Facebook- Who Does it for their lot?
 

One of my jobs at the Used Car Dealership I work at is to manage our Facebook account. Garner New "Likes" and engage our "Friends" with being social. From everything ive read about having a business FB page is to engage people and socialize. Not to log on to Sell, Sell, Sell. That comes later.

Are any of fellow members on Facebook? Not just personal pages, but actually managing a Business Car Dealership FB page?

I've been working fairly hard on it for around a year to only be up to 60+ "Likes". It just confuses me when I hope over to a different local deals page to see they have 19,869,785,645 "Likes" only to see they NEVER POST ANYTHING. Are they buying "Likes"?? Do people actually "Like" them that much for not posting anything? I can go buy 1000 "Likes" too in an attempt to look popular, but I just dont see the point in having a bunch of fake friends that will never result in a customer thinking about us when the time comes?

Anyone have any thoughts on a Car Dealership Facebook Account?

I use it but I'm not big time and I don't put that much effort into it. I occasionally post comments on there and when I get new inventory I will post pictures. I don't see it really as much of a sales tool but my daughter said I should have a FB page for the business.

I do know that one way to get "likes" is to pay FB to advertise your company. Me? Not willing to dump money into FB just to get "likes" so I don't do it.

It is definately NOT a sales tool. At least I don't see it that way, and everything I have read on the subject says the same thing. It's more of a branding tool. SOmething to get your name in their head to make them hopefully think of your car lot when the time comes. I never post my new inventory on it. When we 1st set up our new website when we made a switch from ecarlist, over to carsforsale.com, our inventory feed was automatically posting over on Facebook and I hated it. I immediatly stopped that feed. I know if I was on the other end and a Dealer posted every new car on my newsfeed I would for sure "Unsubscribe" from that friend.

But YES... not a Sales Tool. But if you look up any sucessful business in your area on FB, youre gonna see they have a popular page. Also you will see they arent selling, but rather just engaging their friends and socializing. Branding!!

Thanks for your reply!!

I meant to reply to this thread earlier but I'm just getting caught up.

I agree with Zach@kb that Facebook is mostly a branding tool and dealers who expect to use it as a selling tool will likely be disappointed.

Concerning the number of "likes" a dealership Facebook page receives, I wouldn't be surprised if some dealers are paying for their "likes."

I read a great article the other day about a reporter who wanted to see how easy it was to create a fake identity on the Internet. He created a Facebook account for a fake person and bought a bunch of "likes" and then created a Twitter account and bought thousands of "followers." Once he had the Facebook and Twitter accounts established he created a Wikipedia page for the fake person. His total expenditure was under $200.

Personally, I'm not a Facebook fan and I don't have much use for the site. That said, my father uses Facebook all of the time and he often tells me about used cars he sees that are for sale by a local used car dealer - so I guess that's anecdotal evidence that Facebook advertising does increase awareness.

I would love a link to that article if you had it.

Here's the link - click here

After re-reading the article I determined I was mistaken about the creation of a fake Facebook page - the article mentioned a fake Twitter account, fake Wikipedia entry and a fake website, but not a fake Facebook page.

That said, given the ease the author was able to gather fake Twitter followers I'm guessing it's pretty easy to get fake Facebook "likes" too.

After just thirty seconds of searching Google I found the website Get-Likes.com where you can buy 10,000 Facebook "likes" for $179.90 :rolleyes: