Ep. 642 - How to Actually Sell Cars On Social Media, With Robin Wilson
In this episode my guest is Robin Wilson, founder of Social Grenade and SCP Agency, we’re diving deep into the messy, weird, and wonderful world of social media for car dealerships—what works, what flops, and how to stop posting inventory photos like you’re running a 2003 Craigslist ad.
If you’ve ever wondered:
“Are we posting too much… or not enough?”
“Why aren’t we getting engagement on our posts?”
“Is TikTok even worth it, or should we just stick to dancing in the showroom after hours?”
Robin’s got answers—and they’re good.
Plus, she drops some absolute gems about building a tribe online, why responding to every review (yes, even the nasty ones) is mission-critical, and how a tattoo post led to selling a Camaro (no joke).
This isn’t your typical social media chat. It’s fun, it’s raw, and it’s ridiculously practical.
So, if you’re tired of yelling into the social media void and hoping someone hears you, hit play.
Episode Brought To You By AUTOFI
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Episode Transcript
MC: 0:00
(Episode Sponsor) This episode is brought to you by Autofi.
Robin: 0:03
(Hook) Understanding what Mark Zuckerberg wants will serve you so well. He wants to keep people on his platform for as long as possible so that he can serve up more ad dollars.
MC: 0:12
Hey auto industry. Welcome back to this episode of the Dealer Playbook Podcast. My guest today is Robin Wilson, the founder of Social Grenade and SCP Agency. We're going to talk about social media for car dealers the do's, the don'ts, the good, the bad and we want you to have a playbook so that you can start driving warm leads organically for your dealership.
(Podcast Intro) The car business is rapidly changing and modern car dealers are meeting the demand. I'm Michael Cirillo and together we'll explore the best strategies, ideas and tools to create a thriving life in and out of the business. This is the Dealer Playbook.
(Episode Start) Robin, thanks so much for joining me on the Dealer Playbook 100%.
Robin: 0:59
I'm so excited to be here and I love your background. It's amazing. I love all the stuff you have going on back here.
MC: 1:05
This old thing it. I love it, very well curated at time of recording, a canadian polar vortex has ravished the country I'm in, just north of fort worth, texas, and everyone's freaking out because it's like 25 degrees today. But you're a little bit further. You're a little bit further North. What's happening there Is everyone safe?
Robin: 1:32
You have electricity, obviously, yeah, so if you went up to Kansas city, like just a couple hours North of me, like it got hit pretty hard. We got a light dusting and snow and the temperatures are like 10 degrees, but other than that, like the roads are clear. I only had to pick up one employee yesterday and bring them to work, because I'm the bus. Whenever stuff goes messy I'm like I have the Jeep, I just pop it in and we just go.
MC: 1:52
I'm glad you qualified. What kind of vehicle? Because I was then picturing you in one of those tanks that drive up the side of a glacier.
Robin: 2:01
You know if you've met my employees. It's a short bus. I tell them that all the time. I'm like beep. The short bus just pulled up. Can I get?
MC: 2:09
inside. I've always been curious about this. We've never talked, I mean even when we've hung out in person. I've never gotten this. I mean, you have a BBC company, you do social media. You've worked in dealerships. Were you always in the car business? What did you do before the car business? How'd you get into it?
Robin: 2:32
No, so I was one of the casualties of the mortgage meltdown, so I lived in, breathed in that world, was 100% sure I was going to retire in that world. I worked for Wells Fargo for over a decade and I was like really ingrained in the real estate world here in Joplin and then in you know, 2011, it was about the time that, like, the last heartbeat of how mortgage was at that time was kind of breathed out. At that time it was like just done, and I spent. I spent a while trying to figure out what I was going to do, cause at that time I was probably like 47, 48. And I'm like I'm trying to figure out what a new career looks like. In my late forts and I was working for a company called Jack Henry who creates mortgage banking software, like the software that runs ATMs or runs the system that processes check. I mean, they have a bunch of systems that they run and I was commuting an hour each way to Monette, missouri so it's between Joplin and Springfield to go to work there and, honest to God, they had such a crappy mortgage product that nobody was buying it and I was an installer for a product that nobody was buying, and so I would drive and I would sit there all day long and I was like this is ridiculous. So on my way home, I stopped by a local community college and went I mean, what does it look like? What classes do you offer? Like I need to figure something out here. And before I knew it, they had me enrolled, my FAFSA was done, my student loan was done, all of the stuff was done, and so I was in night class. I would work until 4pm, drive home and then drive straight to school I mean school from like 6 to 9pm every night, and I got my degree in in business administration. But something really weird happened while I was sitting in that class and, like I don't know that, I learned anything in that whole program that I'm like using today, other than it opened my mind to other ways of doing business.
