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Why No Social Media Vendors Exist In Automotive

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Before you get all huffy (especially the social media vendors that may read this), I want to narrow my definition of “social media” for the purposes of this article down. Social media encompasses a lot of things but I’m specifically talking about Facebook and Twitter management.

There are not many people who would argue that, given the choice and means, any company has the ability to do their own social media better than any vendor. You know your company better than anyone. You have the access and availability to create instant, company-specific content on-site and all the content you need to do it.

That being said, if you find yourself either in a position where you don’t have anyone to do it in house, or you don’t have the time to do it yourself and you are considering outsourcing your social media, consider a few things.

Being familiar with many of the social media services directed specifically at the automotive industry, whether those services are from a company that only does social media or as a service offered by a vendor that has multiple services, in my opinion, there aren’t any social media companies and/or any true social media services offered by companies.

What, exactly, do I mean by that?

In my opinion, every company that exists and works within the automotive space that offers social media services are, in reality, offering content marketing services. The basic idea is that they will set-up and/or manage your social media properties and provide content for those properties on a daily (or less) basis. Yes, chances are that they will respond to comments left (hopefully) and engage with fans when fans engage with you. They may offer to help you grow your fan base and followers – some via methods with which I agree and some using methods which I think are idiotic. Keeping in mind that I’m only talking about Facebook and Twitter management (not reputation, location-based services, etc.) that typically encompass the scope of work.

Content marketing is NOT social media.

I’m certainly not trying to imply that there is no value in content marketing. There are lots of benefits to it especially with well run blogs with great, relevant content… but it’s not social media (at least as defined for the purposes of this article).

So, what is social media?

In my opinion, if someone says they will manage your social media properties, these are the types of things they should be doing:

  1. They should be optimizing your pages/profiles to achieve maximum exposure via search engines.
  2. They should be teaching you how and helping you grow your fan base organically through in store signage, marketing integration and other means in which to capture your existing customers.
  3. They should be providing fresh, relevant and timely content and posting this content to your properties on a daily basis.
  4. They should be creating, finding and seeking this content daily. Yes, every day. Not creating some monthly calendar of content 30 days in advance, re-using content amongst clients (whether they are geographically close or are competitors doesn’t matter)… and they certainly should not be using a “content library” of canned posts.
  5. They should be analyzing the performance of different content types on a daily basis and tailoring the content they are posting to what the page audience wants to hear, not what they want to tell them… on a daily basis.
  6. They should be available and ready to react almost instantaneously to any issue, event, request, problem, comment.. anything and everything… on a moment’s notice. If a customer tweets or posts a complaint, there better be someone to respond.. and fast. Not just between the hours of 9am and 5pm.
  7. Most social media companies are reactive in their engagement. Their engagement is in response to an action taken by a fan or follower. Social media companies should be proactive in their engagement. They should be seeking out relevant conversations happening in your market area (whether that’s by region, state or national) and trying to insert themselves into relevant conversations in a non-threatening and engaging way.
  8. Anyone that tells you that social media is all about branding and that “selling” shouldn’t and/or can’t happen is an idiot and you should run away from them. Bottom line is that everything you do – whether its traditional or digital advertising – is about selling your product or service. Sales can be, and are, made on social media all the time. Revenue is there. There is an ROI (albeit it’s hard to track). Anyone trying to convince you otherwise is setting you up for that future conversation where you say you’re not selling anything from it and they say social media isn’t about selling. I’m pretty certain you’re not in business to not make money.
  9. When people follow you on Twitter, they should be thanking those people and, if appropriate, following them back. In addition, they should be finding new and relevant people to follow on your behalf. On top of those two things, they should be identifying your influencers as best as they can (and that doesn’t necessarily mean the ones with the highest Klout scores) and seeking to engage with them.
  10. They should be using methods and techniques designed to maximize your reach on both Facebook and Twitter. There are many things you can do that are free. Some that cost money. There are some things that I believe are worth the money they cost and some that I believe you might as well be lighting your money on fire if you use them. Whatever the case may be, they should be including these in their offerings to you. They should be doing this in real-time as the situation warrants.
  11. They should be providing you with detailed analytics monthly including detailed Facebook reports, Twitter reports, overall performance reports, response times, interactions, and even be able to show you how your social media may have influenced website traffic (which it can, and is possible, if you provide your Google Analytics code to them). These reports should NOT be simply how many new fans/followers you got, how many pieces of content they posted and the engagement metrics associated with that content (likes, comments, shares, etc.)

How do I know that there are NO social media companies that do this? Well, I’ve talked to many of them. Heck, it was my JOB to research competitors. I also attend trade shows and pay attention.

The reason they don’t do it is that it is not a scalable business model. Bottom line. I get that and agree that it probably isn’t but that doesn’t mean they’re providing social media services.. they’re providing content marketing. That’s all well and good but let’s keep it real.

Just because doing it right isn’t “scalable”, that doesn’t justify calling your service something that it isn’t. Many dealers don’t “get” social media. Some “kind of” get it. The ones that actually “get it” will agree with everything I’ve just written (or at least I hope they will).

So, remember two things about your social media: First, that you can do it better than any vendor whether you believe that’s true or not and second, that, IF you’re going to outsource this to a company, at the very least know the difference between a company offering you social media and one offering you content marketing.

[Note: If you know of a vendor that does all of the things I described above and/or even more, I’d love to hear who they are.]

Are You Being Cheated By Facebook Promoted Posts?

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Cheater

Let me start by saying that I’m a fan of Facebook’s Promoted Post feature in general. If your goal is to increase your Page exposure and reach not only more of your fans but penetrate their networks as well, I’ve found that they accomplish that goal. They are especially useful for smaller pages with a fan count under 1500 where the typical cost to promote a post will be in the $5-$10 range.

In the past, on a particular Page which has 164 fans, the options available for promoting a post were $5 and $10 with an “estimated” reach of usually in the 2,000 range for the $10 option. Considering that a typical Page post will reach an estimated 16% of the Page’s fans (in this case approximately 27 people), this is a considerable difference. This Page typically gets good engagement and has a slightly large reach per post – typically between 40-100 with some posts even reaching into the 700 range without promotion (although this is rare).

Recently, Facebook decided to increase the available options to Pages with a smaller number of fans. I noticed this and decided to try testing it out to see what the results were.

Here were my options:

Facebook Promoted Post OptionsAs you can see, the potential reach increased from a maximum of 2,000 I was offered previously to 17,000. I decided to take the plunge and test out the $50 option and let the ad run its course over the 3 days (which, in case you didn’t know, is how long a single post will run in a promotion) so that I could see what the results were.

Here were the results:

Facebook Promoted Post ResultsAs you can see, this is considerably less than the estimated exposure Facebook promised me in their “estimate” of between 9,100-17,000 for $50. In fact, this should have been the results if I had chosen the $20 option.

I find it completely unacceptable (and false advertising) that Facebook would deliver the post to about 33%-50% of the estimate I was promised for my $50. I have noticed this disparity in the past but since I’m working with some Pages that have a smaller audience and the reach promised was much less, the disparity between the “estimated” reach and the final number has never been that large.

Bottom line is that, while I still think Facebook’s Promoted Post (or Boost Post as they’re now calling it) option is a good value for exposure, I will no longer have any confidence in the “estimated reach” promised.

Yo, Facebook. You owe me $30.

The FTC May Have Just Killed Twitter Marketing For Dealers

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Yeah, in the most absurd move ever, the FTC has determined that Twitter is not excluded from regulatory laws requiring full disclosure on products or services. The Wall Street Journal reports that any disclosures that would apply to any other advertising also apply to Twitter.

Hmm. Let’s think about that a moment. On a platform that allows only 140 character submissions, how, exactly, do you tell your followers about a great lease special, factory incentive or other promotion AND include the tiny, almost unreadable, 2 paragraph disclosure in 6 point font at the bottom of the ad? Well, you don’t.

