There's an exciting thing that can happen when you first start advertising on social media. The organic measures of exposure are quickly fading away, so when you get that first boost of exposure as a result of spending very little money, it can become addicting.

It's a trap. Overexposing at the wrong time to the wrong people can prevent you from being able to reach the right people in the future, particularly on Facebook. As I've mentioned many times, social advertising is very different from other forms of online advertising as the performance of the content being promoted has a dramatic and often instant impact on subsequent posts.

In other words, done wrong, you can do real damage.

The story of the tortoise and the hare is one that few want to hear. They don't want their advertising to resemble that of a slow tortoise in any way, shape, or form. However, the reality is that it's the best way to reach the most people in the long term as well as in the short term. Look at these statistics:

As with nearly every attempt at social media, there's a quick spike. Just about everyone who is not using advertising in their social media is having a hard time truly reaching anyone, particularly at the local level. Even with a strategy grounded in consistency, there is still the initial spike and it's almost always a noticeable difference.

The problem is that with many of the pages I check out that are using social media advertising, the view is much different. It's high peaks and low valleys. The overall reach early on is great. The problem is that the spikes are damaging. There's no consistent growth of active fans. There's no steady engagement being built up. It's happening all at once.

There are plenty of reasons why slow and steady after the initial burst is preferable to spikes and low points, but the biggest reason is that the overall number of people reached is much, much higher when it's done with a sound steady strategy. It's not easy to see because Facebook doesn't offer the proper tracking and because it's somewhat counter-intuitive, but once you really dive in and see what's happening it makes sense.

You see, the 10,000 people reached one week are not the same 10,000 people reached the following week. Sure, there are plenty of people (if you're doing it right) who see most of the things you post, but a consistent strategy aimed at spreading out the reach is much more effective at reaching the masses. Facebook insights don't portray this properly which is why you see so many who throw money at Facebook to see the big spikes. It feels like you're reaching more people that way, but you're not.

The only time there should be spikes is when there's something extremely important to get exposed. These should be rare. Sure, there's always something really important going on - the big sale, a new model rolling out, incentives, etc. - but it has to be social gold as well a being important. Otherwise, standard promotion will do the trick.

Unfortunately, it's very easy based on the fallacies in Facebook Insights for a company to demonstrate their effectiveness using inflated numbers. The biggest problem is that it cannot be sustained that way. Social media advertising is the easiest thing to do. It's also the easiest thing to do wrong.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s an extremely complex and effective methodology behind utilizing Facebook as a true marketing and advertising tool that requires some specialized training, a strong sense of creativity, a willingness to experiment, and an unrelenting focus on keeping up with the latest and greatest from experts and Facebook itself.

Then again, there’s a simple way as well. As much as I would love to turn this into a lengthy blog post, I would only be adding fluff. It’s too easy.

Here are the steps:

1. Post really amazing content on a regular basis
2. Do NOT post anything that isn’t absolutely amazing just for the sake of getting a post up
3. Support all of it with Facebook ads
4. Reply to everything that people post in reply or on your wall

That’s it. Sorry to disappoint those who specialize in social media as a career (I’m one of them) but those are the steps required to make Facebook sing for your business. If you do those steps, you’ll be doing better than literally 99% of your competitors.

With that said, there’s a caveat. This will get you to the top. It won’t keep you there. The truth about Facebook marketing is spreading and more people are starting to get it. This is why there’s hope for people like me. The next 17 steps in the process are much more complicated and result in a stronger Facebook presence designed to drive business. Thankfully, these are the steps to make clients stay ahead of the 99% now as well as next year when 10%-20% start to “get it” with Facebook.

Today, the best way to do it is to hire a professional or to diligently perform the 4 easy steps above.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s an extremely complex and effective methodology behind utilizing Facebook as a true marketing and advertising tool that requires some specialized training, a strong sense of creativity, a willingness to experiment, and an unrelenting focus on keeping up with the latest and greatest from experts and Facebook itself.

Then again, there’s a simple way as well. As much as I would love to turn this into a lengthy blog post, I would only be adding fluff. It’s too easy.

Here are the steps:

1. Post really amazing content on a regular basis
2. Do NOT post anything that isn’t absolutely amazing just for the sake of getting a post up
3. Support all of it with Facebook ads
4. Reply to everything that people post in reply or on your wall

That’s it. Sorry to disappoint those who specialize in social media as a career (I’m one of them) but those are the steps required to make Facebook sing for your business. If you do those steps, you’ll be doing better than literally 99% of your competitors.