Robin: 4:10
And if you were around in 2012, in the entrepreneurial world, you'll know that small business owners really pulled us out of the recession. Like they're the ones that created jobs and created opportunities, whatever. And the problem in 2012, is that they were doing. They were. They didn't have a website, they didn't have any online presence. They're the ones ordering the toilet paper, paying the electric bill, going to market, being the employees shutting the doors, I mean, they were doing everything. And so I thought you know what, what if we could use because at the time, we were using social media for our church to run like the youth group and stuff like that I'm like what if we could take the same concept and use it for small business owners and we could help them have an online presence.
Robin: 4:50
Now, in 2012 and 2013, if you had a business page and you had 1000 followers and you made a post, your reach was 1000 people. All 1000 people saw that post. Now it's like that now, but that was before, really pay to play. And so we created a. We created what we thought would be a great idea for getting their presence out there and started in the small business communities. And then, in 2014, my friends at Roper Kia called me and went hey, and they were pretty ahead of their time, cause that was like 2014. Dealers weren't considering social media in 2014, but Roper was and they're like we know that we need a social media presence, but we don't know anything about it and we haggled back and forth for a bit.
Robin: 5:29
It was kind of funny the GM that's there now was actually the used car manager at the time. But the GM that was there at that time he was insisting that I work at the dealership. And I'm like I don't want to work at the dealership, but you need to work at the dealership. And I'm like I don't want to work at the dealership, but you need to work at the dealership. And I'm like but why, I can do all of this from here. And he's like you may know everything about social media, but you don't know crap about the automotive space and you need to work here. And I said, sir, do you understand that if I work there, I am going to be running my business from your dealership? And he goes, yeah, I don't care. And I'm like All right, I'm all in then.
Robin: 6:03
So that's how I kind of got into it and I spent a couple of years actually learning and one of the greatest things that ever happened is they made me a manager. And I say that because I got a seat at the table twice a week and I got to learn the pain points, the profit centers, all of the stuff that was going on from the inside at that manager's table. Like I got to learn that when your, when your Kia cash, your dealer cash is low because you haven't sold enough Optimas. How can I help with that? And I can go. Oh well, we could pull a whole list out of Kia Forte owners and Optima owners, run a campaign to them, a Facebook ad campaign, email campaign, a call campaign to them and we can get our dealer cash finished in the last 10 days of the month. What are we missing? And so I wouldn't have known those things if I wasn't in the store.
MC: 6:42
And so.
Robin: 6:43
I learned from the inside out and then I took this show on the road. I made an arrangement with that GM and the owner, Jack Frost, and I said look, here's what I want to do. I want to go help other dealers, but I can't do it while I'm sitting here. So what if I give you 25% of my salary back and one week a month? My butt doesn't have to be sitting in this chair. I'll still be running all your social. I'll plan it around commercials so that I can be there to help with all of that, but I won't be seated here. They agreed to that we. Quarter two, I bought back another week.
MC: 7:12
Quarter three, I bought back another week and by the end, of that year, we had moved to a vendor relationship, and here I am today. First of all, let's just call out the full circle moment. I don't know why I asked you about the weather. I never start a podcast about the weather and maybe it was the setup for you to say that the owner's name is Jack Frost, exactly.
MC: 7:32
And I met Mr Frost and he's an awesome dude and I'm so glad he leans into that name, by the way. I think that is just the best thing ever.
MC: 7:39
How cool is that His sister's name is Jill His sister's name is Jill, jack and Jill, oh no, thanks for joining us on our podcast at night. But a couple of things I want to dissect here. How do you feel that your knowledge and experience in banking, mortgages, lending, all that sort of stuff has lent its hand to the work that you do in the retail auto industry? I know often our industry looks outside of the industry for inspiration. What are some things that you learned there that you feel you took with you into the car business?
Robin: 8:12
Well, I think that. So not having so. Missouri isn't a bank state for Wells Fargo, so we had a mortgage department here outside of a bank, so you didn't have that brick and mortar that was drawing traffic to you. So that was literally 100% sales right.