So, what does that prohibit by default? Pretty much anything you want to promote that requires a disclosure and, for most car dealers, that’s just about everything. Heck, most factory incentives have disclosures. Contests, giveaways, or any other promotion (social media or otherwise) as well as coupons, service specials, and other customer offerings would also be excluded.

The easiest way to determine whether you can or can’t tweet something about any special, ad car, incentive, lease special, promotion, coupon, service special, parts special etc. is by following one basic rule:

If it needs a disclosure, you can’t tweet about it.

See, that was simple wasn’t it?

Now, all of the above being said, Facebook’s Terms of Service in regards to contests, promotions and such are violated, trampled over and ignored all of the time by both vendors (who know better) and by dealers (who may or may not).

That being said, Facebook can’t investigate your dealership and fine you for non-compliance with advertising regulations either.

So, has the FTC effectively killed Twitter marketing for businesses?

It depends on what you’re tweeting about.

If your tweets are informative, quality content or customer service and engagement focused then no. If your strategy is to blast your inventory and specials to Twitter on some sort of robotic RSS feed that forces everyone to not listen to you anyways, then yes.

You make the call. It’s your business but the U.S. Government has spoken.

Update 3.14.13

I spoke with Compliance expert Jim Radogna about this issue. He researched the actual FTC ruling & found the relevant passages and, in his opinion, you can still tweet specials, etc. as long as there is a clear link to the disclaimers included in the tweet. While the Wall Street Journal article seemed pretty straightforward, it’s in his opinion that they’re incorrect in their translation of the ruling and how it applies to tweets.

Business Insider reports that the FTC released more information outlining a way that businesses can continue to use Twitter to market without actually needing the disclaimer physically present within the tweet. Just use “Ad:” within the tweet

SEO Tip of the Month: Maximize the SEO Value Of Your Video Content With YouTube’s Closed Captioning

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Even though it’s the second largest search engine in the world, most users tend to believe that YouTube’s SEO value is primarily tied to the text surrounding the video, like titles, descriptions, and tags. Each of these pieces are important, of course, but did you know that any video you create contains a wealth of relevant, keyword-rich content just waiting to be unleashed?

We’re referring to the closed-captioning function contained within YouTube. According to The Video Marketing Blog, both Google and YouTube are indexing the text contained within close-captions. There are endless combinations of keyword possibilities contained within each video you create, especially with a little strategic planning.

Imagine doing a walk-around video on a vehicle at your dealership. During that walk-around, think of all the relevant words to the vehicle’s make and model that you would normally say, like engine type, features, benefits, and safety features. Add to the end of that a short “plug” for your business including its name, address, phone number, makes sold, and areas served, and now you have a super-relevant page of natural, relevant keywords that directly tie YOUR BUSINESS to every word you spoke within the video. All of this can be accomplished without having a spammy description on your video. In fact, you don’t have to include ANY of these items within the title, description, or tags for it to be indexed (although I would advise that you keep many of them, especially your business information and website URL).

It takes a little planning and effort, but YouTube will do the heavy lifting for you. Detailed instructions can be found within YouTube’s help pages, but here’s the short version:

After you’ve uploaded your video and added an appropriate title, description and tags, you will need to create a “transcript” file to upload. This is a simple text (.TXT) file that contains the “script” of your video. Essentially, you’re just typing what was said. Once finished, you’ll upload it into YouTube via the Video Manager for the video you want to caption. YouTube will take the “script” you created and automatically sync the words to the video.

That’s it! Not only did you add VSEO value to your digital marketing, but your video is doing double-duty by helping with normal search as well. Google gives high relevance to videos, so by combining both the power of video and super-relevant text, it’s like creating a piece of content on steroids (as far as both Google and YouTube search algorithms are concerned.)

In addition to SEO benefits, Google adds translation ability to the videos, so you’ve also created a video that assists consumers who speak English as a second language.

