How can an auto dealer, stressed out from poor sales figures, turn Facebook fans into leads? Apart from geo-targeting posts, timing plays a vital role in using Social Media to effectively market your dealership. 

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and YouTube have enabled customers and companies to communicate with each other clearly, publicly and in a timely manner. Dealerships finding success with social media lead generation and public relations efforts engage their audience with relevant content and provide shoppers information to help make purchasing decisions easier.

Being able to predict the level of engagement your post will receive based on the time it was updated, will allow your marketing message to be received by the right audience at the right time.

The following tips will enable you and your dealership to send your marketing messages at the times they will be most effective.

Tip #1

To achieve high volume of traffic from FB post @ 11AM EST

Why 11AM? When it is 11am on the east coast, it is 8am on the west coast – meaning both coasts’ morning time overlaps. Virtue, a Social media networking company agrees with this estimation -“The three biggest usage spikes tend to occur on weekdays at 11:00 a.m., 3:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. ET”- Dan Zarella.

Additionally, Zarella’s research indicates that a majority of Social Media activity (with the exception of Twitter) occurs on the weekends.  His technique called “contra-competitive timing” suggests that marketers who update their Social profiles during the week are better able to cut through the online chatter and get their message heard.  However, dealers should keep in mind that their target audience is most active on Social Media during the weekends and should not neglect these peak days.

Tip #2

The best sharing frequency on FB is .5 posts per day

Do you really want to be the dealership that annoys its fans? By limiting your FB sharing posts to 1 post per day you’ll be able to engage your audience without over-sharing. Your objective should be to entertain, educate and captivate fans without overwhelming them.  Keep fans happy by having a content strategy and staying consistent.

Tip #3

Wednesday at 3:00 pm ET is consistently the busiest period

A Facebook post data case study by Virtue analyzing 1,500+ brand streams found that more than 1.64 million posts and 7.56 million comments in all were recorded between August 10, 2007 and October 10, 2010.  Data illustrated that Monday was the most popular day for posts and Wednesday was the most popular day for comments.  Thus, dealers wanting to rank high in fans’ news feeds would be wise to post the most important updates on Wednesday in order to achieve the highest possible engagement.

Other Quick Tips

• According to The Science of Social Timing, the vast majority of Facebook shares occur on Saturday
• Posting once every two days will result in the most “likes”
• Try different posting strategies and monitor results before deciding on a content strategy

For more information, check out the study by award-winning social media scientist DanZarella.  In his study, Zarella defines when and how often we should be reaching out to our audiences: The Science of Social Timing parts 1-3

What’s your social strategy?

Do you agree with Zarella’s findings? What times do you post to Facebook? Are you happy with the amount of engagement you receive?

Please share your strategy with us in a comment below!