Robin: 8:27
I understood that from the very beginning, that I eat what I kill and for the automotive salespeople it has to be the exact same right. You have to be always prospecting, always having those conversations, with your ears tuned to be hearing people, maybe with an issue that they're just wanting to talk about. You don't go straight into sales mode, you're always just in that fact finding place, and people don't understand that. In the mortgage space or in banking space, where you're selling money, that's what we did. We sold money, and vehicles and houses are the two biggest purchases that people will ever make. And you're constantly looking for that relationship. First, because, literally, even if they have like let's talk about the mortgage side of it even if they have a 600 credit score, you know they can still get a mortgage. They're getting an FHA loan, they're getting an okay, they're doing whatever. And so it was funny because I this is really kind of personal, but I was speaking at a friend of mine's funeral this weekend and we were in mortgage together and I was a realtor before. I was a mortgage lender and she was my lender and I was telling the story of the reason that Val and I became such fast friends is because I believed that everybody deserved to have their own home, to have a home that they are paying for every month. That belonged to them. So in the real estate business, you have to be on call, like you have to be on ups, you have to sit out of debt and you're stationed there, so when the phone rings, a licensed agent can talk to them.
Robin: 9:55
Well, the company that I worked for had a big rental division, and so people would call in about wanting to information on a rental home that was available and I would go why do you think you have to rent? And I would start the conversation immediately and take them down a path of homeownership instead of renting. And, like they rented hardly any houses, if I was on the floor because I was literally pulling them and I would be shipping credit apps over to back over to Valerie all day long for her. I go, I know I'm sending you a lot and she goes. It's like mining for gold keep going, and she became one of the best FHA lenders and rural development lenders in the area because she had a solid pipeline of someone feeding those to her.
Robin: 10:28
And so when I think about that in the automotive space and we think about Ally or Westlake or any of the what we call subprime lenders, you know they don't get mad that you're shoveling them stuff all day long as a new car manager or a pre-owned car manager. Don't be all turning your head because of the fact that these borrowers have iffy credit. You know what I'm saying. Like they deserve to drive a nice vehicle. Also, they deserve to have reliable transportation to get their kids to school and to basketball practice too. So develop those relationships with those lenders that you can call on the phone and you can go hey, I know this one kind of looks a little sketchy, but here's the story behind it and sell them the story, because that's what we would do to underwriting. And so I think that really translates over the amount of money that we made in the FHA and RD market whenever I was in real estate and mortgage was crazy. It was crazy, and the lenders, the sales, the automotive dealerships that get have this dialed in are making bank as well.
MC: 11:25
There's a theme here I'm picking up on that I think is interesting because it's going to set the stage, I think, for now that we kind of start transitioning to social media the good, the bad, the ugly, the do's, the don'ts what should dealers be thinking about? All those things that you've learned. And that undertone is authenticity, like there's a genuine sense of how much you care about what you do. There's a drive and a motivation to you, like just the fact that you're going back to school, you're getting degrees, you're, you know, doing things that are seemingly more uncommon to get ahead. This desire that you have, this understanding and desire you have to help people improve the quality of their life, I think is hard come by these days. I wish that wasn't the case. This like nonjudgmental thing that I think our industry kind of struggles with this from rooftop to rooftop which is like oh, you have bad credit. And I think about it personally as well, because three and a half years ago I would have fallen into the no credit category.
MC: 12:26
I moved here from Canada, I started at zero. It was you want to be in your 40s and feel like you're 13 and a half again, move to a different country. It's the best thing ever, and having to start over, knowing full well that when I moved here, there were several dealerships who would not look at me, even though my circumstances were such that I could have them, bless me, buy a car with cash if I wanted to. That would be foolish. I'm an entrepreneur After all, the IRS doesn't need more than they deserve. But so this authenticity that I think sometimes lacks, where I'm just going to kick off our social media conversation here, that authenticity often gets replaced by the latest trend, and it's weird that in 2025 now, it seems, robin, like we're still trying to get a sense of what to even do with social media.
Robin: 13:23
I agree.
MC: 13:24
So let me turn it over to you. What are some of the common mistakes when you go in and you're looking at a dealership from a high level or from where the rubber meets the road and you're looking at a dealership from a high level or from where the rubber meets the road, the common mistakes you see that are happening still and what your recommendation is to the dealer to change things around.
Robin: 13:41
Well, when we audit social media for a dealership on the dealership level right, we're always looking to see a couple of things. One is what are you posting? What content are you posting out there? What kind of engagement is it getting? Are you responding to your Facebook reviews good, bad, indifferent? Are you responding to every one of them, like not just the good ones or not just the bad ones, but are you responding to colored black?
Robin: 14:03
And we throw it all in a big hopper and it's just gallons and gallons of dry dog food kibble going down Right, and then you see one little black kibble and then one little black kibble just here and there, right, like you're not making a dent or annoying people by posting more. You're just not. You're what Number one. You're not posting enough. If you look at if you have like 15,000 followers on your Facebook page and you look at your reach on one post and it's like 175 people, then there are 13,000 people that did not see your post right. And so the main thing whenever I look at them, what they're doing wrong every time without fail there's probably three dealerships in the entire United States that are doing it right is that they're posting inventory pictures and they're posting sold vehicles, and that's what the salespeople are doing as well. That's all they're posting.