This simple and painless addition to your existing YouTube marketing will supercharge your efforts and help you dominate searches over your competition.

(Article originally published in the November 2012 issue of the 3 Birds Marketing newsletter)

Stat of the Week and In The News Compilation – December 2012

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In the News – December 1, 2012 – [LINK]

Facebook Tests An In-Store Gateway To Internet Access

In a win-win for Facebook and businesses, Facebook has begun testing a “social wi-fi” service according to this article on CNET. With Facebook supplying the router, and the business supplying the internet, it would work similar to the processes set-up in hotels in that, when a customer first connects to the wi-fi network, they would be redirected to that businesses Facebook page where they would be prompted to “Like” the businesses’ page in order to access the internet. The upside for a business is that it could increase page “Likes” and engagement through the ability to offer Facebook deals to those customers as they log-in. The benefit for Facebook is all about data. Every time a consumer completes the log-in, they are providing Facebook with valuable data which would then assist them in improving Facebook ad performance and targeting. For those consumers who do not have Facebook accounts and/or do not wish to use them to log-in, there will be an option for the consumer to log-in via a password supplied by the business. In our opinion, however, most people will trade the convenience of logging in via Facebook, and the benefit of free internet access, for a simple “Like” as people are being more and more conditioned to trade personal information in exchange for something free. The perfect place to implement this idea would be the service waiting area where a businesses’ wi-fi is most commonly used and available. As this is in the testing phase, it remains to be seen whether it will come to reality for the masses BUT, it would be interesting to see whether, if Facebook abandons this idea, a business could set this up themselves.

In the News – December 7, 2012 – [LINK]

Major Brands Love Content Marketing

Forbes published an article illustrating how 5 major brands have confirmed through practical application and use that content marketing is driving traffic and creating successful branding and engaging both current and potential customers. In their examples, they share how Virgin Mobile created an online newsroom that has grown to over 1 million unique views per month. The Head of Brand Marketing says that the online content “deepen(s) engagement” with their consumers. Marriott also created an online content site with “rich content for engaging guests…(which has seen) record traffic and exponential growth in engagement”, according to the VP of Global Marketing. In just weeks after launch of the, in this case, video content on YouTube, their channel has grown from “tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands views..with more than half staying to learn about the brand”. Some of the tips for content creation included in the article share how online content should “focus on existing customers as well as prospects” and that content marketing is not only a “great tool to create brand affinity but can also be powerful in building a new audience of potential customers.”

 

Why Social Media Degrees Are Like Throwing Money Out the Window

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Social media skills have certainly come in demand for job-seekers in the marketing field and many companies are asking that candidates have some knowledge in how to market using social media. Many colleges have been offering classes in the social media arena for a while now. In fact, I’ve taken some of them. However, according to an article in Social Media Today, some colleges have taken it to the next level and have actually created entire social media degrees. An article published by The Center for Digital Education refers to Newberry College which plans on offering social media as a separate major starting in the Fall of 2013.

While the desire to get educated in social media is certainly admirable, any classes except those taught on a broad level with very general studies would be a waste of time and useless, in my opinion. Social media is a hyper-dynamic field in which one has to constantly adapt. Social networking sites are coming and going all the time. What’s hot today is thrown by the wayside tomorrow. Even if the classes focused entirely on the big two – Facebook and Twitter – even those two sites change continuously and while Twitter hasn’t made too many major changes, Facebook is constantly changing what its delivering to people’s newsfeeds. Even seasoned “pros” that have been working in the field for a long time constantly have to learn, evaluate and analyze not only current social media sites but also emerging ones.

To offer a college degree solely dedicated to social media is pointless on several levels. First, for the most part, the people that a university would employ as professors are typically not spring chickens. In fact, according to Wikipedia, the median age of a college professor is 55 years old with “very few people attain(ing) this position prior to the age of 40.” According to one study, more than half of social media users are between the ages of 25-44. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that a 55 year old person isn’t able to “know” social media well enough to teach it to a bunch of 18 year olds. That being said, I believe most of those 18 year olds probably know (and use) social media more than their professors. As far back as 2009, there was a University that was offering a Master’s degree in Social Media. According to Mashable, “some of the students have already described the course as too basic.”