With that said, there’s a caveat. This will get you to the top. It won’t keep you there. The truth about Facebook marketing is spreading and more people are starting to get it. This is why there’s hope for people like me. The next 17 steps in the process are much more complicated and result in a stronger Facebook presence designed to drive business. Thankfully, these are the steps to make clients stay ahead of the 99% now as well as next year when 10%-20% start to “get it” with Facebook.

Today, the best way to do it is to hire a professional or to diligently perform the 4 easy steps above.

Over the last couple of weeks, my exploration into the world of effective automotive social media has turned more towards pitches and consultations. We’ve spent 9 months now digging deeper than ever before into what constitutes success and we’ve come to the conclusion that it’s pretty simple – if you aren’t selling cars and driving business to the service drive through social media, you’re not doing it right.

The posting strategies that have proven to be successful are a whole other topic that couldn’t fit into a single blog post, so for now I just want to explore the quick and easy methods that I’ve used to tell if a Facebook page is working or not. It comes down to reach, which means that the answer has absolutely, positively nothing to do with fans. I’ll demonstrate that in a moment.

First, let’s take a look at what you want to see on your page or other pages to determine if they’re posts are actually being seen and having an influence on local people on Facebook.

All of the examples above have varying levels of likes, many of which are higher than most dealers. This is used to grade how well a page is doing, but it’s a false positive. The real number to look at rather than likes is the number to the right – “talking about this.” You can determine how many people are actually being reached based upon this number. For example, look at the second example from the top. It has a ton of fans so it must be doing well, right? Wrong. With only 67 people talking about it, that means that the vast majority of the “fans” are not seeing the posts at all in their news feeds.

Keep in mind that it’s a small ration of reach. In other words, the bottom example that has 70 people talking about this is reaching much more than the one above it that has 14 people talking about it. As a rough estimate, you can multiple the number of people talking about it by 20 and that’s approximately the number of people being reached by the page in a given week. In other words, the bottom example is reaching around 1400 people per week and the one above it is reaching around 380 per week.

Here are some examples of what pages should look like after a few months or even weeks of doing the right things on their page:

As you can see, the engagement ratios (determined by dividing the number talking about this with the total number of likes) are much higher in this batch. Even the page at the bottom with a mere 267 likes is talked about by nearly three times as many people as the page above with over 73K fans. The number of people reached by the dealerships’ messages through use Facebook news feeds is much, much higher for these properly managed pages.

It’s not just about how many people you’re reaching. It’s also about where the people you’re reaching live.

Here’s an example of a page that is reaching a lot of people:

As you can see, they have 2,769 people talking about the posts. They have a good engagement ratio relative to their fans and they’re growing nicely. They are very popular in New York City and reaching more 18-24 year olds than any other demographic. You can easily tell when they started targeting more people with Facebook ads based upon the graph.

It all looks great, right? Well, considering this is a dealership in California, it’s likely that they’re focused on getting nationwide popularity. This is a very bad idea.

I went through 74 people who had liked, shared, or commented on their posts. I could not find a single person engaging with the dealership that was within 30 miles of the store. You cannot easily sell cars to people when you’re targeting the whole country. Is it possible? Sure. Is it much less likely than if you maintain a strong local following and target the people who can actually drive to the dealership and buy a car or get their transmission serviced.

In thirty seconds and two clicks of the button, you can tell very quickly if your Facebook presence is working even without seeing the Facebook Insights. I’ve shown dealers how to dig deeper into their insights to prove it even further, but these two telltale signs are very clear indicators of a page’s presence and how well it is working.

Facebook should be localized. The number of fans is a much less important indicator than the number of people who are actually seeing your posts. The sooner you understand the way that Facebook marketing truly works, the easier it will be for you to find success and start selling cars as a result.

Over the last couple of weeks, my exploration into the world of effective automotive social media has turned more towards pitches and consultations. We’ve spent 9 months now digging deeper than ever before into what constitutes success and we’ve come to the conclusion that it’s pretty simple – if you aren’t selling cars and driving business to the service drive through social media, you’re not doing it right.