MC: 14:58
Is that just because they don't know what else to do?
Robin: 15:01
Yeah, I think so. And you know it's crazy, like I'm teaching a class tomorrow on broadcast posting versus dialogue posting. And the broadcast is that right? Posting inventory photos, generic in stock now call me for the best deal, daily special offers, you know, all of those things those are. Broadcasting is like, really, it's speaking to nobody, it's speaking to everybody and speaking to nobody, you know, other than sharing a customer's excitement about their new car or a specific feature on a car that you can talk about, like, I think, when I mean, I'm waiting for the person to do this and I've said it a million times and nobody's done it yet, right. And you think about everyone who goes to Starbucks and they have their little cardboard cup and has their name written on it wrong, and by the end of the day it's nasty on the top, it's got coffee and not for you but lipstick for some people, you know. And then I would probably take that cup, like we're talking to people, I'm creating a tribe of people and they're coffee drinkers, right, I would take that cup and I would find the dirtiest trade-in vehicle that we have and I would just video that cup going into that dirty car holder, cup holder, right. And then I would go this is disgusting, and I would get a really nice stanley cup or something whatever and I would do another video of it going into a brand new cup holder and I'd go your coffee deserves better. So they're not telling these stories, they're not taking anybody down a path. They're not creating tribes.
Robin: 16:24
I have I have a test friend at Roper Kia that every time I want to test out a theory, I always grab him. I'm like Phil, come here, I need you to do this for me. No, I'm like so I tested it with Phil. So creating tribes of people is so important, right? So if you create a tribe of people by a post that you make, so let's say that for Phil.
Robin: 16:43
I did this last in 2024, we were probably early in the year and I said Phil, I sent him a picture of this beautiful man's buffed arm. It was all like muscly and it had this wing tattoo on it and on the text on the picture I put show me your ink. And I said I need you to post this. And here is the comments that you're going to put on here. I don't have any tattoos yet. I'm thinking about getting my first tattoo. Drop me a picture of your favorite tat and tag your tattoo artist in the comments below blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so, as soon as he did, people started dropping pictures of their tattoos. Because I mean, I'm a boomer but and it usually you had to be a sailor in my generation to have a tattoo, but now it's so mainstream, right, like everybody has one, they all love their nice neck tat yeah.
Robin: 17:28
Right. And so, and I told him, I said I need you to reply back to every comment. So so-and-so drops a picture of their tattoo. Go, oh my God, that one's amazing. I love it. You didn't tag your tattoo guy. Who did it? Was it local? Blah, blah, blah. He responded back. It got to 20, and then it got to 40, and then it got to 80 comments and I'm like, okay, now that we're at 80 comments with his replies back and forth, right, because Facebook doesn't know the difference between Michael commenting on it and Robin replying back. Those are two.
Robin: 17:55
And so I said okay, now I need you to go out and take a picture of the hottest, sexiest traded vehicle that you have right now, the newest one that you have. Make it a cool car. Don't give me a new Nissan Versa, give me something cool. And so he gave me. He made a post. I said and here's the text that will go in it. So he made. I said and here's the text that will go in it. So he made it was a 2020 Camaro with like 50,000 miles on it. I mean, it still had that plate on the front of it from the dealership that probably ran the auction. That's how new. It was Hadn't even been reconned yet. I said, okay, the text is going to be hey, this just arrived. Drop me a number below of what your budget could afford for a sexy vehicle like this.
Robin: 18:31
Now, because he had already created this tribe, the Show Me your Ink tribe. This was pulling into their newsfeeds because they had already played with him that day, and so understanding what Mark Zuckerberg wants will serve you so well. He wants to keep people on his platform for as long as possible so that he can serve up more ad dollars. He could spend more of the business's money on ads and serve them to you and then justify it going. Yeah, they saw my ad. We can see where it got pulled into their newsfeed, and so keeping them on the platform as long as possible is super important. So the minute that a post starts getting legs like the tattoo on when it got to 20, mark Zuckerberg push it, went. I wonder if these people out here would be interested in this as well. And so he pushed it out to a different audience that was like these 20. Once it got to 40, he was like huh, there's a whole other group of people right here that may be interested in this too. Let's push it out to them. And so that's how you get the people to see the thing you want them to see.
