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Sales Agent Facebook Business Pages

John V.

Boss
Jan 15, 2015
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Probably a duplicate thread so please reply back with link if it is......

I have a lot of Sales Agents looking to start their own Facebook Business pages. To those stores that allow this;
What Address are you letting them use for their "business" address?

I do not want to receive any potential SEO penalties for having duplicate Business FB Pages but they don't want to use their home address because they (rightly) want customers to come see them at the dealership.

What is everyone else doing?
 
@John V. Personally, I don't think your gonna have to much of an issue with SEO. Honestly, that would be the last of my worries. I would be more concerned with policing it more than anything. If you're not the owner of those business pages and the reps are, if the rep decides to leave after working for your store for a couple of years and they've built a decent following, they're going to have a direct way to communicate with your customers after they leave and at that point there's nothing you can do about it if the business doesn't own the pages. From the business stand point, you def need to put a social media policy in place (If you don't have one already) but you also need to make sure that the business is in complete control (ownership and moderate the content) on the pages as well.
 
Probably a duplicate thread so please reply back with link if it is......

I have a lot of Sales Agents looking to start their own Facebook Business pages. To those stores that allow this;
What Address are you letting them use for their "business" address?

I do not want to receive any potential SEO penalties for having duplicate Business FB Pages but they don't want to use their home address because they (rightly) want customers to come see them at the dealership.

What is everyone else doing?

The only instance you'd receive a manual penalty, or automated penalty, is if you're creating duplicate content. This typically applies to personally owned domains and websites. Never seen a social media profile get de-indexed over duplicate content - many pages share similar content publicly, and search engines have caught on to what is typically aggregated.

So as long as they're creating social media profiles such as, shouldn't be an issue:

Sales Person #1 - Example Chevy Dealership

Sales Person #2 - Example Chevy Dealership

Sales Person #3 - Example Chevy Dealership
 
@John V. Personally, I don't think your gonna have to much of an issue with SEO. Honestly, that would be the last of my worries. I would be more concerned with policing it more than anything. If you're not the owner of those business pages and the reps are, if the rep decides to leave after working for your store for a couple of years and they've built a decent following, they're going to have a direct way to communicate with your customers after they leave and at that point there's nothing you can do about it if the business doesn't own the pages. From the business stand point, you def need to put a social media policy in place (If you don't have one already) but you also need to make sure that the business is in complete control (ownership and moderate the content) on the pages as well.

Unless the dealership is paying said salespeople to advertise through an ad budget, I don't think it's fair for the dealership to "own" the Facebook Page.

I think it's a great idea to have a social media policy in place, but that's if you have some sort of investment in the page itself. Otherwise.. I believe that salesperson is entitled to their brand, in the end they're using their time and resources to build it.

Only conflict I'd see would be displaying the dealerships branding (Name, Logos) on the page itself.
 
@John.H The reps are building their personal brand at the expense of the Dealerships customers. At the end of the day and after all the cards fall, that customer that the rep is taking a photo of at delivery and posting on their fan page is the dealership's customer. Thats not the reps customer. Again, at the end of the day, the rep is marketing and branding themselves as a representative / employee of that dealers business.

Example: We had a rep that worked for us for 3 - 4 years. Went to OEM training and DD conferences. Everyone talked and preached about the same thing you mentioned. "Personal Branding". The rep creates a Fan page and starts creating a small following posting pics of customers at delivery, specials, etc, etc... Everything looked good and they posted great content. That rep then decides to leave our company and started working for a direct local competitor. The rep then simply changed the title of their fan page from "Joe Salesman at ABC Dealership" to "Joe Salesman at XYZ Dealership". Now, all of our customers that he sold vehicles to, he is telling them to visit that dealership and marketing to the customers he sold vehicle to at our dealership with other dealers content.

@John V. I highly recommend for you to control the pages or you'll be going through the same exact thing simply because you don't have anyway to stop them if they decide to leave.

Also, it's a privilege. Not an entitlement!
 
@John.H The reps are building their personal brand at the expense of the Dealerships customers. At the end of the day and after all the cards fall, that customer that the rep is taking a photo of at delivery and posting on their fan page is the dealership's customer. Thats not the reps customer. Again, at the end of the day, the rep is marketing and branding themselves as a representative / employee of that dealers business.

Example: We had a rep that worked for us for 3 - 4 years. Went to OEM training and DD conferences. Everyone talked and preached about the same thing you mentioned. "Personal Branding". The rep creates a Fan page and starts creating a small following posting pics of customers at delivery, specials, etc, etc... Everything looked good and they posted great content. That rep then decides to leave our company and started working for a direct local competitor. The rep then simply changed the title of their fan page from "Joe Salesman at ABC Dealership" to "Joe Salesman at XYZ Dealership". Now, all of our customers that he sold vehicles to, he is telling them to visit that dealership and marketing to the customers he sold vehicle to at our dealership with other dealers content.

@John V. I highly recommend for you to control the pages or you'll be going through the same exact thing simply because you don't have anyway to stop them if they decide to leave.

Also, it's a privilege. Not an entitlement!

I think it's a privilege as a dealership to have hustlers willing to find buyers unconventionally, outside of the leads a dealership (sometimes) provides. These are the people who raise the bar in a dealership environment.. quite motivating.

What I'd find wrong, however, would be them telling your customers, which you generate through vendors/service/events/past buyers/internal social media team, to follow their private brand for their own personal gain. That's VERY wrong, and can be grounds to terminate employment.

It comes down to who produced the lead. Whether the dealership had involvement in producing it.

I've seen some pretty interesting personal brands before. Can't say I stand behind creating one these days, as organic reach is so limited it's almost pointless. Which is why many are transitioning from organic to paid traffic.