Facebook ‘Questions” Could Bring You Business

August 23, 2010 By Arnold Tijerina

I’ve been watching this new feature Facebook has rolling out called “Questions”. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s not a new idea. Yahoo has ‘Answers’ and is the most used of the Q&A sites but there are plenty more. It’s still in beta and is rolling out slowly so you may not be able to see it yet but I believe there’s a potential for some Facebook Page exposure and, possibly, for dealerships generating some business.

First, here’s an example of what a question would look like:

Now initially, you would think there wouldn’t be any payoff for trolling through questions posted by a service with a user base of 500 million people. I mean, how is answering someone’s question that lives 2000 miles from your dealership going to generate business for you?

There’s also a lot more involved than posting a status update or tweeting 140 characters. To answer most questions properly and intelligently (especially in the automotive business), it will require more than a little explanation. I mean, how easy is it to answer the question “How much is my trade worth”? That’s a complicated answer. (Unless you go old-school on them and ask them to back the car up to the phone so you can hear it.)

The features that make it potentially worthwhile to a dealership or business are these:

If you are the administrator of your business’ fan page, you can choose whether to answer the question as yourself (ie. John Doe) or as your business (John Doe Ford). By answering as your business, your Facebook page is the official “responder” and, just as any post, will be linked back to your Facebook Page. This could lead people there to explore further.
Facebook Questions will allow the people posing the questions to geo-target those questions. For example, a person in Ohio could seek answers from other people in Ohio and/or just want to identify where they are in case that has relevance to their question. If you’re a business who has decided to peruse Questions, you can not only search topics (ie. automotive) but you can also search geographically. Obviously if your business is in Ohio, and it’s a car dealership, you could look at automotive-related questions from people in Ohio. I’m not sure yet exactly how fine-tuned the geographical function will be (ie. can you choose to see questions from people down to the city level) but you could certainly see how answering automotive questions from people in Ohio which could then lead them back to your Fan Page and, possibly, your website or dealership, could be beneficial.
We know that public information on Facebook is indexed by Google. We know that Fan Pages are. Seeing as Questions is public, I’m assuming the question (and your answer) would be indexed by Google. Facebook ranks well with search engines so it could get your business’ fan Page (and name) a little more (or a lot more depending on how active you are answering questions) exposure and SEO.

When I was in Internet Departments, I would target message boards seeking to answer people’s questions about my particular car brand. I answered them directly and never tried to sell them anything. People appreciate that and you could help yourself stand apart from your competitors.

Just as in Yahoo Answers, I’m guessing that people can search Questions previously posted (and answered) for similar questions that they may have. In this case, best case scenario is that they find a previous question posed by a Facebook member and answered by your business. If they are also geographically limiting their searches, you could have a local customer seeing your business being helpful and pro-active in answering people’s questions. This is certainly a form of reputation management that could assist you in gaining some brownie points with a potential customer.

This is certainly a method of gaining some exposure for your business. It’s not the easiest or least time-consuming but the advantage is does have is that not only do you get your name out but you associate positive images with it at the same time. Once this feature is rolled out to everyone, it will be interesting to experiment and see what happens.

On Facebook, Sometimes Less Is Better

July 16, 2010 By Arnold Tijerina

Social Media Marketing is not meant to be your businesses’ sole means of marketing but rather it’s meant to compliment your existing marketing.

I see businesses scrambling to create presences in the social media spectrum daily without any clue what their goal is. Seeing as I’m in the automotive industry, most dealerships that I see diving into the social media party believe that the “goal” of this endeavor is to “sell cars”. By their actions, it seems as if their true goal is “acquiring friends”. If you go into Social Media Marketing with either of these goals, you are wasting your time.

I’m going to focus specifically on Facebook here but this advice applies to pretty much any social media site.

When a business first dives in and creates a Facebook page, they concentrate on acquiring as many “friends” as possible. While it’s fun to see that you have lots of “friends”, the whole purpose of your Facebook page is to engage with your customers.