Robin: 19:22
Gary Vaynerchuk says jab right, hook right, give them something, then ask for something. Alex Ramosi says never ask, just keep giving them. But Hermosi says never ask, just keep giving them. But I do believe that you have to have the ask in there. So when he put the Camaro in there and said drop me a number below of how much a monthly budget would look like for this vehicle I mean he had somebody commented a dollar, which I don't care if they comment a dollar, it's engagement you clicked the algorithm for me. Thank you, I don't even care if you're snarky. But then someone below went Phil call me right now, and hierarchy. But then someone below went Phil call me right now. And then someone else went I think I could afford $400 a month on this vehicle. How many miles was it again? Blah, blah, blah.
Robin: 19:57
Right, phil sold that car the next day and it's because I mean, think about it, if he had put the Nissan Versa in there, would it have hit home with the tribe of people that he created, right? No, is the answer right. So they're not thinking about who they're speaking to. They think they're talking to everybody, and you need to stop doing that. Another thing that I see them failing to do, on the salesperson level especially, is become the trusted advisor in the car buying process. Okay, so I run a BDC, I have a lot of young women that work for me, and I personally was in my 50s before I knew how often I should get my tires rotated. Okay, so we work in this industry and we think everybody knows all the stuff we know, but they don't, and they would come to me in the service department and go hey, robin, we think it's time to rotate your tires, and I'm like like, did a button pop up somewhere? Is it? Though? Did like a turkey timer pop out this side? How do you know it's time, right?
MC: 20:54
Right.
Robin: 20:54
I didn't know that there was a recommended timeframe for this to happen and even why it happened. Why did I rotate my tires right? And so if a salesperson or even a dealership would take the time to go to educate because you should be educating, entertaining and enlighten people, that's what your social media should be about If they're not educating their people meaning the followers, the 15,000 people that are following you if you're not giving them some sort of education, you are not setting yourself up to be the trusted advisor, and that's what you want. You want the know, like trust, before they show up. So if they made a post that said, did you know? And if you did know, great. But if you didn't share this post because not everybody does know that you need to change, you need to rotate your tires every 7,500 miles.
Robin: 21:34
Also, I had one of my girls that works for me that put a customer on hold in the BDC one time because she was like I just want to make sure I'm telling this lady right. So gap insurance covers for, like, if you get pregnant and that time that you need to take off to have the baby, right? No, that's not what gap insurance is for. I don't know where you came up with that at. But think about that, that people don't know that right, that people don't know what gap insurance is for and they don't get hit with it until they get into the finance office. They feel like they're getting sold one more thing that isn't relevant to them.
MC: 22:04
Right. And the finance manager is saying gap insurance and they're like right no-transcript time.
Robin: 22:41
This is why you should have gap insurance or this is why any of the things that we're preparing them for, so the trusted advisor really just comes down to the fact that, I mean, I think about it like I would be like be like if you were selling cars and you were constantly giving me things about my car that I didn't know, and someone I go to church with says, hey, man, think about I'm going to have to buy a new car this year. I go, hang on, I got a guy and even if we had never met because I've been consuming your content and you have been educating me without you even knowing it you would be my guy and I would be going you need to go see Michael, because that guy knows all of his stuff and he'll take good care.
MC: 23:15
(Sponsor Ad Mid-roll) Hey, we'll hop back into this episode right after we thank today's sponsor, autofi. Despite mass adoption of technology by dealers, the car buying process is still time consuming and incredibly inefficient. In fact, it still takes nearly three hours to buy a car and the average salesperson only sells nine new vehicles per month. Nothing's changed over the last 30 years, but selling a car shouldn't be so hard, whether online or in the showroom. Autofi enables dealers to build trust and fast track the deal to F&I and Autofi dealers see an average of $765 incremental back-end PVR per deal Pretty impressive. Autofi will be at NADA 2025 in New Orleans. You can visit them at booth 4219 to check out their digital retail and showroom solutions, or you can go to autoficom forward slash NADA 2025 to pre-schedule a meeting with their team. All right, let's get back to the conversation.
MC: 23:56
I mean, that's how it works in almost every scenario in life oh, your kids should go to that school, or oh, it's like we want real human feedback. It's funny. As you're talking about this, you probably saw I was looking away, not because I wasn't listening, but because I vaguely remember sharing something similar to this idea of being the authority, being the person, how the algorithm works. You are expressing it much more eloquently than I could and I was trying to find a comment to get your reaction. This guy was like yeah, sure, I'm going to go and buy a car from someone I just met through a Facebook group or something like that, and I wanted to be like well, it works, so bye.
Robin: 24:58
But you know what, even him saying that, like, I would carry on that conversation with him even more, just because, like, first of all, he's feeding my algorithm, right? Sure so even if he's a detractor.
