week.
• Take advantage of the social media sweet spots that we described in Part I.
• Posts about events should be posted well-ahead of the event itself. Without the benefit of engagement, you'll want to maximize exposure by giving everyone a heads up.

• Be sure that there's a 24-hour gap between image posts sent from the same platform on Facebook. For example, if you post images on Buffer, post them at the same time every day. This prevents "batching" of the posts into unlikable albums.
• Take into account the types of posts and which times to post them. Part II of this series really dives into managing from an engagement personality perspective.
• Ramp up event posts the sooner you get to them. If you know you're having a big sale in two weeks, post every other day about it the week before, then daily the week of the event.

For better or for worse, Facebook made it easier for people to report or block page posts in September. Since then, the need to tread carefully with posts has increased dramatically; too many reports or blocks can hurt a page's performance dramatically. This is an important topic that will be covered more in-depth in a future series of articles, but for now it's important to note.

As Facebook's ability to drive traffic and improve branding continues to increase, the need to understand the metrics grows as well. Fans, the way that many businesses in the past (and some still presently) judged their effectiveness has never been as important as total reach, but now it's even more important to note because of increased usage of the network. More people are on it and they're spending more time on a daily basis. Facebook is no longer an option for businesses. It's a must-have.

First, let's get an understanding of what reach really is on Facebook.

How are People "Reached"?

Facebook has always received some jabs from those in the programming world for their terrible site architecture. Those in the know would tell you that the site is held together by coding duct tape and superglue when the curtain is drawn back. However, the way they are able to track people and their eyeballs is unquestionably elegant.

When someone is "reached", it means that a post or advertisement was presented to them on screen. Facebook knows what you see and what you don't see. For example, if you post something on your page, it will be available for your fans to see on their news feed. For them to see it (and thus, be reached), it has to register as appearing to them directly. Let's say someone logs in and they start seeing some of the items in their news feed. If they scroll down far enough to see your post, they were reached. If you post is below where they scroll, they were not reached. The post had the potential to be presented to them but if it doesn't make it to their screen, they don't count.

We'll go into more detail about how to improve reach and sustain it in future articles, but for now, let's take a look at why reach is so much more important than number of fans.

Real versus Artificial Indicators

Social media is loaded with numbers that are relatively meaningless. One of those numbers is Facebook fans. That's not to say that you don't need them. It only means that a low number of high-quality, engaged fans would be much better than a high number of low-quality fans. In fact, having too many fans that aren't engaged can actually hurt your chances of having your message seen by those who are.

The image above is a snapshot of a page's reach statistics for a month. The total number of fans is relatively low - from 360 up to 404 beginning to end in the graph. However, you see a sharp spike in people reached. This was accomplished through Facebook advertising and clearly highlights how the reach was exponentially increased as a result.

Important Note: Do not fall into the trap of jumping straight into Facebook advertising without fully understanding it. Facebook users are extremely particular about what they see on their news feeds. Done improperly, Facebook ads can generate an incredible boost in the beginning, but this can fall very quickly even with an increasing budget if it's not positioned absolutely properly. Running Facebook ads is simple. Running them properly takes experience and understanding.

Getting the right fans, people who are interested in what you are posting, is extremely important. The number of fans is a blip on the overall Facebook marketing strategy. I would contend that a properly-run page with 500 good fans can get a higher and more worthwhile reach than a poorly run page with 50,000 weak fans. In Facebook, it's about how many people see your message, not how many people like your page. One has a loose effect on the other, but it's a misleading concept. The math and algorithms behind it all aren't difficult at all to understand. It simply takes a little research.

When you're gauging the effectiveness of your Facebook marketing efforts, look first towards reach. This is the number that you must manage. It's the number that is hardest to maintain at high levels with or without Facebook advertising, but it's also the one that has the greatest opportunity to improve your overall business performance.

It was the 2011 Driving Sales Executive Summit when I was asked by Joe Webb to participate in a debate about Twitter followers. I had around 100,000 followers at the time and he wanted me to argue for the side of quantity being more important than quality. This made perfect sense except for one fact: I don't believe in quantity being a more important factor than quality. I did back in 2008 when Twitter was bright and shiny and "churning" for Twitter followers was a common technique, but those days are way behind us.

Today, size still matters. It's not the total size that counts but the size of your engaged audience. Under most circumstances, I hate using buzzwords like "engagement" but it fits perfectly here. Your engaged audience is all that matters from a business perspective.

Let's look at a handful of social networks for examples of how quantity and quality fit into the models for marketing in each. We'll focus on three areas: fan base (likes and followers), posting frequency, and interactions with others.

On Facebook

This is the big daddy in social media and deserves to be up top.

• Fan Base - This is the most important component when discussing quality versus quantity, particularly for localized businesses. National and worldwide brands do not have to worry about it as much, but when you're promoting a local car dealership, you actually want fewer fans that are outside of your area. An ideal Facebook page fan base would be comprised entirely of locals, of people who would be willing to drive to the store. I'll take 500 local fans over 10,000 fans spread out any day, even if 500 of those spread out fans are local. Why? It's all about demographic and advertising. Facebook ads are extremely powerful and pages that are loaded with irrelevant fans actually hurts your ability to market to the locals. It drives up expenses and can make you look like a cheater to those who see your page and wonder why so many people outside of your area seem to like your page.
  
• Posting Frequency - There are two different strategies here. On one side of the spectrum, you have the business-only Facebook strategy that puts up 2 or 3 posts a week all related to business and advances these through Facebook ads. EdgeRank will not be favorable to this strategy, but EdgeRank goes out the window with proper advertising in place. The other side of the coin is to go after 1-3 posts a day (or more) with the hope of being a part of the conversation on a daily basis. This works fine as well. The pages that fail are the ones that are posting constantly. This becomes noise and forces people to hide you from their news feeds. They aren't here to see a bunch of posts from businesses. They came to Facebook to see little Timmy sliding into third base. Don't overpost.
  
• Interactions - Again, quality is better than quantity here, but it's less of an issue on Facebook. If you're posting comments, liking, and sharing the posts of other pages regularly but not too much, you'll be fine. The biggest challenge I've seen is in having people log in as their Facebook pages and actually interact. Most are willing to comment on their own posts when people respond to them, but it goes deeper, or at least it should.
  

On Twitter

The biggest problem that most businesses face with Twitter is automation.

• Fan Base - I've seen accounts with 1000 avid and engaged followers that have more power and get more interactions than accounts with 250k followers. This is a big problem, the ease in which people can buy fake followers to bump up their numbers. It's a joke, really. Focusing on getting real people who are active on Twitter to follow your account is gold.
  
• Posting Frequency - It's not really possible to overpost on Twitter. Posting too many at once is a challenge because flooding followers' feeds will make them unfollow you, but it's possible to get a ton of posts out there every day without making people too upset. However, automated posting tools such as RSS posters or Facebook post integration is a mistake. On some of the accounts I manage, I post over 20 times a day, but every single post is done manually. I schedule them - I'm not on Twitter 24/7 - but everything I schedule is manually vetted. More importantly, they're all hand-crafted. You can get more out of a properly written Tweet than five RSS-fed Tweets any day.
  
• Interactions - I'm rude. I don't reply to every single person who Tweets at me or retweets me. It's not because I don't appreciate the interactions. It's because I don't want to flood my followers' feeds with a bunch of "Thanks for the Retweet" posts. As a general rule, interact with those who put in the effort. In other words, you don't have to talk to everyone who pushed the retweet button, but if they typed something specifically at you or added their two cents to a conversation, it's best to interact right back at them. Keep it fresh and don't talk to spammers.
  

On Pinterest

The newest big hotness in social media is making a splash on the business side. As a result, there is a need to understand the quality versus quantity aspect as it stands now. This can change as the site continues to grow, but for now here are some best practices.

• Fan Base - For businesses, this is the only social network where size really does make a big difference. You can still be effective without a ton of followers, but they definitely help. Just like with Twitter, there are buying services available that let you bump up your numbers. Just like with Twitter, this is a terrible idea. You can grow your following by posting regularly, tagging appropriately, and interacting with the accounts that are also posting content that you like.
  
• Posting Frequency - The first thing I do when I see my Pinterest page flooded with someone else's posts is to unfollow them. The elegant way in which Pinterest displays their feed makes it easy to spot the overposters. To me, the magic number is 10 a day if you can spread it out and no more than five at a time, but some would say you can post more in a day but should post less at a time. Make your choice based upon your schedule; if you can log in and post three or four times a day, post 1-3 at a time. If you're logging in once a day, get 3-5 out there during your Pinterest session.
  
• Interactions - Pinterest and Tumblr are the social networks where it's okay to operate strictly from an interaction perspective. Twitter is as well when used strictly as a communication tool, but unless a business is truly dialed in and has integrated their Twitter into their standard operating procedures, they'll get more benefit by proactively engaging. Pinterest and Tumblr are sharing machines, so even if you never post your own original content, you can still be successful by simply being a strong curator. The benefit here is that it's easier to get engagement when you're working with other people's content.
  

They say timing is everything. In social media, quality of content is almost everything. The rest of it does come down to timing.

****This is Part II of the series on timing. Please read Part I first.****

There are two primary components to timing that should be considered when planning out what content to post. You must remember the type of content to post at the different times as well as the goals of the content itself. To do this, you have to keep a strong MAP (marketing action plan) in place to guide you in order to have the right posts going out at the right times.

Type of Content

The personality, fan base, and availability to monitor the social channels all make a huge difference in the specifics surrounding your posting, but here are some general rules to keep in mind:

• Inspire in the morning. If your personality type is the kind that has you posting motivational quotes, positive affirmations, or even Bible verses, this should be the first thing that comes out of your social media mouth in the mornig. If you're not quite so "deep" in your business social media personality, starting off with something fun and entertaining works just fine.
  
• Business in the middle. If you're posting 3 or more updates a day, the middle of the day is when these come to play. That doesn't mean lunch time - as stated in Part I, your best times for business posts actually avoid lunch. Post prior to 11am or after 3pm for your best results.
  
• Be thankful in the evening. This is when you should be posting about others. It could be a charity you support, a customer testimonial, or even something from outside of your business such as industry news. If you have nothing like that top post in a day, resort back to entertaining or inspiring text or image posts. Remember the mentality of your fans at different points in the day. In the evening, they are hopefully home from work and enjoying their evening casually scanning their social media. They don't want business-oriented posts popping up at them.