Learning effective marketing, in general, in association with business and writing skills is certainly valuable to a young person planning on going into the marketing field. However, how valuable will the social media knowledge that is taught to them in college be four years later which was, percentage-wise, not being taught by the most educated (social media-wise) professor? I’ve taken classes on social media in which I knew more about it than the professor, which was why I stopped taking them. My goal was to learn, not spend money for a piece of paper that says I’ve learned skills that are already outdated.

Social media changes constantly. Social networks come and go daily. Learning how to effectively market on any given social media platform is a continuous job filled with analysis and adaptation. Trial and error, testing and re-testing, then adapting strategies based on what works NOW, is how most social media professionals “get the job done”. If there was a magic bullet or concrete list of techniques detailing the best way to market on each platform, whoever wrote that would be rich. I equate it to offering a class on how to create viral videos… while the class may exist, there is no formula that can produce this result consistently or, again, whomever discovered that would be rich. Then, of course, if everyone knew how to create viral videos because some magic formula came along teaching them how, none of them would be considered “viral” anymore.

There is no way social media can exist as its own major and be relevant 4 years later. My advice would be to use college to fill up on effective marketing, statistics, and business courses, in general, and take extra time, on your own, doing what you’re already doing anyways – using social networks. Read and learn on your own from the people who are willing to share their knowledge and expertise online (of which there are many) and are taking the time to keep up with current trends, techniques and changes in the world of social media. You could try and secure an internship at a company that specializes in social media to gain some practical, current, working knowledge of social media marketing.

I guarantee that you will come out of college prepared to enter the job market and will not have wasted 4 years (and who knows how much money) just to learn at the end that you haven’t learned anything.

Facebook Promoted Posts: Are They Right For You?

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Facebook’s Edgerank algorithm—the formula used to determine the order content appears in a given newsfeed based on which content is deemed most relevant to that user—may make the Facebook experience more seamless for casual browsers, but it’s a challenge for businesses that harness the social media platform as part of a marketing strategy. After all, thanks to Edgerank, each post on Facebook only makes it onto the newsfeed of about 12-17% of its fans. The fans that do see it are more likely to be those that have already chosen to visit your page, or that regularly interact with your posts. Edgerank’s feedback-loop effect makes it harder than ever to reach and engage consumers that don’t self-select your business’s content.

To counter those daunting odds, Facebook recently introduced a new service allowing business pages with greater than 400 “likes” to pay a fee to promote individual posts. This new feature allows a page owner to select a single post, which could be a status update, photo, video, question, or offer, and pay a premium to increase the reach for that post beyond the circle of fans that are already engaged with your content. Not only that, but promoted posts are supposedly more likely to be seen in the newsfeeds of friends of fans, too.

Promoted posts have a one-time, pre-set budget that remains in place for the life of the post.  While setting up a promoted post, you will be asked to choose a budget from a suite of options that includes the post’s estimated reach at each payment level. The promotion can be suspended or stopped at any time regardless of whether your maximum budget has been used. Promoted posts do have some targeting capabilities, including geographical location and language, but these can only be applied to posts that are less than three days old.

Sounds Great—but Do They Work?

I set out to test the promoted posts feature on my blog’s fan page (which has 613 fans) to see how it performed versus a normal, “organic” post. I’d recently created a page on my blog that consists of a dedicated list of available educational events and conferences for automotive dealers. I shared this blog page via a status update on May 23rd, prior to the launch of Promoted Posts. The post performed as expected, reaching roughly 13% of my page’s fans with a marginal viral reach (a measure of how many impressions came from non-fans who encountered the post because a fan of the page shared or interacted with the post).

