Reputation Management Comp Buying Likes?

[kevinfrye]

Here is another fine example of what you can buy below (a local dealership nearby...). You hire a company to generate 54,000 likes for you. Your most visited week was almost a year ago, and that was a total of 10 people. Now does that make sense to you? You have over 54,000 fans and the most visits in a week was 10??? In the last month, you have had ZERO likes. It would seem, that with tens of thousands of "real" likes, people would be liking you every day, but having NONE in a month? Or maybe you paid for 54,000 likes from some country overseas that will do nothing for your social efforts. Just one more great example of what a dealership paid a reputation management company for... I apologize in advance for my cynicism.

 

[ryan.leslie]

Great thread Kelly, you've raised some excellent questions. Thank you for sharing this with the community. Like some have already said, I wasn't surprised to see a vendor caught in this brand of "Reputation Management" in our vertical, but I sure hope that this serves as a wake up call that you simply cannot outsource YOUR reputation to any vendor, especially if they claim to be "turnkey" with little to no investment of time from the dealership. It is YOUR reputation to build, protect and promote! SFE approved vendor or not, YOU need to be involved in YOUR reputation!

This is really the perfect example of the inherent problem that develops when the focus is on quantity instead of quality. It doesn't matter if you are talking about Facebook likes, impressions of your display ads, pageviews, clicks to your site, SRP's on classified sites, or online reviews. The list goes on and on. Quality means everything! Please don't be impressed by a number that is artificially inflated by low quality, especially when it is SO EASY for the consumer to verify your claims. "So, you have 1200 reviews, great! I'll read some of them and get back to you. What do you mean there isn't really anything to read because they are just 5 star ratings with no explanation as to why you earned them?" More ISN'T necessarily Better!

 

[ryan.leslie]

"Quality vs Quantity" argument in DealerRefresh vernacular:

It is kind of like going to a speed dating event in a purple tie with "Hey Baby, I have over 100 pairs of Jorts" as your opening line.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

I don't know if I should cry or laugh. Ha! #wrong

 

[Chip Grueter]

I don't know if I should cry or laugh. Ha! #wrong

I'm just glad he covered up my face!

 

[Kevin McKillop]

I'd like to point out that looking at inflated like count alone doesn't mean the dealership used a shady reputation management company.

Kevin's post with 54k likes is beyond obvious they were purchased, but by whom you don't know. (Unless I'm missing something).

The dealership can easily to do this themselves for dirt cheap, it's not hard to find online.

 

[ewalraven]

How to start a facebook page (no matter how big or small the business):
1. Create Facebook page with legit information. Try best to get the layout, pictures, and design to liking
2. Call up all your friends and family and get them to 'like' your page.
3. Get some of your closest customers to 'like' as well

...Check out after a week, two weeks, or every a month later and realize you only have 13 likes ...

4. Google "How can I get more likes on my facebook page"

... Find out you get can get 1000 likes for pennies on the dollar ...

5. Say screw it and buy them
6. Press F5 (or Ctrl+R) and watch your likes magically grow


With that said, I'm really not surprised they did this. Good catch though! Funny to say the least.

 

[danmichaeli]

"Quality vs Quantity" may be even more important then we think, especially in regards to link farming. With Facebook likes, bad quality will not really negatively affect a dealership (other than the waste of money). However, if the same reputation management firms choose to farm links out for a dealership's website for SEO purposes (essentially spreading links to the dealership around the web to increase Google ranking), it could not only be a waste of cash but also damaging to the dealership in the long term.


This is because Google is pretty much a popularity content. The more websites that link to your content and the more "popular" these websites are, the higher you will rank. Link farms are damaging because instead of getting legitimate links from a "popular" website they generate hundreds of links from websites that are not only unpopular but, in some cases, known by Google to be link farms. Search rankings may spike in the short run, but in the long run Google discovers link farms and will lower rankings accordingly (beyond what it was before as a sort of punishment). Check this out for more about how the big Goog works: HowStuffWorks "How Google Works"


Super useful to verify which dealerships the vendor works with and use tools like http://www.opensiteexplorer.org to see who is linking in to them before signing up yourself

 

[subi101]

Here is another fine example of what you can buy below (a local dealership nearby...). You hire a company to generate 54,000 likes for you. Your most visited week was almost a year ago, and that was a total of 10 people. Now does that make sense to you? You have over 54,000 fans and the most visits in a week was 10??? In the last month, you have had ZERO likes. It would seem, that with tens of thousands of "real" likes, people would be liking you every day, but having NONE in a month? Or maybe you paid for 54,000 likes from some country overseas that will do nothing for your social efforts. Just one more great example of what a dealership paid a reputation management company for... I apologize in advance for my cynicism.

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It really bothers me when people do this. The whole point of social media is for conversations and humanizing the business. I hate when people bribe, trick, pressure customers into liking or buys likes to make themselves look good... But it is 110% worse when a company that is supposed to advise you on practices and monitor your reputation, buys likes. I hope with people in our roles within the dealerships getting smarter and more educated about technology, these companies will change their practices and pitches.

 

[yagoparamo]

The whole point of social media is for conversations and humanizing the business.

I thought that the point of social media was to find a different avenue to promote the business and sell more cars. Regardless, in general, conversations and humanization are not happening.

It bothered me when I saw Tim Martel from Wikimotive doing this more than anything because it showed a character flaw: "Will do anything for money" but from the dealer point of view it didn't bother me at all: Spend all you want in getting friends, it doesn't give you any advantage.

Think about what you like in FB, is not based on how many other people liked it previously, but on whether the theme or information in the page you liked has value to you.