Keeping Goals in Mind

As a proper MAP will dictate, you should be thinking ahead and planting seeds at the appropriate moments. For example, if you know you have a big sale coming up in a couple of weeks, you may want to post teasers about it every other day for a week, then every day leading up to it. This isn't the time to get boring; make them fun and increasingly informative whenever possible.

One of your goals may be to prompt your happy customers to write reviews on the various sites out there. This is hard to accomplish with social media, but there's a silver lining that has become more important lately. With Google, Yelp, and other review sites pulling down reviews left and right, it should be noted that the people who are able to be influenced to write reviews when prompted by social media channels are the highest quality. That's not to say that they'll write good reviews. It means that the personality type associated with these people is such that they are probably already active on the review sites and have a much better chance of having their reviews stick.

If, like many businesses, your goals with social media are strictly surrounding branding and name recognition, you have the luxury of posting at an extremely regular level. You could even schedule the majority of your posts well ahead of time. You also have the luxury of being able to post more often than businesses with goals that surround driving traffic to their website or landing pages.

This might sound odd, but if you are doing this strictly for the branding, you'll want to schedule your posts at the exact same time every day. Facebook batches images that are posted within 24 hours of the last one within an album. Unfortunately, they create albums for you based upon the source of the post. This includes scheduling with the native scheduling tool itself. So, if you are wanting to schedule 3 images a day, you'll get maximum exposure by scheduling them with three separate tools, including the native tool.

Posts that go up to Facebook.com itself manually are not constrained to these parameters. Unfortunately, everything else currently is, including mobile uploads, Instagram, and Pinterest (though Pinterest allows 2 posts in 24 hours before batching them).

As with the types of posts, this set of tips on goals is a miniscule idea-sparking teaser rather than a comprehensive guide. Because the goals of different businesses can be as diverse as the businesses themselves, it's important to put your own goals together (or contact us for some advice) based upon your specific business needs.

Days of the Week

If you want to get a leg up on your competitors, this is the easiest way to do it. Understanding when and how people are engaging with businesses on different days of the week yields some facts that surprise many (myself included).

The weekends are the untapped goldmine of social media for business. Fewer people check their social feeds on the weekends, but those who do check are much more active than they are during the week. Likes go up by a lot. People are more thoughtful on the weekends as well, meaning that they will watch longer videos, read longer posts, and check out entire albums rather than scanning through individual pictures as they do during the week.

Wednesdays weren't that bad just six months ago. Now, they're dropped below Thursday and Friday as the least engaging day of the week on social media. Don't even think about asking why - I have no idea. All I have is the data.

* * *

Remember, you're a business. You're not welcome on social media as much as individuals, but that doesn't mean you can't accomplish your goals. You just have to do it right. Think of it like television advertising. We all believe we don't like commercials. That's a common stance. However, there are certain commercials that pop up that are entertaining or informative enough that we'll actually talk about them with friends. We may even look them up on YouTube to see them again. I'll leave you with one such commercial that I still watch every year or so since first seeing it during a Superbowl.

For the past several years, content has been a component of search engine and social media marketing that fell far below the tricks and techniques that helped achieve business goals. It was possible to be successful with limited or low-quality content. In fact, there are those who were able to succeed with no content at all, fooling the search engines and social media sites with methods that proved to be more fruitful than actually creating content that the audience wanted.

Those days are finally behind us. It has been a long time coming, but now that search engines, social media sites, and people themselves have seen through the tricks, it's a whole new world in marketing. Today, content rests at the top of the marketing funnel with search engine optimization and social media marketing reduced to components of an overall content marketing strategy. Here's what it all means:

Why Content is Finally King

Despite the proclamations of many marketers over the years, content has not been "king" until very recently. It was always useful, but great content without supporting inbound links would not rank and great content without strong social media promotions would not go viral. Things have changed.

Amazing content that is useful, entertaining, or both now has a better opportunity to be seen through both search and social. Google is finding the content more easily, making it possible for it to be found without having to artificially inflate the inbound link count. Today, link-building is still an extremely important component of a proper search strategy, but it must center around quality content rather than boost up poor content.

Good links are still powerful and high-quality content can help to generate these links. With a little seeding, the links can come in more easily than in the past when most of the links that marketers created were bulk rather than quality.

From a social perspective, there's still a distinct need for some promotions. Unlike Google, Facebook and the other social media sites will not actively find your content. However, by getting it a little promotional exposure by sharing it and focusing on it from the website homepage or landing pages, the content can be found. From there, it's a matter of allowing the content to be easily shared.

Rising social sites like Pinterest and Tumblr are ideal for seeding the promotions of content. It can be shared on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ as well, of course, but the tighter communities on Pinterest and Tumblr actually create an easier path to take content viral on social media than the larger sites. There's a need for a strong account or two to promote them, but it's not as involved as building power accounts on Facebook or Twitter. One can be exceptional at Tumblr and Pinterest very quickly.

Content is at the top of the marketing food chain. It's the spark that generates search marketing links and social signals. It's also the source of social media sharing. Rather than use content for SEO or social media marketing, smart marketers will switch it up and use the content as the central point through which search and social marketing can flow.

There was a time not too long ago when it was hard to get dealers to post enough. The mythical beast known as EdgeRank (which Facebook technically hasn't used in a long time, but that's not important now) compels people to want to maximize the exposure of their posts by keeping a constant flow of positive engagement going towards their Facebook page. More on that in a moment.