Are these “friends” you’re acquiring customers (or potential customers) or are they a collection of other dealerships, vendors, employees, etc.?

If your answer is the latter, your social media efforts are wasted time. Chances are really high that none of these people are going to buy cars from you, get their cars serviced at your dealership, or do anything that is income generating for your business.

What you want to do is captivate an audience of people (ie. friends) that are potential income. You want to market your Facebook page to your real customers. Tell your walk-in traffic. Tell your customers who buy cars from you. Tell your service customers. Include your Facebook page in your other marketing.

Acquire “friends” that are meaningful.

I’d rather have a group of 100 customers that I can engage with that would potentially do (or have done) business with me than 5000 friends who will never buy anything.

This obsession with gaining as many friends as possible is counter-productive. The goal of Facebook marketing is engaging with and marketing to your customers, not acquiring friends. If you do it right, in a passive, non-intrusive way with meaningful content, your message will be heard by the right people (customers) and you will reap the benefits.

It’s the quality of your “friends” that count, not the quantity.

Using foursquare to Bring Customers to Your Dealership for FREE!

April 29, 2010 By Arnold Tijerina

I know some people think foursquare is stupid and that’s OK.

Some people also think playing video games is stupid but that hasn’t stopped consumers from spending almost $8 billion dollars per year.

As a brief summary, foursquare is a location-based game in which people use their GPS-enabled cellphones to “check-in” at locations. Checking in earns them points, badges and mayorships. It’s all fun and, for the most part, you don’t get anything but bragging rights out of it with your friends. I explained why I thought dealers should pay attention to foursquare in a previous blog post. I also briefly touched on the idea I go into in this blog post.

It has been exploding with new user registration now boasting about 1 million users and adding about 50,000 per day. This, of course, is attracting major brands such as Starbucks, Pepsi, Macys and more to see what they can do to use it for their benefit.

According to a New York Times article today , Pepsi just worked out a deal with foursquare to offer “live notification(s) when customers are near stores” that carry Pepsi products. Pepsi relies on stores to sell Pepsi products so their interest is in directing customers into those stores. They’ve also combined their foursquare campaign with their Pepsi loyalty campaign so when people check-in at those stores, they actually earn Pepsi points for their loyalty account in addition to the points they receive on foursquare.

I’m waiting for an automotive manufacturer to start a similar campaign since they are pretty much in Pepsi’s shoes and rely on dealerships to move vehicles. Why not have an OEM campaign designed to drive customers to dealerships? (I wouldn’t be surprised if Ford is the first OEM to try this. They’ve certainly embraced social media marketing.)

Foursquare has also started catering to businesses and offering businesses the opportunity to offer their customers specials, coupons and freebies. It includes with it analytics of your business (as related to foursquare check-ins). You can see more about their program here (Foursquare + Your Business ). Here’s a sample image (from that page) showing you kind of what you “could” do when people check-in:

Without going into too much detail, the one thing that foursquare users love is badges. People go to places and do things just to get badges. The badges don’t really “do” anything. They’re just cool and, well, it is a game after all.

Whether you like foursquare or even know what it is, there’s at least one immediate thing you can do to drive traffic to your dealership, cater to the game.

There exists a badge on foursquare called the Swarm badge. This badge can only be unlocked when 50+ users check-in at the same place and at the same time (within an undisclosed time frame). This is particularly hard to get, for obvious reasons.

Dealerships use promotions all the time designed to bring people to their lot. Radio station promotions, Gas card and movie ticket giveaways, free food, live entertainment, etc.

Why not hold a “Swarm” event?

It’s not hard and it’s free. Worst that could happen: nobody shows up. Best case scenario: you have people on your lot. Accompanied with an appropriate Twitter campaign, you will generate interest and you may even get foursquare to help market your event. They’ve been known to do that. If foursquare tweeted just one tweet about your event, 60,000+ people would get exposed to your store. I guarantee that consumers in your market will also re-tweet this event as they will have a vested interest in ensuring that as many people show up as possible.

Consumers get barraged with all the “typical” dealership events and they tend to tune them out, in my opinion. We have so many “sales” that a customer probably feels like there’s a sale every week so the “sense of urgency” a sale is designed to instill is negated by the fact that we have them so often and, in some cases, all the time.

Do you know why Nordstom’s sales are so popular? They only have them twice a year. Really. Only twice. They never deviate from that and customers know it. That’s creating a true sense of urgency.

A Swarm event would create a true sense of urgency, even if only for foursquare users. They would have to come on a specific time on a specific date and they will come, I promise.

You never know, you may even have such a great turnout that the people on your lot at your swarm event earn the even more coveted Super Swarm badge where 250+ people have to check-in.

All I know is anything that’s free and will bring 50+ people to my dealership on a specific date and time would definitely be something I would try out.

Just having 50+ people on your lot at the same time would bring non-foursquare users onto your lot. Why? Humans are curious beings. If they’re shopping for a car (or even just driving by), they may stop to see what’s going on. Heck, people also like attention. I could very easily see someone buying a car right then just to show off!

Having people on your lot is never a bad thing. This could help them get there.

After that, what you do with them is up to you.

Why Social Media Marketing is Important For Any Business

April 25, 2010 By Arnold Tijerina

Recently, I attended the Digital Dealer 8 conference in Orlando, FL. I was working most of the time but did get an opportunity to have an interesting conversation with Ron Morrison – the “ron” in ronsmap.

If you have not heard of ronsmap , start looking into it quickly. In my opinion, it could absolutely be the next Craigslist but for cars. This video explains what it is better than I ever could.

If you don’t have your inventory there yet, call whatever company is handling your inventory feeds and/or ronsmap and get it there.

Ron and I started talking about the future of internet departments. I told him it was my opinion that, in the future, there wouldn’t be any. I expressed why in a previous blog post . I expressed my belief in the importance of building your internet sales and that, in my opinion, a good internet department would account for 40-60% of any dealerships inventory with that percentage increasing in the future.

He countered with the following question:

“If my dealerships’ internet department accounts for 40% of my dealerships’ business, why would it be important to me, as a dealer, to focus on increasing that departments’ sales versus focusing on increasing my retail departments’ sales?“

I answered with what I thought were the obvious answers:

increase units sold
increase website traffic
increase exposure
lower cost per sale in internet vs. retail
be where the customers are
etc.

Other people threw some answers in there also. While none of these answers are wrong, none of them really “hit the nail on the head” of the importance of social media marketing.

After all of our attempts at answering his question, he countered with a question that, in my opinion, summed up, in its entirety, why it’s important for any business (not just car dealerships) to embrace and engage their customers utilizing social media.

“How much would it be worth to you, Mr. Dealer, if every customer that bought a car from you went home and told 130 of their friends?“

He also asked me what the first call to action on any businesses’ website was and, again, the obvious guesses (contact us form, quick quote, and other forms of engagement) were not what he was looking for.

“The first call to action on any businesses’ website is a “Share” button.”

The reasoning he gave was that, if a customer that visits your website sees, and clicks, the share button, he just offered you free advertising. He’ll get the name, number and the opportunity to speak with the customer if they’re willing to share your website with their friends, family and colleagues unsolicited.

I’ve been hearing, both in our industry forums and in feedback on conference sessions, that social media is overrated and that too many vendors and companies are focused on it when their efforts would be better focused elsewhere.

While it may be a little over-kill to have EVERY session and vendor focusing on that while neglecting all the other aspects, tools and best practices for you to learn about, that doesn’t make it unimportant.

Statistics don’t lie. Facebook may become the search engine of the future. Right now, SEO is focused on Google Page One management. It’s very possible that the future will bring a different focus – Facebook search results. SEO and SMM may become synonymous. With all the integration happening, they will, at the very least, become symbiotic.