The posting strategies that have proven to be successful are a whole other topic that couldn’t fit into a single blog post, so for now I just want to explore the quick and easy methods that I’ve used to tell if a Facebook page is working or not. It comes down to reach, which means that the answer has absolutely, positively nothing to do with fans. I’ll demonstrate that in a moment.

First, let’s take a look at what you want to see on your page or other pages to determine if they’re posts are actually being seen and having an influence on local people on Facebook.

All of the examples above have varying levels of likes, many of which are higher than most dealers. This is used to grade how well a page is doing, but it’s a false positive. The real number to look at rather than likes is the number to the right – “talking about this.” You can determine how many people are actually being reached based upon this number. For example, look at the second example from the top. It has a ton of fans so it must be doing well, right? Wrong. With only 67 people talking about it, that means that the vast majority of the “fans” are not seeing the posts at all in their news feeds.

Keep in mind that it’s a small ration of reach. In other words, the bottom example that has 70 people talking about this is reaching much more than the one above it that has 14 people talking about it. As a rough estimate, you can multiple the number of people talking about it by 20 and that’s approximately the number of people being reached by the page in a given week. In other words, the bottom example is reaching around 1400 people per week and the one above it is reaching around 380 per week.

Here are some examples of what pages should look like after a few months or even weeks of doing the right things on their page:

As you can see, the engagement ratios (determined by dividing the number talking about this with the total number of likes) are much higher in this batch. Even the page at the bottom with a mere 267 likes is talked about by nearly three times as many people as the page above with over 73K fans. The number of people reached by the dealerships’ messages through use Facebook news feeds is much, much higher for these properly managed pages.

It’s not just about how many people you’re reaching. It’s also about where the people you’re reaching live.

Here’s an example of a page that is reaching a lot of people:

As you can see, they have 2,769 people talking about the posts. They have a good engagement ratio relative to their fans and they’re growing nicely. They are very popular in New York City and reaching more 18-24 year olds than any other demographic. You can easily tell when they started targeting more people with Facebook ads based upon the graph.

It all looks great, right? Well, considering this is a dealership in California, it’s likely that they’re focused on getting nationwide popularity. This is a very bad idea.

I went through 74 people who had liked, shared, or commented on their posts. I could not find a single person engaging with the dealership that was within 30 miles of the store. You cannot easily sell cars to people when you’re targeting the whole country. Is it possible? Sure. Is it much less likely than if you maintain a strong local following and target the people who can actually drive to the dealership and buy a car or get their transmission serviced.

In thirty seconds and two clicks of the button, you can tell very quickly if your Facebook presence is working even without seeing the Facebook Insights. I’ve shown dealers how to dig deeper into their insights to prove it even further, but these two telltale signs are very clear indicators of a page’s presence and how well it is working.

Facebook should be localized. The number of fans is a much less important indicator than the number of people who are actually seeing your posts. The sooner you understand the way that Facebook marketing truly works, the easier it will be for you to find success and start selling cars as a result.

There's a trend on Facebook that simply won't die. Many dealership pages continue to offer giveaways, contests, and even "exclusive" games on Facebook in order to get more fans. It has been proven over and over again to be ineffective at getting targeted, high-quality fans but there seems to be an insistence on continuing it in order to bulk up the numbers.

The problem with this is that it actually hurts a page more than it helps, especially for localized businesses.

The example above demonstrates a "popular" dealership page that has over 250,000 fans. In 14 hours, it's been able to accumulate three likes and likely a handful of clicks, but the important thing to note is that it leads to an app that forces people to like the page in order to play the game and have a chance to win a million dollars or an iPad Mini. This cannot be stated more clearly - you do not want people to like your page because they think they're going to win something or get to play a game. The people that like the page for these reasons will not be engaged. They're not interested in your content. They aren't there to buy a product. They're on you page to try to win something or to play a game.

It's important to understand what this does to the page. The Facebook algorithm is very picky when it comes to presenting business page Facebook posts on news feeds. Every negative action as well as non-actions count against your posts' likelihood to be seen. It's not just the people who hit "hide" or "report" on your posts. They are bad enough, but the people who simply pass over your posts are also counting against your future posts' abilities to be visible on news feeds. Every time someone sees a post and scrolls right passed it without liking, commenting, clicking through, or sharing the post, they are less likely to see future posts... as are their friends.