MC: 25:10
Right.
Robin: 25:10
I don't care. I might have that conversation and go do you have a guy? Do you have a trusted advisor already? If you do, fantastic, Love that about you.
MC: 25:18
But not everybody does Not everybody has a guy like you probably do. How do you recommend dealers reconcile this, dare I say, fear of the detractors, the negative comments? We're still very much, I feel like, in an industry where it's like, oh, button up that white shirt and tie and be as professional as possible, and then you get a negative comment. And one of the questions we get all the time at our agency is well, how can we remove that negative Google review? You're missing the point, right. So what do you say to that? To maybe ease the pressure that dealers are feeling to just lean into it because it's helping them more than it is, and sometimes you know they're truly wrong.
Robin: 25:56
The dealership is truly wrong and they have to show that vulnerability as well. So for years for Roper Kia, we were the voice of everything right, all of their reviews, all of everything. And so we had a manager group that we would go to and somebody would post a horrible review. I would go into the managers and go. I need your story. Tell me your story, tim. Tell me what happened in the service department with this lady. Blah, blah, blah. Pull all the notes, give me all the stuff, because I have her story and now I need your story. And between the two, I'm going to structure a response that doesn't attack her, does not make the dealership vulnerable, and I'm going to structure reply because it really isn't about this lady. We've already lost her. Unless you can get her on the phone and save her, we've already lost her as a customer.
Robin: 26:35
It's for the other hundred people that are reading this reply to see were we human when we replied. You know if we didn't make a mistake. You know owning that and going. You know, not every day, when you have humans working for you, does everything go smoothly. I wish you had had a better experience and I wish I could have the chance to re-earn your business again. I understand if we can't, but thank you for bringing this to our attention. We'll be better for the next customer. And then I, if I'm a customer, if I'm someone who has not ever done business at that dealership and I'm reading that I'm like that was grown up of them. That was a way to answer that without going yeah, okay, lady, you stood here and tapped down my counter for blah blah. I mean, I see, I will never, ever let an owner answer his own reviews and I get it because this is the baby he birthed, right? He popped it up Like he borrowed- I want a 2025 statement.
MC: 27:23
Okay, the baby he birthed, I got it.
Robin: 27:26
I got it you have an emoji for it. I'm kidding.
MC: 27:30
I'm kidding, I just couldn't pass up on a good tee up.
Robin: 27:33
I love it. But the thing is that you know, if you think about how much blood, sweat and tears and angst I mean, I'm an entrepreneur, you're an entrepreneur, think about the time you're like, holy crap, how are we covering payroll? These clients just quit us. I still have all of these people I have to pay and so, and now I've got some jerk who just gave me a horrible review and I'm mad because I literally borrowed money from my dad to pay payroll today. And then they're going, you stupid SOB, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so we take all of the emotion out of it when we're responding for our clients and we just go back in and go okay, how can we humanize what happened here? Honor, the person who left the review, even if they are a turd, and also honor you know the dealership has humans that will mess up from time to time.
MC: 28:14
Talk to me about. So we've talked a little bit about Facebook. We've you've given us some really awesome tips here about how the algorithm works. The thing I'm picking up here is kind of ties back to the authenticity, like be you but build a tribe, like find people from varying demographics and then lean into them. I love that little connector. I hope everyone listening and watching caught what you said. It's like they've already played with you today. Zucky's going to make sure that they play with you again. I don't think people really often think about that. One follow-up before I move on to my next question is you're either not posting enough or potentially posting too much. What do you find is the common sweet spot? Is there one?
Robin: 28:59
There really isn't. I mean, it really depends on what your following will tell you and you can always go into your analytics. I mean, facebook makes it super easy to find and you can see what's working and what's not working and what to dish more of and what to dial back on. But there really, there really, if you think about it smartly, right? So let's say that you want to post all of your sold customers, but it's going to bury the newsfeed. So sold customers or birthdays or anniversaries, things that are like just those things that happen on that day, I would post them in stories, right, because they have a 24 hour time limit. They're going to be in stories and people can swipe through and you can be interested in one day. Who cares if you have 17 employees that have a birthday today? You don't want to bury your news feed with 17 happy birthdays, right, because really nobody but their mama cares and really, as a parent of five kids, there's times whenever I'm like, holy crap, is this somebody's birthday again? God dang, but god, did somebody send them something for me? I don't know.
Robin: 29:56
Stories is a really good way, like if you have stuff or if, like, you want to wait till the end of the month and post all of your sold customers, pop them into stories or turn them into a video and pop them into reels, but don't bury your newsfeed with that. So there really is no too much. There's too much in your newsfeed for sure, because that's where you know that's what's pushing into other people's newsfeed. So if you want to honor people, I would do it in stories or in reels. And I'm telling you right now, with all of the hoo-ha about TikTok maybe going away or not going away right now, if you're not using reels right now, it's really a miss, and I even made a post today.