The real power (and value) in social media marketing lies not in being there for your business’ sake, but in being there for your customer’s sake.

Why would you not want to make it easy for your customers to “spread the word” about your business to their friends?

What I don’t understand is why people differentiate between SEO, SMM, Reputation Management, etc.

They are all the same thing.

It’s like having a Happy Meal in front of you and saying that you think the fries are the most important part and that you’re only going to eat those. The rest doesn’t matter.

I know that if you ordered a Happy Meal, and they only gave you fries, you wouldn’t be happy.

Eat the whole Happy Meal, not just the fries.

I promise your belly will be fuller and you’ll be.. well.. happier.

Where is Waldo? (Foursquare: Why You Should Pay Attention and 3 Great Tips for Dealers)

March 29, 2010 By Arnold Tijerina

foursquare.

For the foursquare clueless, foursquare is basically a cell phone based application that allows it’s users to “check-in” at places they visit using a GPS-enabled phone. The benefits to the user are that they can see where their friends are, can get “tips” about nearby places that people have left and earn points and cool badges for checking in. A user can even become the “Mayor” by being the person who has “checked-in” the most. It’s a game, but one that is growing in popularity and has some value for dealerships and all businesses.

First, let me explain why this application is something to watch. Then I’ll offer a couple neat ideas and things you can do to DRIVE TRAFFIC to your dealership in a non-traditional way.

The app is adding 100,000 users per day (or so they claim). While a small percentage of the population use it, if the growth rate continues, eventually, it may be statistically relevant.

Now, Bing is incorporating foursquare user “tips” into Bing Maps. The result looks something like this:

So, even if you think it’s the stupidest thing on earth, there is one area in which you should pay attention to this application: Reputation Management.

I’m sure you would want to know what “reviews” show up when someone does a Google Search or a Yahoo Search, so why wouldn’t you want to know what people are saying about your dealership on foursquare? These “tips” are essentially mini-reviews and the best (or worst) part about these “tips” are that, for the most part, people won’t see the “tips” until they are already at your dealership! If I were a shopper in an auto mall, and a foursquare user, and “checked-in” at a dealership I was about to shop for a car at and saw “tips” that told me not to shop there because they suck and will rip me off, I might heed that advice.

Now for three tips on how you can leverage foursquare to assist you in your marketing.

Tip One: There could be “tips” that say a certain salesperson is GREAT and that you should ask for them (hint to salespeople), there could be reviews from disgruntled customers, and there could also be reviews from happy customers. If you’re ahead of the game, it would be easy to get this campaign started in your favor rather than wait until you have to do damage control.

Tip Two: You can easily incorporate foursquare into your Facebook marketing now with a new app that will allow you to add a tab to your Facebook fan page with YOUR business’s foursquare information.

Why would you want to do that? Well, it’s an easy way to see how many users are coming to your dealership, who the mayor is, and, especially to keep an eye on the “tips” that are being left. It’s also a convenient way to add map information in your Facebook page showing people exactly where your dealership (or business) is. It looks like this:

It seems as if foursquare is digging this app since they’re the ones who told everyone about it (see their status update at the top of the above image). Here’s a link to the app on Facebook. Place Widget

Tip 3: I’ve heard a lot of dealers wonder if foursquare is even worth their time. Well, so far, people have been looking at how a foursquare campaign, using traditional methods, can increase traffic, get me phone calls, etc.

One way is to offer foursquare users who check into your dealership coupons and special offers but what about some creative and “outside-the-box” ways?

One business thought outside the box and had great success. Rather than try and figure out how he can make people want to come into his business to buy things, he catered to their fun for the game. He dissected the available badges and found one that he thought he could leverage to bring in some traffic.