Before we get into the numbers surrounding posting, let's look at this from a human perspective. Facebook is the venue through which people are able to communicate in their own way with their friends and family. By "in their own way," I mean that not everyone makes it a two-way conversation, but they're still receiving information through Facebook. Those of us who are avid users couldn't imagine not liking, commenting, or sharing, but there is a large chunk of active Facebook users who rarely interact on it but who still log in and check it on a regular basis. These people are important, but again, more on them in a moment.

From a human perspective, most people are not interested in what a dealership has to say outside of ways that it can benefit them directly. Coupons, specials, events, etc - they don't mind seeing these for the most part. That's what they were likely expecting when they liked the dealer's page. It's not like Skittles; some brands are able to gather a following based upon simply being utterly entertaining. With car dealers, it's possible to be like that but extremely difficult. It takes time, effort, money, and often a willingness to drive away from the direct business needs into a realm of branding that is risky.

Now, let's get an understanding of the math, as promised.

The Algorithm: Why Posting Often is Good

We won't get into a lengthy discussion on the intricacies of the Facebook news feed algorithm - I'm not sure that a single blog post dedicated to the subject would be enough to do it justice and it's changing so rapidly (a big change just yesterday) that it would be outdated in weeks at best. There are, however, a few basic underlying premises that are important to understand today and that will likely stay in effect in one form or another for a long time to come.

Every time you post something to Facebook, it will be exposed to certain people in different ways. This exposure does not necessarily mean that they will see your post. It just means that they have an opportunity to see it in their news feed. The age of the post is one criteria that determines how high on the news feed they'll see it. If you post something and someone starts looking at their news feed right afterwards, that person has a better chance of seeing it than someone who checks their news feed 5 hours later. Where your posts stand from an engagement perspective with each individual person plays an important role as well. If someone has liked, shared, or commented on some of your posts in the past, Facebook will push your posts higher in their news feed. Yours might show up higher than posts by other businesses whose posts the individual has not liked.

Finally, there is the "friends who liked it" factor. If Bob likes a picture of himself that a dealership took and posted on their page, Bob's friends will be more likely to see it in their news feed as well.

This is just a basic overview and there's a lot more that goes into it, but it's enough to discuss why frequency and timing of posts is important.

The Humanity: Why Posting Often is Bad

Little Timmy sliding into third base. It's for pictures like these that the majority of pure Facebook users visit the site in the first place. They want to see what their ex-boyfriend from high school is doing. They want to see videos of their cousin at her recital 1400 miles away. They want to see if the guy in the accounting department is finally single again.

For the most part, they don't want to see what new trade in a local dealer just got on the lot. That's not to say that they won't interact with it if they do see it. Heck, there's a chance (a very good one if done properly) that this might spark them to want to see what else the dealer has since their car started making a weird noise on the way home from work today, which is why we continue to believe in the promise of social media. However, it's not the intent. They didn't check their Facebook feed in hopes of seeing a car. They wanted little Timmy.

This is especially true for the people I mentioned earlier, the ones who do not interact often but who check Facebook regularly. For these people, cat pictures will not be effective.

It's the human factor that makes it the most challenging for businesses to get a foothold in social media. Some have tried to "blend in" by posting funny cat pictures to their feed. They believe (in many cases, rightfully so) that they can get into the mix of their fans Facebook feeds by entertaining them. While this strategy can be effective, it's also very challenging, especially over time as fatigue sets in.

There's only so many funny cat pictures you can post before you start annoying people. They might like it. They might appreciate your funny cat for a time, but in the end they came for little Timmy and if you can't deliver him, you're not going to stay high on their list forever.

To Overpost or Not to Overpost

That is the question. Hopefully you're not totally confused at this point, as I've basically said there are advantages and disadvantages to posting often. The reality of the answer comes down to your dealership and which social media personality you want to hold. There are two primary extremes: the business-only infrequent poster and the community-engaged frequent poster. In between, there are more complex strategies that I'm not going to go into directly, but here's a breakdown of the two ends of the spectrum:

The Infrequent Poster

• Posts 1-4 times a week
• Posts only relevant business posts such as offers and customer testimonials
• Takes a big risk of never being seen without paid Facebook promotions
• Stays on point and has a lower chance of being unliked or removed from the news feed

The Frequent Poster

• Posts 1-4 times a day or more
• Mixes in relevant posts with engagement-driven posts
• Takes a big risk of being unliked or removed from the feed for fatigue
• Has the opportunity to play the EdgeRank game and get their brands exposed to the broader community

My advice: if you are not absolutely sure your strategy of frequent posting is going to work OR if you are not keeping up to date (3 major changes in the last two weeks) with the Facebook algorithm OR if you're not investing money into Facebook ads, than you're better off toning down the posts. This goes contrary to what I have said as recently as three months ago, but that's the nature of this game. It changes so rapidly that someone like me who isn't knee deep in trying to run a dealership, who spends several hours a day exploring, practicing, and staying on top of social media, still must make adjustments to recommended strategies on a regular basis.

Be the best or play it safe. Don't overpost unless you're positive you know what you're doing. If you think you're on top of it enough, take a look at the related posts below. These all discuss a few major changes that Facebook has made in the last week.

