The Auto-Dealer's Guide to Facebook Timeline
A recent study from eMarketer reports that the majority of brands who have been using Facebook Timeline (the new layout was made mandatory for brand pages as of March 30, 2012) have been seeing increased engagement as a result.
If you’re still a little unsure of how to fully make the most of the new timeline layout, check out our auto-dealer’s guide to Facebook timeline below:
Set your Cover Photo
In addition to your profile picture, the new Facebook layout allows you to upload a cover photo for your dealership. While smaller profile photo is usually something simple, your logo for example, the cover photo can be anything that represents your brand. Don’t be afraid to get creative with it, and change your cover photo as often as you’d like. Just remember not to include any price or purchase information, contact information, references to Facebook features or actions (i.e. Likes) or calls to action. (Cover photo dimensions: 851 x 315 px)
Share your Story (Milestones)
Have there been any significant events that helped to shape your dealership into the organization that it is today? What about your overall brand? Milestones allow you to add important events to your timeline to share our story with your fans. You can create a new (or past) milestone via the status update box, which will prompt you to input information about your milestone. (Milestone photo dimensions: 843 x 493 px)
Publish More Content
The once a day rule no longer applies, as Facebook's changes mean that there’s a much shorter window of time for people to see your posts. But that doesn’t mean that you’ve got free rain to spam your page. Think about the times your fans are most likely online and share accordingly. Likely that means lots publishing the majority of your updates on evenings and weekends. Thankfully there are tools like Hootsuite, and our MiSocial platform that allow your dealership to schedule updates for a set time in the future.
Show Off your Most Important Posts
By hovering over the top right hand corner of a post you can mark it as important using the star icon. You can also pin or anchor a specific story to the top of your Timeline for up to one week. That helps to ensure that your fans won’t miss the update, as your post won’t get buried by more recent messages on your timeline.
Enable Messages
Facebook has finally allowed private messages between fans and brands. Turn on brand messaging to make it easier for fans to contact your dealership privately with their sales and service questions. This feature is excellent for sales reps who are looking to collect more personal information from a potential lead.
Leverage Real-Time Insights
Facebook is rolling out real-time insights for the first time, giving Page administers information on real-time activity on the site, Mashable reports. To fully take advantage of Facebook’s improved reporting platform, you first need to ensure your website is connected to Facebook insights. This means you’ll be able to receive information in Facebook about ‘Likes’ on your website. As you publish new content, to your data on Facebook to determine how it compares to previous blog posts for example. Monitoring engagement can help you to tweak the content you share for improved interactions with your customers and fans.
How is your dealership leveraging the new changes with Facebook timeline? Share your tips in the comments!
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