Over the years, Facebook has increasingly become pay-to-play. The reality is that less than five percent of your followers will ever see your organic content appear in their News Feed. However, that doesn’t mean you should just give up on posting to your Business Page and focus solely on Facebook Ads—it simply means you have to be smart about what you post to your Page. 

A mistake many people make is thinking that your Page simply exists as “free advertising.” The reality is that your Facebook Page is advertising, but not in the traditional sense. The same ad campaign you use on TV, radio, and on billboards won’t see the same success on Facebook. Plastering your Page with posts, such as, “Buy this car. You want believe the price,” is not something Facebook users want to see. If you do that too often, your current followers are likely to unfollow you, and could possibly mark your posts as spam. Your Facebook Page is not the forum for that type of advertising.

Instead, your Facebook audience wants to see useful, fun, and informative content posted once or twice a day. This means you have to curate content—so do yourself a favor and refrain from inundating your audience with posts after post about the new vehicle arriving on your lot. You can write those posts every so often, and when you do, display the content in a way that is eye-catching or engaging to your audience. 

To balance a brand’s desire to push product and an audience’s affinity toward useful content, many marketers swear by the 80/20 rule. This rule states that 80 percent of your content should be informative and entertaining, while the remaining 20 percent of posts should sell your product.

While the 80/20 rule is a great guideline and helps with content creation, the perfect post should do both. An example of the perfect post is showing a customer or team member having fun test driving a car that just arrived. The perfect post may not always be possible, but it is something to strive for, as each post is a new opportunity to win over a fan, and hopefully, gain their business. 

When you post content that people enjoy and are genuinely interested in, your brand will stand out in their minds the next time they are looking for something that you offer. This could mean that they will occasionally check up on your page if they haven’t seen a post from you in a while, or potential new customers may look at your page to see what kind of content you post to familiarize themselves with your brand and your product/services. You don’t want to disappoint anyone going out of their way to look at your Facebook Page, do you?

It’s important to remember that, before they ever walk in the door, many customers use your website and your Facebook page to learn about your business and decide whether they are going to do business with you. These potential customers are interested in getting to know you. Will you educate them throughout the process? Will they connect with your staff? Do you make the car buying and service processes fun?

You can easily answer these questions with images of your team members enjoying themselves at work, customer testimonials, and links to informative blog posts on your website.

If you’ve caught yourself engaging in some of the previously mentioned bad practices, rethink what you post and make improvements. If you feel like you don’t have time to create engaging content, one solution is to hire an intern or recent college grad who understands social media and has a knack for creativity. With so much going on inside your business, there is no excuse for not posting engaging organic content. As for Facebook Advertising, PCG has you covered.

About the Author

PCG Digital Marketing is an award winning digital agency headquartered in Eatontown, NJ. We help our clients get found online through innovative search, social and online advertising campaigns.