The Facebook algorithm is designed to reward authenticity. It's made to allow their users to be presented with the content that they are most likely to enjoy, which means that for a business page to "coax" people into liking their page is a localization disaster.

Posts should be real. They should be designed to encourage engagement and to offer people what they expect to see. If they like a business page because they want to see things that the business knows about (such as information about their business and industry) as well as special deals that can come to them as a result of being a fan, then that's exactly what they should be delivered. It's the type of content that will get them more engaged and help them to spread that engagement to their own friends. Using contests or giveaways to bribe people into liking a page demonstrates an obvious misunderstanding of how the algorithm works and how Facebook itself can be useful for a local business.

There is, however, one type of contest or giveaway that can be effective. It's the type that rewards local people for visiting the business itself. These types of giveaways and contests can be golden. It would take a couple of blog posts to go into details about how these types of contests and giveaways work, but the important thing to remember is that a giveaway or contest should be an incentive for physical visits, not to try to accumulate worthless Facebook fans.

There's a trend on Facebook that simply won't die. Many dealership pages continue to offer giveaways, contests, and even "exclusive" games on Facebook in order to get more fans. It has been proven over and over again to be ineffective at getting targeted, high-quality fans but there seems to be an insistence on continuing it in order to bulk up the numbers.

The problem with this is that it actually hurts a page more than it helps, especially for localized businesses.

The example above demonstrates a "popular" dealership page that has over 250,000 fans. In 14 hours, it's been able to accumulate three likes and likely a handful of clicks, but the important thing to note is that it leads to an app that forces people to like the page in order to play the game and have a chance to win a million dollars or an iPad Mini. This cannot be stated more clearly - you do not want people to like your page because they think they're going to win something or get to play a game. The people that like the page for these reasons will not be engaged. They're not interested in your content. They aren't there to buy a product. They're on you page to try to win something or to play a game.

It's important to understand what this does to the page. The Facebook algorithm is very picky when it comes to presenting business page Facebook posts on news feeds. Every negative action as well as non-actions count against your posts' likelihood to be seen. It's not just the people who hit "hide" or "report" on your posts. They are bad enough, but the people who simply pass over your posts are also counting against your future posts' abilities to be visible on news feeds. Every time someone sees a post and scrolls right passed it without liking, commenting, clicking through, or sharing the post, they are less likely to see future posts... as are their friends.

The Facebook algorithm is designed to reward authenticity. It's made to allow their users to be presented with the content that they are most likely to enjoy, which means that for a business page to "coax" people into liking their page is a localization disaster.

Posts should be real. They should be designed to encourage engagement and to offer people what they expect to see. If they like a business page because they want to see things that the business knows about (such as information about their business and industry) as well as special deals that can come to them as a result of being a fan, then that's exactly what they should be delivered. It's the type of content that will get them more engaged and help them to spread that engagement to their own friends. Using contests or giveaways to bribe people into liking a page demonstrates an obvious misunderstanding of how the algorithm works and how Facebook itself can be useful for a local business.

There is, however, one type of contest or giveaway that can be effective. It's the type that rewards local people for visiting the business itself. These types of giveaways and contests can be golden. It would take a couple of blog posts to go into details about how these types of contests and giveaways work, but the important thing to remember is that a giveaway or contest should be an incentive for physical visits, not to try to accumulate worthless Facebook fans.

If there’s one thing that gets under my skin the most about local businesses on social media, it’s that they rarely take advantage of one of the most important types of posts: local facts. It’s a low-hanging fruit that is completely missed by most.

It starts with having a local following and fan base, of course, but if your page is in what we like to call stage 2, then local facts are an easy way to get people talking to you and about you. It’s one of the most important tools in our arsenal that we use to promote clients but it doesn’t take a team of social media specialists to make it happen. You can do it very easily on your own.

In the example above, you see this Long Beach Chevy dealer has a post up about an interesting fact for the Long Beach area. Someone saw it in their news feed, recognized it, then tagged their friend in a comment. The friend saw the post as a result and commented as well. He recognized the house in this case… it was his neighbor!

The individual interaction has an exceptional algorithmic effect on Facebook. Whenever anyone likes, comments, or shares a post, it has an opportunity to be seen by that person’s friends. When something like this happens where two friends are having an exchange on the post, the chances of their individual friends seeing the post increases, of course, but the chances of their shared friends seeing it shoot up exponentially. Once one of those friends like the post, now it’s very likely that their entire shared circle of friends will see the post.