Related articles

• Facebook News Feed Placement Is All About Relevancy (allfacebook.com)
• Silicon Alley Insider: Facebook: Yes, We Changed Your News Feed (FB) (businessinsider.com)
• Facebook Clears The Air On News Feed, Promoted Posts (forbes.com)
• There Are Now 4 Ways Facebook Determines What To Show You In Your News Feeds (businessinsider.com)
• This Facebook "All" Link Lets You See An Unfiltered News Feed, But It Might Get Shut Down (techcrunch.com)
• New Facebook Option Can Help Brands Regain Fan Engagement (news.terra.com)
• Facebook reveals the 4 factors that determine News Feed content (prdaily.com)
• Why Facebook Won't Give You a Straight-Up News Feed (mashable.com)
• Getting "Liked" Was Tough Enough, Getting Notified... Is a Whole New Ballgame (business2community.com)
• Facebook Adds a News Feed Option: 'Pages Only' (mashable.com)

There is a rise in niche-level outsourced social media that is refreshing on one hand and discouraging on the other. It's encouraging because when agencies take the stance of focusing on a single niche such as automotive or entertainment, they are able to build up several resources to make their jobs easier and the clients' social media presence more robust. On the other hand, it allows many to create an assembly-line, one-size-fits-all mentality of automation that can actually hurt the clients.

It's one of my biggest annoyances. When I sift through the hundreds of Facebook and other social media feeds that are attached to the car dealers I follow, I often see repetition. To some extent there's nothing wrong with this; a Ford dealer in Tuscaloosa sharing the same epic image of a 1967 Mustang that a Ford dealer in Boston shared is likely a safe practice, especially if they're not posted at the exact same time. However, when I start seeing feeds that are over half-duplicated with other similar dealers, I cringe.

Where's the personality? Where's the individuality that allows Facebook and other social media sites to pump up the good and dismiss the bad? Certainly the Ford dealer in Tuscaloosa has completely different goals with social media than the Boston dealer and a diverse personality through which their dealership's humanity can shine?

Unfortunately, this simply isn't the case. Many niche social media companies have adopted as much of an assembly-line mentality as possible. Knowing what I know about social media, if I were on the other side of the discussion looking for the right type of social media I would look for certain things out of my social media partner. This is easy for me to say since we do not currently offer a product that matches these criteria; I have the luxury of speaking without bias. This is exactlywhat I would want if I were a dealer...

Seven Criteria for a Social Media Partner

I understand the concepts of scalability, profitability, and building a product that can deliver on the goods without being too cost-prohibitive. I have eliminated those thoughts from this discussion for the sake of describing an ideal situation. No vendor today offers this level of advanced social media marketing in the automotive industry (including us) today. That's a shame because it would help reshape the industry and align goals with results.

1. Constant Consultation for Both Parties' Sake - Running the various social media profiles that I do, I could not imagine being effective with them if I didn't have intimate knowledge of what was going on at the companies. This isn't something that can be accomplished by a monthly call. It doesn't necessarily require a daily call, either, as that would get annoying, but a weekly touch and an open phone line are absolutely required to make sure that we were taking full advantage of the best component of social media: real time.
   
2. Diversity of Personalities - There is no "master plan" in social media that works universally. A Chevy store in Fond du Lac may have a personality that is deeply rooted in the community. They might be one of the centerpieces of the city that plays an important role in cultural growth, education, and bringing the community together. A Honda store in Shreveport might have a completely different approach with different goals for their social media. They might be best served posting 3 times a week instead of twice a day, posting only what is relevant to their fan base that has grown used to seeing service specials advertised to them regularly.
   
3. A Budget for Facebook Advertising - Whether through Offers, Sponsored Stories, Events, or straight up Facebook ads, the idea that a page can be maximized without an advertising budget is like saying that a car can drive really fast without gas. I don't care if it's a Lotus - without fuel the only hope to go fast is to drop it out of plane. Facebook offers by far the most cost-effective form of advertising on the internet right now. The majority of vendors who deny this are either uninformed or simply don't want Facebook taking from their chunk of the pie.
   
4. Understanding and Focus on the Right Networks - Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ are non-negotiable and should never be automated. Dealers and vendors who plug their Twitter into Facebook and call it a day are missing out. Dealers and vendors who use Hootsuite or other tools to keep their Google+ updated have missed the point (this one topic could be a blog post of its own). Tumblr, Foursquare, Pinterest, and Instagram are important and may fall in line with a strong social media presence. YouTube, Slideshare, and Flickr work well for dealers who are positioned properly with the right content. Scoop.it and a handful of other startups that we're watching are moving up on the list. Pretty much every other social network is fluff at this point. Vendors that say, "Get your dealership on dozens of social networks" are either ignorant or they believe that their clients are ignorant. The concepts of "more is better" and "it can't hurt to try" are absolutely false in social media. I'd debate anyone on this point.
   
5. Content that Starts at the Dealership - There is plenty of generic content out there that works pretty well. In the car business, there is no shortage of content. However, the only way to get real success out of posts is to localize them. A picture of a Hyundai concept car from the Geneva Auto Show is good, but a picture of a customer's tricked-out Hyundai that drives on the local streets is much better. Vendors who are not doing point #1 will never be able to accomplish this point.
   
6. Search Integration - This is a huge one that nobody is doing properly right now. Nobody. Social signals are quickly becoming one of the most important aspects of search engine optimization. There are those who claim to be helping a dealership's search rankings through social media by getting additional inbound links, but this is a completely different strategy than social signal implementation. Again, this is another blog post waiting to happen, but if there is nothing in the strategy that includes getting high-quality organic social interaction on your website, you don't have a true social signals for search strategy in place.
   
