If your dealership is struggling to figure out why you should jump into social media and how to measure its ROI, check out the Basics Of Social Media ROI slides from Olivier Blanchard.

It IS possible to measure your engagement and investment once you have defined metrics and things you want to improve.

ATLANTA, Georgia, ‐‐ EasyAutoSales.com, America’s fastest growing consumer driven automotive resource launches version 3.0 of its classified services to focus on vehicle research and premium classifieds. The new EasyAutoSales website features added integration with Craigslist and a number of social‐networking websites to help car dealers better reach car buyers in the social web.
“94% of consumers are researching cars online and reading peer reviews weeks or months before they browse classified listings,” said Randall Prince, Co‐founder of EasyAutoSales.com. “With EasyAutoSales, buyers can now do both vehicle research and comparison shopping at the same time.”
The EasyAutoSales Community allows both car buyers and car dealers to interact, share vehicle photos, and post YouTube videos within the online discussions. All relevant car reviews and discussions are linked to the 2 million+ vehicle listings&nb...

At EasyAutoSales we are feverishly working to improve our offering for car dealers.  Our goal is to make selling cars as easy as possible for you.  Who better to help us do that than YOU?  We've created a Car Dealer Online Marketing Survey using Survey Monkey.  It will take you less than 5 minutes to cruise through, and your responses will be tremendously helpful to us.
CLICK HERE TO TAKE OUR SURVEY
We will post our findings on this blog, as well as our company blog http://blog.easyautosales.com.  So check back in the next couple weeks.
Thanks so much for your time!...

If you read our previous post outlining 10 reasons why car dealers need to engage car buyers online , than your next logical question would be, "Where is the best place online to engage these car buyers?"  We've crafted a list of where we believe are the 10 best places to engage car buyers online.  Depending on the make and model your selling, one online community may make more sense than another, but this list should at least get you started on finding where the relevant conversations are taking place.
10. Edmunds Carspace - "The Car Enthusiasts Automotive Lifestyle Social Networking Site". Edmunds Carspace is one of the most popular forums on the web. As such, finding what you want can be a bit daunting and the conversations can be long. However, there's a lot of great advice to be had and a wealth of information in archive. The interface is clean, but there are a lot of ads.
9. AutoMedia - "Car Advice You Can Trust". Whereas Edmunds does for...

Word of mouth is the holy grail of reaching potential customers - car buyers are no different.  If someone who just bought a car from your dealership blogs or tells a friend that they had a great experience, BAM! you will surely have new shoppers walking through your doors instead of the dealerships down the street. 
Until fairly recently, harnessing the power of word of mouth has been virtually impossible.  Now, thanks to social media and social networks, the possibilities are becoming a bit more tangible.  If your dealership is not already engaging potential customers online, these 10 data points will certainly set you straight.
 
10. 93% of consumers do research online before buying a car.
   
    Whether your dealership and inventory is online or not, almost 100% of your potential customers are on the web searching for information, reviews and recommendations!
9. 67% of consumers say that recommendations and information ...

There's always a silver lining.  The cutting of costs in the automotive sector is leading to more and more Do-It-Yourself internet marketers in the car industry.  Forced to get rid of advertising, and pricey lot services to take and upload inventory photos, car dealers are turning to the internet to figure out ways to promote their business for free.  Social networks like DrivingSales are proof of this phenomenon, as automotive professionals are seeking out help from their more internet savvy peers.  As car dealers learn how to increase their presense online, in the long run this will be a contributing factor to the improvement of the automotive industry.  Increased online presense means increased transparency, which means better service, which means better consumer reviews, which means more business.  Auto sales online will follow the way of popular websites like Amazon.com.  If you are a car dealer without positive reviews online you will be at a di...

Ok, so maybe you've heard of a few of them, but these aren't the obvious ones like YouTube, Digg and Facebook.  The point is your customers are using social networks everywhere they go.  Its becoming a natural part of online behavior.  Connecting with people on these niche social sites in a relevant manner may be more effective than the large networks that everbody is a part of.  In the long tail of social networks its easier to figure out what interests your audience.  So don't be affraid to migrate off Facebook and MySpace. It may require more of an effort to connect with people, but I'm will to bet ultimately conversions will be higher.
Finance
 

Value Investing News: Share and learn from this stock market news site.
Real Estate Voices: Offers an active real estate community of realtors, sellers, and more.
Feed the Bull: Financial investors and stock market traders gather here to discuss and rate market news.

Shopping & Style
...

Are you a visual learner?  Well I am, and that's why I'm such a big fan of the Search illustrated column at Searchengineland.com.  Some SEO concepts are a whole lot easier to understand in an infographic.  For my first blog post at DrivingSales I would like to direct you to the Search illustrated graphic about article search engine optimization. 
Writing, hosting, and submitting articles is an excellent way to give your site visitors helpful information and at the same time provide keyword rich content for the search engine spiders. Once you put your article on your own site and it gets indexed by Google, you can then submit it to the many article submission sites online in order to build backlinks to your site. Not only will you be getting a link from the site you submit to, but if your article is compelling enough it will often get picked up by other automotive publishers seeking content. There is no guarantee that other sites will keep your link intact, but the...