Auto Dealer Monthly, August 2016

16 AUTO DEALER TODAY AUGUST 2016 DIGITAL MARKETING T There is a lot of talk about social selling lately but not enough emphasis is being placed on social media engagement Sure prospecting on Facebook is a great way to create leads especially in an environment where generating your own leads is getting harder and costlier every day But conversation marketing my preferred term for social selling is about locating and engaging with potential customers To do that you need a strategy that involves more than yelling Buy Buy Buy at them day after day You need to be an active part of the community The more you act like a human being the less youll be thought of as just a corporate mouthpiece We all know that Facebook can become a huge time suck if its not managed properly and Im not talking about spending hours a day on Candy Crush or Farmville Im talking about being active enough that you are seen as part of the community and arent treated like a nuisance The days of interruption marketing are over my friends and they arent coming back Its the softer sell that works now Heres the breakdown weve been using to make ourselves part of the Facebook community Believe it or not it takes just 10 minutes a day 1 NEW POST Create or curate at least one new post every day Find something interesting somewhere else a video an article a news story that your customers and prospects will like and engage with Using Google AdWords you can look up what else people who click on your ads are clicking on For example you might discover that a lot of your potential customers are dog lovers or comic book fans Use this information to determine what to post on Facebook 2 COMMENTS Find something someone else is talking about on and comment on it Join the conversation Opportunities can be found on another users timeline in a group or on another brand page 3 LIKES OR SHARES Again this is about being part of the community Simply like or share someone elses posts You can use an app like Buffer to preschedule posts Using the Google Chrome add on shortens the time it takes to schedule a share to just a couple seconds If you manage multiple pages like for multiple rooftops you can even share across all of them with a single click I also use another app Pocket to queue items to read and share later Like Buffer Pocket also has a very handy Chrome addon that makes saving interesting items to your queue as easy as a single click Pocket has also recently added a recommendations feature that offers a wealth of other possibilities based on the kinds of things you typically save A few minutes with both apps will yield a weeks worth of posts all lined up with no undue effort The last part of the equation is what I call the Rule of 5 For every five times you post just one should be focused on direct sales In other words one out of five posts should be to announce a sale or serve as a call to action to contact you More often than that and youll drive away fans Less often and youre not using your platform effectively enough One two three and five Creating and maintaining your social media presence can be as simple as that Clifford VanMeter is the marketing manager for the Express Auto group of dealerships a certified inbound marketing and sales expert and a Google partner Contact him at cliff vanmeter@ bobit com GET MORE OUT OF FACEBOOK Use the 1 2 3 method for managing engagement on Facebook and the Rule of 5 to keep from becoming overbearing By Cliff VanMeter COURTESY FACEBOOK