News

I was intrigued by a blog post written by Brian Carter entitled “SHOCKER: 3% To 7.5% Of Fans See Your Page’s Posts” and I recommend that you read the entire article as well as consider Brian’s tips to increase engagement.

With everyone’s obsession about collecting high number of Facebook Fans these stats remind me that high quality engagement and building the right fan community are so important. The stats above were collected from Facebook Pages that had a combined 400 million fans.

More Fans Equals Less Engagement

The chart shows that as the fans “increase” the visibility of your posts drops. Could this be a wake-up call for business owners that are pushing for numbers and not quality? You’ve heard the phrase “Junk In = Junk Out” so maybe this is the social media version of that warning.

Now aside from arguing these numbers if your page has higher stats, it’s still a reminder about the potential direct impact of any one Facebook post or short term campaign.

Heck, in fact these numbers are less than the visibility you get with an email campaign which have open rates around 10-15% on non-segmented lists. I’m not thrashing Facebook, I use it regularly. These stats just show that it can’t be the holy grail to solve all your consumer marketing needs.

Building Segmented Communities On Different Marketing Channels

My takeaway from this article is that building focused, segmented marketing strategies is the way to approach the diverse base of consumers looking for your goods and services. Business owners need to have engagement with consumers using multiple digital channels:

• Chat
• Texting Campaigns
• Facebook/Social Media
• Email
• LinkedIn/Digital Networking
• ReTargeting/PPC
• Mobile Websites/Apps

I have been amazed with the jump in leads when a dealer adds chat to these website. Dealer eProcess shared a great chart at a recent PCG Pit Stop that showed all age groups are using chat. See chart below:

Are You Using Opt-In Text Campaigns?

I have also “seen the light” on texting campaigns since most people under 40 prefer to receive a text than an email or phone call. It’s amazing how fast a business can build a text marketing campaign. When you consider that most people don’t change our cell phone number often and that the phone is always with us, even in the bathroom, text marketing has an amazing delivery rate.

If you have ever watched the attrition on your email lists, you know how often people change their email. 15% of the US population moves every year and add to that how often people change jobs. Keeping email contacts up to date is laborious. Now consider how little attrition you will have on your text campaign database if you don’t abuse it.

Offer and Management Multiple Engagement Channels

To me fair, I have also seen great engagement on Facebook. Anyone who has tested different posting techniques knows that some posts start a fire of comments and others die on the vine. Facebook is another channel, but it’s value should not be inflated to greater than the data shows.

Business owners need to establish a multi-channel communication strategy for their market. If you ignore any one of the methods listed above, you are missing an important part of your market.

Now that PCG has added these channels to our consulting services, I could not be more excited for dealers who want to invest and engage in digital marketing. For me, there are many efficient and profitable ways to connect with consumers and that gives dealers more choice.

The future looks bright!  If you need assistance setting up a comprehensive digital communication strategy, give us a call at 732.450.8200.

If your are looking for new strategies to improve your Internet Marketing visibility, Internet Reputation and your Social Media footprint in 2010, the team at DealerRater.com has quietly been building a set of tools that can be leveraged in new ways.

I love to share great ideas with the automotive community as I find them. Since Facebook is a hot topic I thought I would write about ways to make your Facebook page more interesting.

In the past few months I have been testing and implementing some of the free tools that come from DealerRater when a dealer is signs up for the Certified Dealer program. There are many benefits to the program but I would like to discuss one of the new recent ways their dealer platform can be leveraged.

Facebook Car Inventory Pages

Dealers can now add their car inventory to a Facebook Fan Page tab using tools from DealerRater.com. You can see an example of this technology on the Infiniti of Norwood Facebook Fan Page below.

There is a tab called “Classified Ads” on their Fan Page which when you click on the tab it shows their inventory. This is a tasteful way to add additional functionality to Facebook withoput posting cars in the main Facebook news stream. This feed is free to dealers on the Certified Dealer program and it is easy to add to your fan page.

The trick is to add graphics or call to action messages to make your fans aware of the tab. Then if they want to look at cars they can and you can keep your news stream more meaningful and a value to your followers.

Facebook Tabs Customized

If you didn’t know it, you can add HTML code pages to your Facebook Fan Pages that can look just like your website. It can also have active buttons that bring people to your website.

You can see another example from ABC Motor Credit’s Facebook Page shown below. They are a Buy Here Pay Here dealership in Ohio and they have a contest running which they wanted to leverage on Facebook as well as getting clicks to their website. So this custom tab was created: http://www.facebook.com/ABCMotorCredit

If you are not handy with HTML coding, find someone to help. It only took a few minutes of our team’s time to take the HTML code from ABC Motor Credit’s website and created this tab. Once these TABS are created, you can add graphics to the Fan Page to encourage people to click on the tabs.

There is a number of creative ways to enhance Facebook. Inventory feeds, video channels, website forms, specials pages or something completely crazy can now be implemented to super-charge your Facebook page.

2010 Internet Marketing Education

Do you like these ideas? You can super-charge your 2010 Internet Marketing Strategies by attending the Automotive Marketing Boot Camp in Orlando. It is being held on February 12th, one day before the NADA Convention in Orlando.

Get the edge on your competitors regarding social media, SEO, microsites, pay-per-click and video marketing strategies from industry leaders.

Jared Hamilton will be the opening night keynote speaker on Thursday evening February 11th. Sign-up today.

Learn more about this limited engagement event at: www.internetmarketingbootcamp.com

News Alert: Facebook will now allow users to create their own vanity URL similar to other social networking websites.  A vanity URL is one that is easy to remember; it can be your name or something pertaining to you.

Starting at 12:01 a.m. (EDT) on Saturday, June 13, 2009, you will be able to select a user name at http://www.facebook.com/username. For more information, visit the Username help topic.

I have a number of vanity URL’s for my name that show up on Google pahe one or two when you search my name:

• http://twitter.com/brianpasch
• http://www.linkedin.com/in/brianpasch
• http://brianpasch.gather.com/
• http:// brianpasch.multiply.com

Facebook Opens Up to Vanity

Currently, my Facebook profile URL is: www.facebook.com/people/Brian-Pasch/685389902 .   This URL is odd looking and what is that number on the end?  It’s a way to make the URL unique so that any other Brian Pasch in the world can create their own profile.

With the new offering, the URL can be: www.facebook.com/brianpasch.  The trick is that only ONE URL can be created like that so first come first served.  So if you want to reserve your name without putting a number after it, you must act quickly.

Does Vanity URL’s Help Automotive SEO

Why is this important?  That is debatable.  For one thing it is easier and cleaner to add to an email signature or just to remember.  Think of it as a calling card.

Secondly, if you can create a URL that is a HIGH value keyword like “bostonnissan” then maybe that Facebook profile will come up for searches on Boston Nissan.   The idea situation is that you reserve your name and if you have a business fan page, you also can customize it with a vanity URL.

An example of this is when you search for “Automotive SEO”.   You will see vanity URL from Vox ( http://automotiveseo.vox.com) and Ning  (http://automotive-seo.ning.com) in Google search results so vanity URL do make a difference.  

So your question should be: What vanity name to use?

I would suggest that you look at your Google Analytics data and Google Adwordsdata to see what search phrases bring the most traffic to your website and then grab that vanity name.  I do not know if the business fan pages have any restriction for vanity name so you will have to see that on Friday or Saturday when the doors open at Facebook.

I hope that this post allows the early birds to get the worm.