What is important to your business when using social networks? Is a question many companies should be asking every time they log onto their social sites, such as Facebook or Twitter. Understanding what the purpose is for using these sites is vital in knowing the types of content your business will produce and share on them, as well as, what your company hopes to gain from using them. For most businesses, the answer would be to connect, engage, and build reciprocal relationships with the right people, but finding the right people for your business is not always easy and usually takes a lot of time and effort to accomplish. Many companies have begun using sites that measure social influence, such as, Klout and Kred to discover their best customers and brand evangelists; however, besides a Klout or Kred score there isn’t much else to go on. Little Bird, currently in private Beta, offers much more than the current social influence measuring sites, in that it analyzes data and ...Read post

Take a look at those familiar little icons in the top right corner of the screenshot above. Four of the primary social media sites’ logos adorn a prominent position on the homepage. It’s not an uncommon sight. Some put them at the top. Other put them at the bottom. Some make them large and prominent. Others make them small and subtle. One way or another, most dealerships put them somewhere. They do it for a reason. The reason is presence. We’ve all heard about the potential of social media but few local businesses and car dealers in particular have found the level of success that they would like. Finding that success is not the topic of this particular article (important though it is). Instead, we’re going to gain an understanding of the importance of social media outside of the obvious. We all know that Facebook, Twitter, and the other networks have the potential to drive business when done right. Some would say that the effort and cost are too high, that...Read post

As customers continue to migrate towards mobile, the opportunity to generate and convert leads also migrates. Customers who once submitted leads via your desktop site are now shopping from their smartphones. If your mobile presence does not offer the speed, ease of use, and call to action, you very well may be losing a large percentage of these customers. It's critical for dealerships to explore their options for a polished mobile platform the same way they shop for a desktop website or CRM. http://www.carpursuit.com/learn/article/are-you-seeing-a-drop-in-internet-automotive-leads ...Read post

As the founder and CEO of CarGurus, I wanted to clear up some confusion that seems to have arisen about how CarGurus operates and how we deliver value to dealers. Read post

I’m not a broken record, at least I’m not trying to be. It seems that I’ve covered this topic from different angles a lot lately, but it’s simply that important to understand. In business in general and in automotive marketing in particular, getting more Facebook fans is a very low priority compared to reaching more people. This seems to be counter-intuitive. One might argue that getting more fans on Facebook is the way to reach more people, but they dynamics of the social network make it to where this isn’t the case. A page can be extremely successful and reach the masses with very few fans. Conversely, a page with hundreds of thousands of fans can reach next to nobody. It’s a challenging concept to understand until you get down into the way the Facebook algorithm works. In essence, it’s not size but quality that counts the most on Facebook. Just because someone likes your page doesn’t mean that they’re going to see any of your...Read post

A common perception of what makes a business successful is as follows: the leader is a genius who has a vision, defines the strategy, and all the employees work to make that vision into a reality.   The reality, however, is far different. In the best-selling business book, “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t,” by Jim Collins, a team of researchers discovered that the most successful leaders focus on getting the right people on board before they set strategy. In essence, they load a bus with the right people and get them in the right seats, before they decide where to drive the bus.   An example of this was in the early 80’s when Dick Cooley became CEO of Wells Fargo. Cooley foresaw great changes ahead in the banking industry, but he did not know exactly what those changes would be. (Sound familiar? As much as the auto industry has changed in the last few years, I believe more change is ahead).   Instead of tryin...Read post

Do you need showroom traffic? Of course you do! This week on Think Tank Tuesday learn how to drive your virtual showroom traffic. Leave Your Comments below the video and Share it Please. Visit our website: www.ppadv.com Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/PotratzAdvertising Follow us on Twitter: @PotratzRead post

If there’s one major flaw with the way that many businesses use automation tools, it’s that they’re not able to properly control the flow of content from its longest form down to it’s shortest form. This is unfortunate because using RSS feeds to post to Facebook and Twitter from a blog, for example, doesn’t save much time at all but minimizes the effectiveness of the networks. It’s all about flow. It’s about taking advantage of the strengths of the various networks will not falling into the traps that each allows. Let’s take a look at an example of content flow. In this case, we’re going to work it down from a standard piece of website content rather than a blog post or YouTube video. Those are easier. If you can master the creative elements of promoting standard website content, the other types of content will be a piece of cake. Original content This is where it all starts. Here, we see a sales special. It’s not th...Read post