It’s called the “Swarm” badge. A foursquare user earns this badge when they “check-in” at a place where 50 or more users are checked in at the same place and at the same time. He says it took him about a week to coordinate and that foursquare was even on board and helped him. Most of this event coordination was using Twitter. Foursquare even “tweeted” it out for him to their 46,000 followers. There are only 300-400 users in the Milwaukee area but he managed to get 161 people into his restaurant to earn this badge! Are you kidding me? Almost 1/2 the foursquare users in his market showed up for this event! Link to Article

Would you like 160 people at your dealership at the same time? What if there are 3,000 users in your area and 1/2 of them showed up?

Dealerships have events all the time designed to drive traffic to their dealership, why not try a new way?

I bet an enterprising dealer could find some other interesting badges to organize events or functions around.

I also think that an enterprising dealer could contact foursquare and see how they can help.

What about a badge that ONLY PEOPLE WHO BUY A CAR FROM YOU GET? I bet it can be arranged.

While the percentage might be small now, I know I think foursquare is fun and if I had the same deal to buy a car at multiple dealerships but one of them gave me a badge if I bought from them, that would be sweet and a badge not many of my friends had. It just might influence me into buying at your dealership over the other…..

and my friends may just go buy a car at your dealership, also…..

Just to get the badge.

[EDIT: After writing this article, an interesting website was brought to my attention: 4squareoffers.com . I’d certainly want MY dealership listed as having an offer versus not having one at all or having my competitors have one. Just a thought.]

Don’t Get Kicked Out! (Building Relationships vs. Selling Cars on Facebook)

March 23, 2010 By Arnold Tijerina

The second dealership I worked at was a brand-new dealership. I mean it literally had no cars on the lot when I first started. There wasn’t a lot of foot traffic. There weren’t previous customers to follow-up with. We worked from an “up” list so there were many moments of down-time where you didn’t have much to do. We could go the whole day and only see 1 customer at that time. At this time, I wasn’t in the Internet Department. I was just a salesperson “on-the-line”.

I took that time to look at message boards that were geared towards enthusiasts of my manufacturer. I found one that was particularly active and started participating. They welcomed dealer/salesperson participation with one simple caveat – they did not want you to try and sell them anything. The salespeople that did anyways, got kicked off the boards. I participated vigorously answering any and all questions people asked with complete transparency. If I didn’t know the answer, I found it. If it involved a different department, I got them involved. After doing this for awhile, I truly became a “member” of that community. People appreciated the interaction and that I didn’t try to sell them anything. They knew I sold cars and that, ultimately, I wanted to sell them a car, but I didn’t try.

By behaving in this way, I was rewarded by many of the forum members buying vehicles from me. Customers were flying to me to buy cars. I was shipping cars all over the country. People were referring other people to me. If someone went onto this forum asking other members where they should buy a car, I didn’t have to say anything. The other members did it for me.

I wasn’t giving the cars away either, I was selling them at MSRP! People were flying in to buy FROM ME at STICKER PRICE (and no, I wasn’t paying for their transportation either). Here’s the forum and a sample thread:

Fresh Alloy forum: Arnold Tijerina at Riverside Infiniti is THE MAN !

(There are more posts like this. Feel free to search around the forum.)

The point of this story is that I took the time to build relationships with these consumers online without trying to sell them anything, was still being profitable for the dealership and making money for myself.

Dealers have many other avenues in which to continue their traditional advertising and capture business – print ads, 3rd party leads, websites, direct mail, email campaigns, and more.

Social media is presenting dealers with an opportunity that either didn’t exist or I didn’t know about back then. (This was in 2003). Dealers have the ability to interact with consumers in a forum THEY control. The message board I was dealing with wasn’t under my control, I was a passive participant until a question was asked.

I’ve seen many dealers start to create Fan Pages. Some I think are doing it right. These dealers seek engagement and to put a personality to the dealership. A great example, in my opinion, is the Walser Automotive Group. Here’s their Fan Page. They’re trying to build relationships on Facebook.