  

Keep in mind that my Facebook page isn’t particularly active, nor do I put too much effort into engaging my fans, which limits the reach of posts. I mainly use the page to post blog articles, so I don’t expect high engagement, but these statistics are in line with the average reach reported by others.

On June 2, I decided to test out the new Promoted Posts feature. Upon creating the new post, the only option presented to me was to pay $5 to reach an estimated 300 people.

The post I promoted was essentially the same as the previous one – a status update which included an external link to the same page on my blog. I did no other social media promotion at all for this post and let it run for the full three days.

Here were the results:

  

As you can see, the post exceeded the estimated paid reach (with 324 rather than 300 paid impressions), and it also reached 1200% more non-fans (13 vs. 164) via viral sharing, substantially increasing exposure to my fans’ social networks. Organic displays also increased by almost double (70 vs. 132). The promoted post didn’t increase engagement but, the post itself wasn’t really designed to encourage engagement. I also didn’t see a noticeable difference in traffic to the external page on my blog, with the average number of daily visitors to that specific page remaining roughly the same.

Two interesting side notes: First, Facebook defines paid results as “the number of people who saw your page post in an Ad or Sponsored Story.” But when signing up for the service, Facebook never mentioned that my promoted post could potentially be displayed via an Ad (on the right of the newsfeed) versus as a Sponsored Story (within the newsfeed itself). In my estimation, Ads constitute weaker exposure than Sponsored Stories, but I have to assume that at least some of the paid exposure for my promoted post came via Ads.

Second, as mentioned previously, I was initially only given the option to reach 300 people for $5. However, when I looked into promoting another post following my initial trial, I was given a second option to reach 700 people for $10, as well. This tells me that Facebook underestimated the results they could deliver.

Are Promoted Posts for You?

As in any form of advertisement, you must have clearly defined goals before spending any money. Here are some questions you should ask yourself before making a decision one way or another regarding promoted posts.

1.    How large is your page’s fan base? Keep in mind that the larger your fan base, the more potential reach each promoted post will have, which will result in a higher upfront cost.

2.    Are these actual customers, or are they a random assortment of individuals who were collected in an effort to grow the number of fans at all costs? I consider fans to be relevant if they are potential or existing customers who could realistically do business with you—whether that’s via sales, service, or parts—and whose social networks will, in all likelihood, include more relevant people. In the case of dealerships, for example, it does you no good to increase exposure to people outside your PMA, vendors, or anyone else who doesn’t have the ability to spend money with you. Note, however, that the geo-targeting option does allow you to more efficiently reach relevant fans.

3.    What is your goal for promoting a particular post? Is it to increase engagement? Increase exposure for an offer or event? Share important information with your fans? Lead people to an external website or conversion page?

In my opinion, promoting a post just for the sake of promoting it is ill-advised. If you have clear goals in mind, you should be able to accurately track whether your money was spent wisely. Did you actually increase engagement, and was that engagement by new people rather than those who already regularly engage with you? Did more people take advantage of your offer? Did you receive more traffic (via Facebook) to the external link you included in your post?

If you’ve built your fan page organically via your website, in-store signage, or via inclusion in other marketing channels, I could see a promoted post helping to jumpstart your page by potentially increasing your fans via increased exposure to THEIR networks. Keep in mind that the majority of the people you will be reaching already like your page so, in my opinion, the greatest potential of Facebook Promoted Posts is in its ability to extend your exposure beyond your fans and into their social networks.

That being said, a well-thought-out promoted post with clearly defined goals has the potential to increase reach and revenues—all at a relatively low cost.

via the June 2012 edition of the 3 Birds Marketing newsletter

Foursquare Launches Local Updates for Businesses

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If you haven’t heard, foursquare announced yesterday the launch of what they’re calling “Local Updates”.

What are these and how can you use them?

Essentially, Local Updates will allow businesses to push messages to consumers who have either “liked” their business or frequent it. Updates can include things like specials, pictures of a new car (or a used car you just got in stock), it can include coupons, service specials, or whatever else you’d like your customers to see.