7. Reputation Reinforcement through Social Media - This is one that is a "must have" for dealers. Reputation is everything. There are a few vendors who do a great job at reputation management - getting reviews, monitoring them to get the dealership's responses, and redirecting potential negative reviews directly to the dealership to allow for one-on-one conversations. Kudos to them. However, a component that I've seen done well on only the occasional social media presence is reputation reinforcement. It's not just about putting a tab on your Facebook page with a reviews feed. It's about taking the extraordinary reviews and getting them exposed to potential customers proactively.

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Nataliya Hora / Shutterstock.com

Are you taking advantage of Social Media for Referrals?

Have you ever looked up your dealership at www.socialmention.com? If you have never done this, pause and take a moment to do so now. Now that you have looked up your dealership does it come up with having no strength, no results, or even worse no results showed at all for your dealership? Now ask yourself this question. How can I get my fans on Facebook, Twiiter, and Google+ to share my message and their experiences on their Social Media sites?

I am going to give you a few ideas to get you started and well on your way to pulling in referral business from customers Social Media sites.

Create cool content that your customers will want to share.

There are a plethora of website providers that dealers use to convey their inventory, service department, parts department, and body shop, but sometimes we fall into the category of having just one sales page or product information after another. If you look at your website and it falls into this category, then its time to look into developing some cool content that your customers will be interested in and want to share with their friends online. The following is two types of cool content that will drive an incredible amount of traffic and social mentions, which in-turn you can use to get referrals.

Inforgraphics: Infographics are simply the the presentation of statistics and information in a visually appealing manner, and any dealer has the ability to design one fairly quickly with the help of a such websites like www.piktochart.com. I guarantee your customers will find very interesting and will want to share them on their Social Media sites. Here is a good example of one that I designed last night that a dealer could use to pull in referrals.

 This is a simple infographic that I put together to show you how you could design one quickly and use to pull in referrals. I have seen others that do include more in depth information and this is a good example of what I am talking about.

Videos: Everyone knows how important video has become, so I don’t want to sound like a broken record. I do however want to ask you if you are developing videos that your customers want to share. People love viral videos, so you may want to think about a video that your sales staff can put together that show your customers that even though you’re a car dealership you can have fun too.  Here is a link to a good example of the good people down at Lost Pines Toyota having a good time with a customer who just bought anToyota Tundra. .https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjlRts82rF8

Hold a social media contest.

Contests are another way to get people talking about your dealership. It can be something as simple as a weekly contest where a random Twitter user who tweets a particular dealership special to their followers can win a free product. You want to do a more elaborate contest using Facebook where fans can win a major prize by liking your page and sharing your content with their friends.

Whatever you decide to do for a contest, the key is to make sure that the prize will be relevant to your customers. Dealers are all the time giving away TV’s, but the real question is where your fans/followers will stick around after the contest ends.

If you want to increase referrals about your dealership and increase sales in the process, give away your own product! Think about it-if a dealership gives away a free year of service for example and they generate enough buzz with their social networks, then people who didn’t win the free year of service will be so curious about your dealership they will be more apt to come down to your dealership to see what all the buzz is about.

It’s all about planting the seed of “What if I was to win this? That sparks more talk and more sales!

You can increase mentions about your business through Foursquare.

Each and ever dealer has a physical location so why not take advantage of the Foursquare check-ins. As people check-in to your dealership, there is a good chance that they will be sharing your business with their friends on Twitter and Facebook simultaneously.

That kind of buzz can really draw in more new customers through your dealerships door, especially if you tie in some great discounts for the customers that check-in!

Always update your dealerships social profiles with live updates.

Do you ever wonder why more people talk about you on Facebook over Twitter? Is your Twitter feed just regurgitating your Facebook updates? That’s probably the reason why. Customers will follow your dealership on your social networks if you post unique and valuable updates. So if you want your customers to talk about your dealership on Twitter, then start tweeting unique messages. The same goes for Facebook, Google+, and Pinterest.

What can you update your social networks about that will get your customers engages? Again, just like content development, you have to think about your target audience and what they would be interested in. Don’t just update your networks with your latest cars or trucks-post updates about your industry. You can also get important feedback from your customers by asking them questions. You might ask them what they want to see from your dealership in regards to your posts.

Implement

Now it is your turn to re-evaluate the content that you are posting on your social networks. If your content is not creating mentions and pulling in referrals, maybe its time to change what you are doing and implement some of the points that I have mentioned today.

Jason Parman

One of the most important components of a successful dealership Facebook page is pictures of happy customers. More dealers are doing it every day and they are seeing the results in improved engagement through likes, shares, and comments.

However, the increasing trend is also making it harder to stand out. With more of these pictures hitting Facebook on a regular basis, it's important to try to make your pictures more interesting than the happy-customer-pictures of the dealership down the block. It's easy once you know some of the types of photos that you should take and avoid the "guy and girl in front of the vehicle they just bought" pictures.

Last month, we covered the 5 Facebook Customer Photo Types That Aren't Totally Boring. In it, we gave examples from one dealership Facebook page that is doing it right. As we mentioned:

The problem is that the pictures of happy customers are often about as boring as a picture can be. There's a customer standing in front of their new car. Sure, they look happy, but is it going to get anyone's attention? Is it going to get comments from local prospects, even the friends of the person who is in the picture?