I’ve also seen dealers on the other end of the spectrum who are basically mimicking their traditional online and print ads on their Facebook Fan Pages as much as possible. They’re trying to sell cars on Facebook.

You can take this opportunity to create relationships with the knowledge that the business will come in the future from the evangelists you created…..

or you can try to sell some cars and get kicked off the message boards.

You decide.

You Rock and It Sucks! (or Computer Generated Interpretation of your Tweets)

March 15, 2010 By Arnold Tijerina

We all know (and have been warned) that what you put out on the internet can come back to bite you. We hear stories of people all the time having their personal and/or work life interrupted by things they’ve said or posted on Facebook.

My personal favorite (and a great example) is the following “status update” on Facebook followed by the boss’s comment:

So, now we have privacy controls and the ability to specify on a piece-by-piece basis what, and who, can see things.If you use them, they’re better than nothing. At least your boss (or potential employer) can’t see that drunken photo of you dancing on the bar top as easily, if you do, in fact, friend him/her.

Let’s talk about Twitter, now. Twitter is completely public and indexed by search engines. I have Google Alerts (and other services) setup to monitor certain things and I am always fascinated by what pops out in the results.

An item popped up in my Google Alert last Thursday and, while I found it amusing at first, as I started thinking about it more, it made me concerned.

What exactly I’m talking about is a website called “Amplicate”

According to the website, it’s purpose is to do this:

“Amplicate
collects similar opinions in one place; making them more likely to be
found by people and companies.”

This would be fine because you actually DO have the ability to input your opinion on things if you, in fact, choose to participate in and interact with this website. Your opinion is, however, limited to whether something “Sucks” or “Rocks”.

My concern is that apparently it indexes Twitter in some way and automatically generates your “opinions” for you. I don’t know how it chooses which tweets to use to form your opinions, nor do I even know how it selects the specific people which it chooses to form (and announce) opinions for. I do know that, at least in my case, I didn’t choose to participate in or interact with this website.

It seems to take keywords from your tweets and then determines whether you think the subject of your tweet “sucks” or “rocks”. It then posts that to the world under the guise that these are YOUR opinions. It’s obviously a computer generating these because some of the “opinions” actually make no sense and it’s apparent that the “opinion” is out of context.

The peril in this is that, to someone who doesn’t actually analyze the opinions that were generated by a computer based on your tweets, they may just assume that these are, in fact, your opinions. If there’s a potential (or current) employer doing a little research on you for whatever reason, this could potentially harm you.

As an example, the Google Alert that returned this discovery to me shows the following (it even hijacked my photo):

So, apparently, I think the word “enough” rocks and that the Oscars and Toyota sucks.

Now we not only have to be careful about what we say, but also about how a computer would interpret it.

Here’s Looking At You, Kid! (Live Video Broadcast on Your Facebook Fan Page)

March 12, 2010 By Arnold Tijerina

Last night, I was introduced to a new app that is a “cloud-based, interactive, live video broadcast application” or, basically, an app that will allow you to stream live video right within your Facebook Fan Page.

A sales trainer could hold a live training session from within his (or her) Facebook Fan Page. Conferences could stream live video of sessions on their Fan Page. Dealerships could hold live video conversations with Facebook fans. An Internet Manager could actually work with a prospect this way. A vendor could have a presentation. I haven’t fully-digested creative applications for this new application but possibilities abound.

The company’s name is Vpype (I’m imagining it’s supposed to read V-Pipe) and this app is supposed to be as easy to start using as clicking a button within Facebook.

Here are some highlights of the application (from their Press Release dated January 21,2010):

create scheduled or unscheduled live shows
send video notes
store completed broadcasts with audience participation
share videos in Facebook
requires no software download
easy-to-view chat history
embeddable web video player
broadcast Tweet notifications
built-in viral marketing tools where you can promote your broadcasts through instant notifications to Facebook walls as well as broadcast alerts to Twitter
content automatically archived

Here’s a picture of the interface:

I know there are plenty of live video chat/broadcast companies out there, but I don’t think any of the other companies have a potential installed customer base starting at 400 million people (and growing by 1/2 million per day).