Your customers will be able to see these updates while in the same city as you. While certainly not as geo-targeted as it could be (like in the auto mall or within 10 miles of your dealership), being in the same city is a start.

In the past, the only way (or type) of message you could put out there for consumers on foursquare were “special offers” which required a check-in. While you can still make an offer to a customer, the ability to simply provide updates to consumers is another way of engaging them and staying top of mind.

Here’s an example of what an update would look like:

With nearly 1,000,000 business pages claimed and 10,000,000 users, foursquare is simply something you cannot afford to ignore. It’s fairly low-maintenance when set up and, since its free, the benefits vastly outweigh the possibility of lost business. Engaging your customers (or potential customers) is something that’s not only necessary but integral to increasing customer loyalty and retention.

The Local Updates feature will be rolled out to businesses that have claimed their page this week sometime so stay tuned.

Here is a brief video intro created by foursquare:

 

Facebook Likes: Don’t Get Scammed

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One of the easiest metrics dealers use to judge the success of their Facebook page is how many people like it. It’s also the most irrelevant.

I’ve said this many times and I’ll keep repeating it:

You’re better off having 1,000 fans to your page that can actually do business with you than 10,000 fans that will never spend a cent.

How do you expect to get ROI from your social media efforts if all your social media fans/followers are in Thailand? (Unless, of course, you have a booming export business to Thailand) The answer is, you won’t.

Also, many companies are delivering “fake” fans anyways through shady methods. This article by AllFacebook.com illustrates some of the methods these companies use.

Having a lot of Facebook fans that you bought is meaningless and a waste of money. Companies that prey on dealers with a service that increases “likes” to your Facebook page with random people are scam artists. It’s a waste of money and either these companies don’t realize that (which means they are incompetent and shouldn’t be in the social media business) or they do realize that (which means they are intentionally selling a service that has no value).

Dealers, please don’t fall into the trap of equating quantity with success. If you build your fan base organically with customers in your market, your social media marketing efforts will bear fruit.

If you “buy” fans, you’re actually sabotaging your own Facebook page and social media marketing efforts and you’ll only accomplish one thing:

Do you want to make money or be able to say “mine is bigger than yours”? You decide.

(P.S. There’s a great conversation over in the DealerRefresh forums talking about this.)

(P.S.S. Yes, I love the gorilla graphic.)

Facebook Promoted Posts

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Facebook’s Edgerank algorithm—the formula used to determine the order content appears in a given newsfeed based on which content is deemed most relevant to that user—may make the Facebook experience more seamless for casual browsers, but it’s a challenge for businesses that harness the social media platform as part of a marketing strategy. After all, thanks to Edgerank, each post on Facebook only makes it onto the newsfeed of about 12-17% of its fans. The fans that do see it are more likely to be those that have already chosen to visit your page, or that regularly interact with your posts. Edgerank’s feedback-loop effect makes it harder than ever to reach and engage consumers that don’t self-select your business’s content.

To counter those daunting odds, Facebook recently introduced a new service allowing business pages with greater than 400 “likes” to pay a fee to promote individual posts. This new feature allows a page owner to select a single post, which could be a status update, photo, video, question, or offer, and pay a premium to increase the reach for that post beyond the circle of fans that are already engaged with your content. Not only that, but promoted posts are supposedly more likely to be seen in the newsfeeds of friends of fans, too.

Promoted posts have a one-time, pre-set budget that remains in place for the life of the post. While setting up a promoted post, you will be asked to choose a budget from a suite of options that includes the post’s estimated reach at each payment level. The promotion can be suspended or stopped at any time regardless of whether your maximum budget has been used. Promoted posts do have some targeting capabilities, including geographical location and language, but these can only be applied to posts that are less than three days old.

Sounds Great—but Do They Work?