Robin: 30:30
Facebook will tell you what they want you to do, and every time I post a a reel right now, because that's where they're focusing on is reals, because they don't know whether tick tock's going away either yeah, but so they'll send me a notification. Nice job, your reel reached 100 plays. You can watch it again or make a new reel, and so if facebook's telling me what to do, why would I not go? Not a problem, let me feed that machine again, because zuckerberg is going to give me more lift.
MC: 30:54
See, this is this, and this answers a question I've even had, which is Do they just want me for my money and that's why they're making the recommendations, or are they making the recommendations because of the recommendations will actually work and help you? Sounds like it'll actually help you.
Robin: 31:14
So, so, yes and yes, so, oh my gosh, it's going to go way back for just a little bit. In the olden days there was a live streaming app called Meerkat and then another one called Periscope.
MC: 31:23
They came out about the same time, I love those yep.
Robin: 31:26
And Gary Vee went all in on Meerkat. He was at South by Southwest. He was promoting Meerkat because he was an investor in it. Then the edge rank that was needed, the tool that was needed to help it get lift, was purchased. Periscope had access to it through Twitter and Meerkat didn't, and Meerkat died. But so this was the first app that was a live streaming app. Facebook didn't have Facebook live, nobody else had it, just Periscope. So people are like live streaming all day long.
Robin: 31:53
Everyone would be like, hey, hop on my scope, blah, blah, blah, right, and, matter of fact, I did a Periscope with Tess and Ulrich back in the day, and so the fun thing was is that Zuckerberg was busting his butt trying to get Facebook live up as fast as he could, and when it first rolled out, it rolled out for coaches or influencers. At first you would get the red button. Nobody else had the red button. But these people, like every day, wake up and go to have a red button. No red button, or you had to have so many followers.
Robin: 32:22
And so because they were testing to see how much strain the system could take if everybody went live stream at the same time it wasn't built for that, so he had to go. Okay, this many users. I've got 1 million users that have access to it and it's straining our economy like this. Bolster up all of this before he rolled it out tomorrow. It was very smart the way he rolled it out, so, but by the time Facebook live was available to everybody, nobody uses Periscope anymore. I don't think they do anyways, I don't.
MC: 32:50
Can you? Even now? I'm curious. You keep going, I'm listening, but now I'm also curious.
Robin: 32:55
So then everyone started moving. So when, when Facebook live came out, people who had Periscope would be doing two at once. They'd be doing one on Facebook live and one on Periscope, okay, and so the cool thing was is that because Zuck wanted to take over and dominate and wanted Periscope to go away? He'll never say that out loud, but that's what he wanted. If you did a live, he gave you more reach than any other posts that you would get. Like it was like going to the casino on a Wednesday when they've loosened all the dials, you know, and everybody's running, all the machines are loose, right. Well, that's what Zuckerberg will do when it's something he's focused on.
Robin: 33:28
When he wanted to take over YouTube video views, he wanted to have more video views than YouTube did. Then he wanted to have more video views than YouTube did. Then he would give anytime you posted a video, he would give it more lift. And then it used to be I could take you through the history of social media. It used to be you had to click on it to hear the sound, like the video would roll, but there'd be no sound and you had to click on it, right, and so so what he did was he modified the measurement so he considered three seconds a video of you, and so if you watched his videos for three seconds, he tallied it as a video of you, and then after like a year, he was able to go look, we have more video watching on Facebook than YouTube has. You should spend your ad dollars here. And so if you will look at what he's trying, what he's accomplishing or looking to accomplish, then just ride that wave in with him. And right now it happens to be reels. And so, although he doesn't not that he doesn't want our money, he does want our money, but the only way to keep users on the platform is fresh, new content.
Robin: 34:22
Facebook doesn't put out its own content, so they count on creators or business pages to create enough engaging content. Not just crap, not just your Nissan Versa, not just your oh my God, it's 1.9% APR. Blah, blah, blah. You have to engage them, and that's why we created social grenade was because that was being missed. The. Do you like pineapple on your pizza or not? Are you an iPhone, android user? Right, if you will play with me here, then the next thing I serve you up is going to be about something I want you to see, but you have to get them to play with you or you're not going to make it into anybody's news feed and nobody comes to your business page to look at what you got going on nobody cares.
MC: 35:00
No, I love this. I love because for me it's the human element. It's like would you watch this or would you pay attention? No, well, guess what surprise so sanitized right.