Most of the other live video broadcast applications require a software installation on the users end. While frequent users of a particular service may not mind this, the consumer that wants to talk about a car, see a sales training session or view a vendor presentation might not attend just because of this hurdle. (Hey, we all can’t be computer geeks, you know!)

Most people have Facebook accounts, however, and if you can connect with them and all they have to do is click a button within their Facebook account, the odds of them participating and listening to whatever you have to say increase exponentially.

People like easy.

How To Add Inventory or Web Sites To Your Facebook Fan Page for Free

March 9, 2010 By Arnold Tijerina

So, you have a Facebook Fan Page.

How do I “showcase” my cars to my customers without spamming their news feed?

Why not add your inventory to your fan page in a tab? (BTW, the methods I’m about to teach can be used to add ANY web page right within Facebook so, add your inventory.. add your credit application, etc)

The following instructions assume you already have a Facebook page. If you don’t, you can find directions here.

Step 1: In the search box, search for an application called “Static FBML”

Step 2: Go to their page. In the top left corner (under the logo), click on “Add to my Page”. A pop up box will ask you which page you want to add it to. Select that page.

Step 3: Go back to your news feed. Within the left menu will be an application called “Ads and Pages”. If not, click on “Applications” and search for it.

Step 4: That will take you to a page titled “Pages You Admin”. Find the page you added Static FBML to and click on “edit page”

Step 5: Scroll down the page until you see the Static FBML app under Applications. Click on “Edit”

Step 6: A pop up box will open. In the “Box Title” field, enter the text that you want the tab on your Facebook page’s wall to read.

Step 7: Cut and paste the below code into the lower box eliminating the BEGIN CODE and END CODE parts. Now edit it accordingly (Ive added an image illustrating the parts you need to edit)

BEGIN CODE
<script type=”text/javascript” charset=”utf-8″>
function disp1(var1) {
if (var1==’link_1′)
outside_location.setInnerFBML(link_1);
else if (var1==’link_2′)
outside_location.setInnerFBML(link_2);
}
</script>
<form>
<select id=”gowhere” onchange=”disp1(document.getElementById(‘gowhere’).getValue())”>
<option>-Select below-
<option value=”link_1″>View Our Inventory
<option value=”link_2″>Visit Our Website
</select>
</form>
<div id=”outside_location”></div>
<fb:js-string var=”link_1″><fb:iframe width=”760″ height=”1280″ frameborder=’0′ src=’http://backwebs.homenetinc.com/SalesDemo-ATijerina/browse/view_detailed/type_both/’ /></fb:js-string>
<fb:js-string var=”link_2″><fb:iframe width=”760″ height=”1280″ frameborder=’0′ src=’http://www.homenetsalesdemo5.com/site/’ /></fb:js-string>
<script type=”text/javascript” charset=”utf-8″>
var outside_location = document.getElementById(‘outside_location’);
</script>
END CODE

Note: The highlighted areas are the areas you will need to edit. Don’t edit anything else.

Step 8: In the first area (starting with <option value=”link_1″>) The text should be what you want the FIRST choice in your drop down box to say. Change that to describe where they would be going. In this example, the text reads – View Our Inventory

Step 9: Repeat Step 8 for the second link.

Step 10: The third highlighted area above is the URL you want to take them to. Notice each line of code corresponds with the number of the link you established in Steps 8 and 9. So, in this example, the first URL corresponds to the first link you created in Step 8.

Step 11: The fourth highlighted area is the second URL.

Step 12: Click “Save Changes”

Step 13: Back to the “Edit Page” page you were on in Step 4. Scroll down again and find the Static FBML application. Click on “Application Settings”. Make sure it reads “Box: Available” and “Tab: Added” under the little “profile” tab in the little pop up box.

Now you’re finished!