I set out to test the promoted posts feature on my blog’s fan page (which has 613 fans) to see how it performed versus a normal, “organic” post. I’d recently created a page on my blog that consists of a dedicated list of available educational events and conferences for automotive dealers. I shared this blog page via a status update on May 23rd, prior to the launch of Promoted Posts. The post performed as expected, reaching roughly 13% of my page’s fans with a marginal viral reach (a measure of how many impressions came from non-fans who encountered the post because a fan of the page shared or interacted with the post).

Keep in mind that my Facebook page isn’t particularly active, nor do I put too much effort into engaging my fans, which limits the reach of posts. I mainly use the page to post blog articles, so I don’t expect high engagement, but these statistics are in line with the average reach reported by others.

On June 2, I decided to test out the new Promoted Posts feature. Upon creating the new post, the only option presented to me was to pay $5 to reach an estimated 300 people.
The post I promoted was essentially the same as the previous one – a status update which included an external link to the same page on my blog. I did no other social media promotion at all for this post and let it run for the full three days.

Here were the results:

As you can see, the post exceeded the estimated paid reach (with 324 rather than 300 paid impressions), and it also reached 1200% more non-fans (13 vs. 164) via viral sharing, substantially increasing exposure to my fans’ social networks. Organic displays also increased by almost double (70 vs. 132). The promoted post didn’t increase engagement but, the post itself wasn’t really designed to encourage engagement. I also didn’t see a noticeable difference in traffic to the external page on my blog, with the average number of daily visitors to that specific page remaining roughly the same.

Two interesting side notes: First, Facebook defines paid results as “the number of people who saw your page post in an Ad or Sponsored Story.” But when signing up for the service, Facebook never mentioned that my promoted post could potentially be displayed via an Ad (on the right of the newsfeed) versus as a Sponsored Story (within the newsfeed itself). In my estimation, Ads constitute weaker exposure than Sponsored Stories, but I have to assume that at least some of the paid exposure for my promoted post came via Ads.

Second, as mentioned previously, I was initially only given the option to reach 300 people for $5. However, when I looked into promoting another post following my initial trial, I was given a second option to reach 700 people for $10, as well. This tells me that Facebook underestimated the results they could deliver.

Are Promoted Posts for You?

As in any form of advertisement, you must have clearly defined goals before spending any money. Here are some questions you should ask yourself before making a decision one way or another regarding promoted posts.

1. How large is your page’s fan base? Keep in mind that the larger your fan base, the more potential reach each promoted post will have, which will result in a higher upfront cost.

2. Are these actual customers, or are they a random assortment of individuals who were collected in an effort to grow the number of fans at all costs? I consider fans to be relevant if they are potential or existing customers who could realistically do business with you—whether that’s via sales, service, or parts—and whose social networks will, in all likelihood, include more relevant people. In the case of dealerships, for example, it does you no good to increase exposure to people outside your PMA, vendors, or anyone else who doesn’t have the ability to spend money with you. Note, however, that the geo-targeting option does allow you to more efficiently reach relevant fans.

3. What is your goal for promoting a particular post? Is it to increase engagement? Increase exposure for an offer or event? Share important information with your fans? Lead people to an external website or conversion page?

In my opinion, promoting a post just for the sake of promoting it is ill-advised. If you have clear goals in mind, you should be able to accurately track whether your money was spent wisely. Did you actually increase engagement, and was that engagement by new people rather than those who already regularly engage with you? Did more people take advantage of your offer? Did you receive more traffic (via Facebook) to the external link you included in your post?

If you’ve built your fan page organically via your website, in-store signage, or via inclusion in other marketing channels, I could see a promoted post helping to jumpstart your page by potentially increasing your fans via increased exposure to THEIR networks. Keep in mind that the majority of the people you will be reaching already like your page so, in my opinion, the greatest potential of Facebook Promoted Posts is in its ability to extend your exposure beyond your fans and into their social networks.

That being said, a well-thought-out promoted post with clearly defined goals has the potential to increase reach and revenues—all at a relatively low cost.

[Article originally published in the June 2012 issue of the 3 Birds Marketing e-newsletter]

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