Check out those 5 image types on Dealer Bar.

One of the biggest misunderstandings surrounding social media is that it's a distant cousin of search engine marketing or that it's goals are similar to other forms of internet marketing. This isn't quite true. There are definitely tie-ins; social media can help improve search rankings, it is a valid follow-up component to email marketing, and it can be used as a direct lead generator for certain products and services. However, real success on social media often comes down to knowing the frame of mind of the people on it and realizing that the messaging style is much more akin to television advertising than any of the traditional online marketing formats.

Think about it like this: when someone wants to buy a car, they go to the search engines. They might go to AutoTrader or Craigslist. They may just go straight to a dealership website. They don't think, "Let's turn on the television and hope we see an ad."

They also don't think, "Hmm, I need to get a new car. Let's see what Facebook has to say about that."

Just as dealers have learned that television advertising works even if you can't demonstrate a clear ROI, they're learning that social media marketing and advertising work as well. When people are in television or social media mode, they are in an entertainment frame of mind. They are not fearful. They are not worried. They are not concentrating. They are open to what the two different mediums are about to show them. Nobody wants to see commercials, but they watch them anyway if only passively. Nobody wants to see marketing messages on Facebook, but they see them anyway even if they don't like or comment on them.

Television and social media both help to keep the business branding and messaging in mind, even if it only registers at a subconscious level. If they are in the market for a vehicle at the time, they might react. If they aren't, that's okay. The brand is being presented. When it comes time to buy a car, their subconscious has an opportunity to move them towards the familiar. Both television and social media help businesses become part of the "subconscious familiar" brands when the time comes to act.

Here's a video I made several months ago that discusses the concept.

It isn't uncommon for a page to be created on Facebook, only to be abandoned. Many dealers started off with multiple pages and then consolidated to one. Others had an internet manager who has since left the dealership and they didn't even know there was an additional Facebook page out there.

Find them. Destroy them. They can do damage to your reputation.

As you can see in the image above, this is a dealership page created at the same time as the dealer's primary page. They made a page for sales and a page for service, but unfortunately the service page didn't get much attention. They had one post in 2012 and a couple of posts in 2011, and that's it...

...except for the negative comment at the top of the wall.

This isn't even the worse case scenario. It's easy for a page to be "hijacked" by spammers or competitors who post bad things. There was a relatively-infamous instance a couple of years ago where a dormant page was loaded up with porn.

Don't take the chance. Only bite off what you can chew at the dealership. There are definitely multi-page strategies that work, but they require a commitment. If you cannot make the commitment to manage and monitor more than one, don't build it. If there are dormant pages for your dealership out there, find a way to get control of them and either remove them completely, start managing them, or make them hidden from the public (just in case you want to revive them later).

Don't leave them hanging. You can end up with a bad representation of your dealership without ever knowing about it.

A mistake that many make on social media is that they post things in batches. Rather than spread out the posts throughout the day, they load everything up at once. This poses a challenge for both businesses and individuals because doing so will (a) annoy your fans and followers as you "flood" their feeds with posts, (b) limit the potential audience since only a portion of your fans and followers are monitoring social media at any particular time during the day, and (c) reduce the overall exposure as you make EdgeRank and other algorithms "mad" with your batches of posts.

One way to avoid this is to use scheduling tools such as Buffer, Hootsuite, and, of course, KPA Local Engage.

As humans, we often operate in batches. When we surf the web, we usually do so in longer stretches rather than in bits and pieces throughout the day. Unfortunately, that means that our engagement on social media is similarly batched.

Here's how to fix it:

Images

We all come across images that we want to share on social media. For sites like Facebook, you really don't want to post more than one an hour and probably no more than 4 or 5 a day. You have a couple of options to build your library of images to post.

I save the images in folders. Call me old school but I like housing the images locally (as well as through Dropbox) and sifting through them when I'm ready to post.

Another way to do it is to create an images folder in your bookmarks. Just save the link that contains the image and you can go through and post it later. Either way, you'll probably want to purge the images once they're posted - nobody likes seeing the same image twice. I do keep some of the best "timeless" images in an archive folder and include the date that I posted it in the file name. One such image that I posted in the past is the one shown above - Smokey and the Bandit is as timeless as it gets.

Thoughts

I'm a terrible mobile typist. Blame it on the fat fingers. As a result, I hate posting long status updates through mobile devices. If it's not an "in the moment" post, I use the voice recorder on my phone to save thoughts as they come to me. A couple of times a week I go through and transcribe these posts into my scheduling tools and spread them out throughout the day.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I'm not a big fan of post dropping. On all of the networks other than Twitter, I schedule posts during times when I'm going to be online whenever possible. I like to be able to respond to people who comment on the posts, so just because it's scheduled doesn't mean I'm not watching.

Some posts are too timely for this method, of course, in which case I'll go ahead and struggle through my fat-finger syndrome to get them posted immediately.

Links

For the most part, I find my links early in the morning and schedule them throughout the day. Again, the timely rule applies; you don't want to schedule breaking news.

Occasionally, there are links that come along that are important enough to save and post in the future. These are usually resource links. For example, if you find a video that describes several tips and tricks on SYNC, you wouldn't necessarily just want to post it once. With a link like that, I would save it and post it again and again for as long as it was still valid. I've actually scheduled something weeks ahead of time knowing that it's valuable today and will still be relevant in 2 months.

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As I've said in the past, I'm not a fan of using tools to completely automate your social media engagement, but if you use them properly you can maximize your exposure by posting the right content at the right times.

Hat Tip to Adam Ross for inspiring this post.

In hindsight, it’s easy to see that it was only a matter of time. Facebook has been such an amazing marketing tool for businesses for a couple of years now, allowing effort and proper strategy to circumvent spending money on the platform. If a business worked hard and applied the proper techniques, they could perpetuate a formidable marketing strategy that helped with branding, drove traffic, and sparked engagement.

Facebook fixed that last month. Page administrators started noticing their statistics fading. In some reports, the drops were dramatic, chopped down to a third or less exposure of what was happening before. I almost wrote about it then but decided to wait to see one of Facebook’s infamous corrections. Surely, there would be outrage over them forcing businesses to pay in order to get exposure.

There was, to some extent. Many sites took notice. However, the “outrage” was limited as there was no real sympathy from users. It didn’t noticeably affect them. If anything, it helped to clean up their Facebook news feed to allow fewer business posts to appear. More images of nephew Timmy sliding into third base wasn’t such a bad thing, so Facebook is continuing with the current EdgeRank settings. Moreover, there have been suggestions and recommendations on various blogs that say users should start spending more money on it.

I was one of them.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Facebook definitely needs to right-size their pricing; pages with a low number of fans can be promoted inexpensively, but once you start getting into the tens and hundreds of thousands of fans, the promotion costs go up tremendously. If they can make adjustments to their pricing, it’s only fair that they should make money for being a marketing platform.

Still, it’s annoying. It’s a bait and switch, regardless of whether that was the original intention or not. They hooked a lot of businesses into relying on engagement, activity, and quality content. They then pulled the rug out from under then and are holding the eyeballs of fans hostage. If you want to be seen, you have to pay up.

I cannot fault them for doing what they have to do to make their many investors happy. This is a business. They’ve provided a tremendous service that has struggled to make the money to justify both the size and price. Still, it changes the way that those of us in the social media marketing industry must calculate for Facebook. Strategies that are strictly organic have been devalued.

We’ll see how it’s working out during next quarter’s reports, but it’s a safe bet that this is the direction they’re heading. Businesses got snookered a bit, but not too badly. It’s just time to adjust.

Social media is about conversations. It's not a broadcasting platform like traditional advertising, search marketing, or other forms of internet marketing. Conversations on social media happen all over the place and are pertinent to your dealership's local area. YOU should be involved in as many of these conversations as possible.

The reason is multi-layered but easy to understand. First, it gives the human component that is so often missing from dealerships' social media marketing strategy. You want your dealership to have a personality on social media. People don't like robots. They don't like automation. They don't like broadcast messages.

What people do like are conversations and businesses willing to take part. When your dealership makes comments on posts from other pages that serve the local area like the one displayed above, people become acutely aware that there are real humans behind the operation of the Facebook page. They will be more willing to check you out. They will be more willing to follow you.

Second, the exposure that you gain through a thoughtful comment that takes 20 seconds to write can be wonderful. In the example above, both students and administrators of the page will see the comment and take note of where it's from. Believe it or not, these simple little interactions are often known or even subconscious factors that help them to consider your dealership now or in the future whether they're aware of the connection or not. The thoughtfulness of this single sentence registers with them. In a split second they're minds understand at a subconscious level that your dealership (1) supports education, (2) is active in the community, and (3) thinks highly of the cause being highlighted by the post.

Again, this post took 20 seconds to write but brings goodwill (even at a subconscious level) to your dealership.

Finally, and there are other factors to consider but these three are the most important ones, you get more branding for your dealership while the potential customers' brains are in their most receptive state. Science has proven that one of the reasons that television commercials are so effective for some is because the messages are being placed in the mind during "TV time", an experience that many people have every day when they are more relaxed and enjoying the day rather than doing something strenuous, tedious, or unpleasant (such as work).

Facebook falls under the same category. Our brains or more active while on social media than while watching television but we're still in a "good place" and the branding that happens during this time will make a deeper impact than normal branding. It's one of the reasons that some are shying away from billboard and radio advertising. That's not to say that you should take down your billboards or stop your radio spots but unfortunately the brand is often exposed during a bad time - while sitting in traffic. You want your brand exposed during happy times.

Find local businesses and organizations. "Like" them on Facebook while logged in under the dealership's account. Follow them on Twitter. Interact with them. Unfortunately it's not the most easily trackable ROI activity but if you understand the importance as well as the ease in which it's done, you can find a way to squeeze in the 10-15 minutes a day it takes to make an impact.

Taking Facebook to the Next Level Advanced Posting Strategies from KPA - DealerWebinars.com on Vimeo.

http://www.neilhuffman.com
http://www.internetsales20group.com

Automotive Digital Marketing Manager of Dealer Group in Kentucky - 17 Years in Automotive Sales

Quick interview with Joe Turner, Digital Marketing Manager with the Neil Huffman Auto Group. Joe has been in the industry for over 17 years and is a veteran in Automotive Internet Sales. Joe gives some advice based on his experience(s)