Losing a friend stinks; losing a client costs you money; people unliking your Facebook page is both! Historically, people have had a somewhat negative opinion of car dealers in general, and not many of them want to be friends with a dealer on Facebook. However, when you get the chance to build that relationship, that relationship that may one day lead to a sale, so don’t screw it up!

Being Boring

The number one reason people will unlike a page on Facebook is because the posts are uninteresting. People go to Facebook to be entertained, to find things that add value to their lives, and to interact with people who make them happy.

Show some personality in your interactions on Facebook. Let people get to know who you really are. Share pictures of people in the dealership having some fun! How many car salespeople can you fit in a minivan?

Constant Self-Promotion

It’s your page—you should be able to constantly SELL, SELL, SELL, right?

WRONG!

If we’ve learned anything about social media over the last 3–4 years, we’ve learned that “push marketing” no longer works.

What is Push Marketing?

It’s when a brand/person pushes advertisements & posts on an audience—interrupting them and soliciting them to visit their website and/or buy their products even when they are not in the market.

You’ve probably seen dealers that do this. Every single post is a marketing pitch for the big sale they are having or low-interest rates the manufacturer is offering. Even if those webinars & products are great, no one wants to get sold to over and over again, day after day.

That’s why Pull Marketing is a much better strategy.

In pull marketing, you’re still generating leads—but you’re doing it in a generous, informative, non-pushy way. For example, this blog post is an example of pull marketing.

You probably came to this post via some form of social media or our website, and you’re reading it to get information to improve your social media knowledge.

You doing that is actually our goal with blogging. But our goal is also to sell our service. By providing you with (hopefully) quality information and not giving you a sales pitch, we’re building a relationship. Sometime in the future, we hope you try out our services.

4-3-2-1 Rule of Facebook Posting

For every ten Facebook posts you post, you want the content to break down as the following:

4 – Fun topics that are designed to promote engagement like Throwback Thursday (you can post brand-related pictures here, like old car ads or old pictures of your dealership), contests, funny pictures, etc.

3 – Things happening in your local community, events, fund-raisers, bake sales, school fairs, etc. Reach out to people in your community, and let them know you are there to share their events. This promotes two-way interactions.

2 – Topics relating to your dealership like charities that you are associated with, new products that are coming, birthdays for employees, Ask a Mechanic type Q&As, bios about employees, etc.

1 – Sales type topics, like it’s the last Saturday of the month and we will be working late tonight! Try to add some uniqueness to the post so as to create a higher level of excitement.

Posting Too Much

When it comes to social media, especially Facebook, less is often more.

People tend to hop on Facebook for just a few brief moments on their lunch breaks or after work. If they log in and then all they see are 37 posts from your page, you WILL get hidden, or worse: unliked.

Posting Too Little

Wait a second… didn’t I just say that posting too much can make you lose fans? Yep, sure did! But not posting enough can also cause people to unlike your page.

Why?

People don’t want to be connected to dead pages or to pages they don’t have a good working relationship with.

So, how much is the right amount?

This will vary, but for our clients, we post two times per day during the week and at least once on Saturdays and Sundays. Sometimes we will do more.

For instance, we have a couple of clients in college towns, and people are very attached to their football teams. So, we will post updates during the games to keep people updated on the scores if they are unable to watch.

Choosing Sides

Some topics are best to stay away from, basically any topics that cause you to choose a side, such politics or religion. You may have very strong beliefs on who the next president should be, but these views should not be shared on your business page.

Why?

No matter how many people think your views are wonderful, you offended just as many by having differing views as theirs.

Posting Rule of Thumb

If you have to think twice if this topic or content will offend anyone, don’t post it!