Cars.com/DealerRater - Dealers Facebook Posts are ClickBait

[DrewAment]

Interesting thing happened this morning.... I am disabling the DealerRater posting of reviews. Just wondering if anyone else has any insight or if they have seen the same thing?

To be honest, I never understood in the DR/FB integration and what benefit it really had for the dealer.

 

[Ryan Everson]

Yeah, we received the same message on our Facebook pages that still had the integration enabled, so we turned it off groupwide.

I agree the posts were pretty much pointless because they received close to 0 organic reach and cluttered our page timeline.

They would have been more worthwhile if DealerRater could have created a dynamic open graph image with the review text snippet as the image preview of the link (perhaps the star rating and review text snippet dynamically layered on top of a photo of our dealership).

 

[Mike Lauf]

Hi there - my name is Mike Lauf and I'm the Sr. Product Manager at DealerRater. I want to let you know that we're aware of this issue and actively working with Facebook to resolve it.

As we all know, Facebook has a tendency to make frequent changes on their site with little or no warning that can affect third party plugins. That seems to be the case here. We're still working with them to figure out exactly what needs to change on our end to correct the issue so legitimate consumer reviews from dealerships who are choosing to post these reviews on their Facebook pages don't get flagged as clickbait.

I completely understand the frustration on your end and want to apologize for that. We hope to have the issue resolved soon and will be sure to provide updates when necessary. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have questions.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

I'm not having this issue. Thank goodness. My team uses the LotShot mobile app in order to solicit the review while obtaining a photo of the customer and their new vehicle. I have DealerRater set to auto-post a review no more than once a day, which gives us a steady stream of review posts without overdoing it.

These posts don't receive some amazing amount of engagement, however engagement isn't the main decision for using it. It's more of a motivational tool for the team. The Reps like to share the reviews on their personal page while often tagging the customer. I've seen quite a few customers also share on their pages.

 

[bjones]

We ran into this same issue for our 150+ dealers and ended up bumping them all down to 1+ post/day (from 4/day). That seemed to stop the spam issues and was able to keep the stores organically posting something (even if just once a week to let everyone know they're alive)! Aside from that, we don't see too much interest or buy-in compared to other organic posts.

Definitely agree with reverson... that DR is a little behind in terms of scheduling good organic posts... but do dealers really need another dashboard they won't look at? Is there any benefit at the store level, or are we just checking off OEM requirements?

 

[Jeff Kershner]

It would be nice if DealerRater offered a few more options, as in post scheduling, content, auto-tagging our employees while pre-populating some hashtags.

While we have @Mike Lauf here, if you have a suggestions for more features - maybe he will take some notes..

 

[Mike Lauf]

...diligently taking notes over here. Figuring out ways of keeping relevant content in front of in-market shoppers is certainly the objective. And the technology we're able to leverage has come a long way since some of our older features were released.

I agree with a lot of the ideas presented here and am curious to dig into some in more detail. The open graph image idea that @Ryan Everson mentioned is very interesting to me - particularly because it entices someone enough to want to click through to continue reading. The page they'd be clicking through to is where they could ultimately submit a lead. Happy to explore than one a little further.

@Jeff Kershner , your idea around auto-tagging employees is one that we've floated a bit. From an engagement standpoint, I think it's great and have no doubt that employees would love seeing it. The biggest challenge I see with something like that is that every taggable employee name is another page the reader could end up and get lost in a web of other distracting content. In the end, our goal is to provide content that makes a user want to click through to a dealer's website or to a profile on DealerRater where they can submit a lead. By introducing other clickable elements within the same post, we make it harder for the reader to figure out what to click on, and ultimately reduce the chances of them clicking through to whatever URL is shared in the post.

That said, I'm not totally off of that idea either. If the tags didn't actually go to the employees personal Facebook profile, but instead, went to their DealerRater profile, that could be more worthwhile (and if that's what you meant originally, sorry for assuming otherwise!).

I'm always happy to spitball new ideas, even if it means looking at existing features with a more critical lens. DealerRater isn't a young company and there's always a need for products and features to evolve. I appreciate everyone's comments on this thread.

 

[Steve Stauning]

My recommendation (regardless of how/when they resolve this) is to stop posting anything to your dealership's Facebook page that receives little to no interaction. Without getting too technical, when you post a turd, Facebook "punishes" future organic posts. This reduces the amount of perceived spam your followers see, as Facebook assumes your followers don't care much for your content (based on the turds you keep posting).

This includes automated review posts and (especially) OEM-driven content. Your organic posts shouldn't mirror your paid posts. Your followers already know you sell cars. Stop beating them over the head with it, and use your Facebook page to show how authentic you are, what you do for the community, and (in a limited fashion) how happy people are to buy from you (with a pic of them next to the car and properly tagged).

 

[Alexander Lau]

My recommendation (regardless of how/when they resolve this) is to stop posting anything to your dealership's Facebook page that receives little to no interaction. Without getting too technical, when you post a turd, Facebook "punishes" future organic posts. This reduces the amount of perceived spam your followers see, as Facebook assumes your followers don't care much for your content (based on the turds you keep posting).

This includes automated review posts and (especially) OEM-driven content. Your organic posts shouldn't mirror your paid posts. Your followers already know you sell cars. Stop beating them over the head with it, and use your Facebook page to show how authentic you are, what you do for the community, and (in a limited fashion) how happy people are to buy from you (with a pic of them next to the car and properly tagged).

Agreed and a big fat LOL! I said such things around 8 years ago, circa 2012.

"If there’s a local or community event important to the dealership, focus on it. That’s a major part of the strategy. Dealership don’t need to remind their social followers that they have cars for sale, they already know that. When choosing what to post, realize that you shouldn’t act like a dealership, but still remember that you are a dealership. Don’t be pitchy. Don’t feed into stereotypes. Don’t be too “sales-oriented.” Instead, be brand, community, fun, and familial in orientation.

Truth is, to be successful on social media as a dealership, you have to stop thinking about yourself as a dealership, but instead, think of yourself as a company that helps out the local community. Giving people a social media smorgasbord of posts to review makes you more well-rounded. Like any delectable sampling of food does."

 

[Dahvin Greenfield]

Just to add in my two cents here ...

Facebook as a social platform has changed dramatically over the past 4 to 6 years. Back in 2016 when I was a marketing manager for an auto group, a lot of our sales we credited to Facebook. Our reach was unbelievable and turn around with inventory was great after we had pumped some dollars into a post.

Nowadays, Facebook is so cluttered with various products and silly statuses from friends, it's hard to gauge the ROI.

In general, having an active Facebook or IG page is essential but it's not a reliable source. There's so much more value in posting directly from your Google My Business page or have your marketing manager take over a blog. Like they say... content IS king.

And the sad truth is... research has shown that although you may have 10K followers on Facebook, organic posts are only reaching up to 6% of those people and as for paid posts, you're interacting with maybe 30%... something to consider when you're reviewing your ad budget at the end of 2020.