[Note: The Page Administrator cannot see the results after selecting from the drop-down (for some odd reason) but if you log-out, you can see it. Everyone but the Page Administrator(s) can see it, however.)

You can do this to infinity and beyond, by following the instructions in the addendum below (although I wouldn’t put a link to every page in your website).

This code creates a tab. Within that tab is a drop down box. Within that drop down box are your link titles. When someone selects a link, the page opens up WITHIN Facebook, right on that page.

Here’s an example of what the finished product looks like. LINK (Click on the “My Inventory” tab)

Of course, there are alternative ways to get your inventory onto your Facebook page. Gumiyo has a new application titled “MyShowroom”. If you do a search in Facebook, you can find it within the applications search results.

(You can see it on my example page linked above by clicking on the “MyShowroom” tab)

To use Gumiyo’s “MyShowroom” app, you need a way to feed your inventory to Gumiyo either through the company that handles your inventory feeds (I know a great company if you’re in need!), or directly with Gumiyo through a product that you have.

This is for the budget-minded and costs absolutely nothing! (assuming you have web pages to link to but chances are, if you’re a car dealership (or any other business), you at least have that.)

Now what?

You don’t want to get too intrusive with your Facebook Fan Page. Remember, the whole point of Social Media Marketing is to engage your customers, not irritate them. If you irritate them, they will either “un-fan” you or “hide” you in their news feed. Either one of these actions will make you invisible to your fans. This, of course, is contradictory to what you’re trying to accomplish.

The second thing you have to keep in mind is that the number of fans you have is absolutely irrelevant. You’d rather have 100 fans that are actually your customers (or potential customers) then have 1000 fans who will never buy anything from you. Personally, I’d start by recruiting the people who already do business with your dealership, your service customers. Create a half-page flyer and stick it in every service customer’s vehicle prior to giving them their car back asking them to “fan” you on Facebook.

(Caveat: To get a customized URL for your Facebook Fan Page, you will need 25 fans. Get your employees to fan your page so you can get an easy URL for your customers.)

Keep your page interactive and throw a bone to your fans every once in awhile (ie. service coupon, etc.). Announce your sales. Keep relevant news about your dealership posted. If your dealership is participating in the community (ie sponsoring a little league baseball team, organizing a recycling campaign, etc.) Post information about your vehicles or new models. You have a never-ending supply of free content to add by just utilizing content from your OEM site. Take pictures of your sold customers with their new cars and post them within your photo album. Take photos of your staff. Be creative.

You want to humanize your dealership, NOT make a sales pitch.

Be helpful. Answer any questions you get. Respond to any complaints. Be pro-active. Do these things and, I promise, sales will come. This will only take you about 15-20 minutes a day (if that). Seeing as Facebook pages are now indexed by Google, this has some SEO value as well.

This is a cheap and easy way to interact with the people that truly matter….. your customers.

Hope this helped!

Addendum:

You can add more links to more pages simply by adding lines of code. To add a third line, you would copy and paste this line:

<option value=”link_2″>Visit Our Website

and change it to this:

<option value=”link_3″>The name of your new link

Make sure to paste it right after the first line you copied. In other words, keep them in order.

Then copy this line:

<fb:js-string var=”link_1″><fb:iframe width=”760″ height=”1280″ frameborder=’0′ src=’http://backwebs.homenetinc.com/SalesDemo-ATijerina/browse/view_detailed/type_both/’ /></fb:js-string>

and 1) change the “link_1” part to the new number (ie. “link_3), then 2) change the URL to the new web page corresponding with the title you gave link 3. IMPORTANT: make sure you keep the URL surrounded by the single parenthesis.. ‘desiredurl.com’

Keep repeating this process until you have all the links you want. They will all open within Facebook. (although only one at a time can be viewed.)

“Amplicate collects similar opinions in one place; making them more likely to be found by people and companies.”

“Amplicate
collects similar opinions in one place; making them more likely to be
found by people and companies.”