Im starting to see (thanks to advanced searches) more and more local dealers in Indianapolis post updates to their FB pages and tweet about something OEM centric. Most of them are centered around some award an OEM has won, a new marketing program the OEM is pushing or a video. While some of these are pulled via RSS from non OEM and non dealer sites (mind boggling) most of them at least go back to an OEM branded video on YouTube or a Motor Trend type article. While this is a step in the right direction compared with dealers that just post inventory updates and annoy the few people that are listening, it still misses the boat big time. While one of your goals socially should be to get conversation going about your products and brand (more on that later) one of your other goals is to drive traffic and leads. Posting RSS feed content and OEM branded stuff is great for conversation but absolutely horrible for driving traffic and leads through web entities that you own or have control ov...

Location Based Services (LBS) are the talk of the online marketing world lately. Sites like Foursquare, Gowalla (with their latest release) and Facebook Places all offer a way to provide discounts based on criteria you select. The opportunities provided to market your business on these channels are as endless as the new LBS services popping up daily. The Indianapolis Convention and Visitors Association launched a contest centered around SCVNGR, the latest hot topic LBS site on the market. Numerous "normal" websites are even adding checkin services to their platforms. "Chris why should I offer a discount for checking in at my location?" Does your business utilize coupons in any shape or form? If the answer is yes (I hope it is, if not stop reading now) then think of a check-in discount as a coupon, but this coupon helps spread your name to tens, hundreds and even thousands of people online. Not only is a check-in discount a coupon on steroids its the ultimate wor...

Yet another reason to stop selling cars online and start building communities and engaging your current customers and prospects. This is a must read;

http://searchengineland.com/what-social-signals-do-google-bing-really-count-55389

I hear alot of talk these days about customer reviews, and with good reason. They allow your prospects peers to tell your prospects about their experience with your business. This should be a no brainer for any business, but especially car dealerships. With such a negative stigma (most of it earned back in the day) tied into the car buying experience why wouldn't you want people talking about their experiences online. While most reputable dealerships get this part, most miss the big opportunity with customer reviews; allowing them to be indexed by search engines.

"But Chris my Dealer Rater reviews show up when I search for my companies name online" Good for you but you are still missing huge opportunities. "My Google Place listing has 80 reviews" Congratulations and keep up the good work, IF someone is searching for your name.

What if someone is on a search engine but isnt searching for your name? What if they are searching for new Chevy Malibu and happen