This is a great thing because chances are very high that the majority of the people within this circle are within the market area of the dealership. That’s one of the ways the Facebook algorithm works. It’s one of the easiest ways to get posts like this to be liked by 30 local people and seen by over 1000 locals.

If there’s one thing that gets under my skin the most about local businesses on social media, it’s that they rarely take advantage of one of the most important types of posts: local facts. It’s a low-hanging fruit that is completely missed by most.

It starts with having a local following and fan base, of course, but if your page is in what we like to call stage 2, then local facts are an easy way to get people talking to you and about you. It’s one of the most important tools in our arsenal that we use to promote clients but it doesn’t take a team of social media specialists to make it happen. You can do it very easily on your own.

In the example above, you see this Long Beach Chevy dealer has a post up about an interesting fact for the Long Beach area. Someone saw it in their news feed, recognized it, then tagged their friend in a comment. The friend saw the post as a result and commented as well. He recognized the house in this case… it was his neighbor!

The individual interaction has an exceptional algorithmic effect on Facebook. Whenever anyone likes, comments, or shares a post, it has an opportunity to be seen by that person’s friends. When something like this happens where two friends are having an exchange on the post, the chances of their individual friends seeing the post increases, of course, but the chances of their shared friends seeing it shoot up exponentially. Once one of those friends like the post, now it’s very likely that their entire shared circle of friends will see the post.

This is a great thing because chances are very high that the majority of the people within this circle are within the market area of the dealership. That’s one of the ways the Facebook algorithm works. It’s one of the easiest ways to get posts like this to be liked by 30 local people and seen by over 1000 locals.

There are always going to be those who are real experts offering real products or services with proven strategies and the ability to make changes to their techniques as the market and industries change. There are also always going to be those who put on the uniform, slide on the aviator sunglasses, and pretend like they know how to pilot a passenger jet. Sadly, the latter is starting to outnumber the former, particularly in the world of search marketing.

It happens in many industries, particularly ones where things get easier. For example, owning a custom computer shop was a nice, tight niche just a few years ago. Now, you can drop a paper airplane off a building and have a 50/50 chance of hitting someone who can build a custom computer. It isn’t that they are faking. It’s that the modular design and cross-compatibility of computer hardware components has made building custom computers as easy as building a LEGO house.

The arena of search marketing is different. In both PPC management as well as search engine optimization, there has been a tremendous influx of experts and services filling the ears and inboxes of prospective clients. It’s not that it is easier than it was in the past. In fact, it’s harder today than it has ever been in the past, particularly with the complexities, risks, and quality needs of SEO. The reason that it’s growing is because the pitch is easy. Search is obscure. It’s super easy to fall for the wrong pitch because they’re all starting to sound the same.

In Catch Me if You Can, Leonardo DiCaprio‘s portrayal of the infamous Frank Abagnale Jr. was an example of what I’m seeing more and more of today in the search marketing world. It’s a matter of being able to talk the talk and winging it when it comes to walking the walk. Everyone says the buzzwords. Unique content. Targeting competitors’ cities. Market coverage. Link building. Social signals. I’ve heard pitches from people who can barely spell “SEO” that made them sound like their services were rock solid until you asked them detailed questions or demanded more than one or two example of successes.

Therein lies the two biggest problems. Those who are buying SEO don’t know the right questions to ask or what the correct answers should be. More importantly, every vendor in the industry has at least a couple of examples of where their clients are ranking well even if they had no hand in making it happen. This happened to me first hand this week when a site that I had optimized to rank well two years ago was used as an example of search dominance by their website provider. Their rankings had fallen in the two years since we had optimized them but they were still good enough to be an example of this web provider’s excellence.

There’s really no way to fight this, unfortunately. For my own company, I’ll be collecting dozens of examples of SEO domination to give to the sales team, but what about the smaller companies that are doing it right? If they have a dozen clients and they’re all doing very well, they still look bad compared to the giant company with 2000 clients that has 8 examples of good performance. Is there a solution? Is there a way to wake up the industry and show them how to tell the difference between aggressive, solid search marketing and the type that isn’t worth a buck, let along hundreds or thousands a month?