To Servando Orozco, building and maintaining a brand for his business, Orozco’s Auto Service, is the most important work he does.
Countless hours go into making sure that his current and potential customers think of Orozco’s when they think of auto repair. The majority of that work comes through social media.
Orozco is a major proponent of using social media to build a brand, and he does a lot of it. Each of Orozco’s six southern California shops have their own Facebook page. Then there is a general Facebook page for the entire company. Oh, and then there are around another 20 profiles that Orozco manages to direct anyone searching for services in the area to his locations.
“Yeah we have a lot of them,” Orozco said in an interview with Ratchet+Wrench magazine, FenderBender's sister publication that focuses on the general automotive repair industry. His social media tips are applicable to body shops as well.
Each of Orozco’s six main accounts post up to 10 times a day, with a photo or video attached to each post. But it’s not the same across the different pages. Each individual page caters specifically to its community. The different shops are never posting the same video at the same time or even the same day. Instead, Orozco estimates he has about 300-400 videos he has recorded that he rotates between the different accounts to keep content fresh.
In any way he can, Orozco is trying to capture the audience's attention. Creating local profiles for every location is one of the best ways to do that.
According to a Digital Stack report, social media platforms, especially Facebook, favor local content over national content. The report found local pages gain over 450 percent more engagement than national brand pages. Facebook has even publicly shared that it changed its algorithm to favor local content, the report said. It also makes it easier to work with customers, as they can directly contact the shop they visited.
Still, from talking with shop owners around the country, many MSOs and small franchises are often operating just one main facebook account or have no social media presence at all.
A 2019 Forbes article explored the power of activating local social media channels and spoke of similarly positive results to Digital Slack.
Among the tips discussed were using an 80/20 approach, with 80 percent of the posts being locally focused with 20 percent being part of the larger national brand. Along with allowing a human element into the voice of the brand. It’s hard to cultivate a personable brand image with a national account, but a local page can more easily fit the feel of the specific location, which has been shown to drive engagement.
The bottom line: If you have an MSO or own or work within a franchise, adding a social media page for each location could be a very good idea. Not only will it bring more visibility to the page, but it creates a more tight knit community amongst its followers.