Robin: 35:12
They've got some corporate, somebody or other or some oem approved vendor. Yes, they have two craps. They're just serving the oem loading up these facebook pages with ford f-150 on a snowy mountain, blah, blah, blah yeah, yep, you actually kind of answered where I was going to go next, which was tick tock.
MC: 35:29
I mean like for me, okay session. This is the segment of the show where you perform therapy In my brain in the context of engaging with real human beings who live in my market area, who I can build a relationship. The opportunity is unparalleled the fact that I can go on my phone and start building relationships with my community, and you've given us all these examples and the stuff you're testing out with Phil and all this. And then I hear all these dealers that are like but we're just not going viral. And then you hear the one dealer in a 20 group that's like, yeah, but we do this dance on TikTok and we got like 400,000 views. And I'm like this is the therapy piece for me, robin.
MC: 36:15
I'm like, aside from not knowing whether or not TikTok is going to exist, a what the heck does viral even mean anymore? And if the meaning of it is to have 700,000 views from every other country but the one that I live in, what am I doing? What is the meaning of life? All of a sudden? You know what I mean. Like I struggle with this fundamentally, cause I'm like I would rather get 10 comments or, to your point, 80 comments from people who lived in Joplin, missouri. If I'm working in Joplin and have an exchange with them and have the ability for them to be like oh who's this guy? I'm going to go click on his profile. Oh cool, he sells cars at roper kia. You know what I mean.
Robin: 36:56
Like I would rather have that than 700 000 views from sri lanka and china right, and you know, if I advise sales people which I do because I'm just going to shameless plug in here, but social grenade comes with a performance manager and training for sales people as well I tell them to become the mayor of their town, right. Where are the best tacos in town? Where is the best pawn shop in town? If you're like a gold collector or you love to fish and you can pick up the best fishing rods at Joplin Pawn and Purchase when are the best things Become the mayor of your town, right. So people like to know. We all get stuck in the same three restaurant rut. Right, because we just don't know. Right, but if Phil would go, oh my God, lalo's Taqueria on 7th Street looks like a dive, but it isn't. Those people barely speaking within their best street tacos you've ever gotten right, and he tags Lalo's Taqueria If she has. If they have a Facebook page, now you're stealing social media. Right, because you're tagging their page and you're like going, hey, I'm friends with Lalo, me and Lalo, and if you're following Lalo, you should be buying a car from me. Is the perception that we're saying, right, like, and I'm in my Rupert Kia shirt and I'm eating tacos at Lalo's. So become a mayor of your town and so not just are you? So? Now, whenever you do stuff, it pertains to your community.
Robin: 38:14
And going viral to me, like people ask me, like going what's your most viral post that you've ever done? And I'm like, oh well, on TikTok it was my husband who almost burned down the shed to the pool, which did not ever, and my wiener dog running for his life because Brian had the water hose out there but didn't have the water turned on. And so most of them about Brian are pretty funny. But but that doesn't get me business right, that's just entertainment portion of it. If I don't follow that up with you know something that's relevant to what I do, then there's no sense in it.
Robin: 38:42
So I think about if they're going viral on TikTok for some sort of a dance, can they figure out if that's what they want? If they're, if they really care about their audience bigger than their market where they're going to be selling at. I mean, I don't understand the point of it If you're not following it up with something that's community related or getting back into hashtag Joplin Missouri. Hashtag car sales, joplin Missouri, whatever it is that you're making sure that these people know this is what you do. I don't see the value in going viral, other than it gives you some sort of bragging rights whenever you're having wine at NADA.
MC: 39:16
Okay, well, you heard it here, folks. I think it's fascinating. I mean, we've covered a lot of territory here. Some of the don'ts that could be do's in the right context, like posting pictures and like showing off the people that you're selling cars to and you're happy customers you should. Don't do it in feed, do it in stories. Everything's contextual Dare, I say, pandering to the algorithm, but doing it authentically, like just know it, not pandering, but knowing how the algorithm works. We've talked about that. We talked about being authentic, being you, tapping into tribes, becoming the mayor of your town. I love that phrase. It just makes so much sense to me. Robin, I want to thank you so much as we wind down. How can those listening and watching get in touch with you?
Robin: 39:56
Well, I'm on every social platform there is on earth, but you can always hit me up on Facebook I mean even on LinkedIn, or you can email me at robin at socialclimberprocom. You could call me, you could text me 417-629-8006. Text me, really, because I'm not going to answer your call, but I will respond to your call.
MC: 40:13
Robin Wilson. Thanks so much for joining me on the Dealer Playbook Podcast.
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