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

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

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

There are two frames of mind amongst search marketing professionals when it comes to major updates such as the Google Penguin update last year and the upcoming Penguin 2.0 algorithm update. Some start to panic as they’ve seen these algorithm updates force companies to make major changes. In some cases, companies have had to close down because adjusting was just too much to bare. The other perspective is that these changes bring the game of optimization more in line with quality over quantity, strategy over brute force, and perhaps most importantly, art over science. That’s what’s expected with the upcoming update based upon a mixture of common sense and some pointed Tweets by Google’s spam czar, Matt Cutts. The pursuit of quality links instead of having a large inbound link portfolio has been the focus of Google (and Bing) for over a year now and the coming update will likely be more of the same. The art aspect of it all comes down to getting more value ou... Read Post

The KBG. Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti. The Committee for State Security for the former Soviet Union was one of the most feared agencies in history. Thankfully, this post isn’t about them. Here, we’re going to talk about a different type of KGB, the type that is plaguing social media on pages across the internet, hurting businesses and striking fear into the hearts of knowledgeable internet marketing professionals around the world. It’s the type of bad posts that were once thought to be effective but that have been debunked time and time again, yet so many businesses (and even vendors) continue to post them. Today’s social media KBG is this: Kitties Games/Giveaways Bogus Questions If you or your vendor are still using these things, stop immediately. They aren’t helping. In fact, they are hurting the cause of using social media as a proper advertising venue through which to increase business. Here’s why:   Kitties Don&rsq... Read Post

I'm already regretting posting this before it's even written. It will likely go down as one of my late night rants that shouldn't have been posted, but hey, I've already started. Can't stop now. There's a trend in the industry that has been disturbing me for a few months now. I've been hard at work on a new social media service that combines the experience we've had doing advanced social media marketing outside of the automotive industry with the core of our business in digital marketing for car dealers. What I've learned during this exploration has been disheartening. It seems that the vast majority, both vendors and dealers, are missing the point when it comes to a social media presence. There is still a focus on getting fans regardless of why they clicked "like". There's still a trend towards posting humorous irrelevant pictures rather than taking the amazing base of content available in our industry and in the local area and mak... Read Post

I remember working internet leads around the turn of the millenium. It was funny because at the time, there were many at the dealership who didn't even have an email address. My, how times have changed. There was a statement by the general manager that struck me and ended up sticking with me to this day. He was lecturing his brand new internet department, something that none of his competitors had. His internet department was... me. He told me, "Do whatever you can to get them in but don't treat them like real people unless they call or come by. They aren't real until they have a voice." Today, most dealers (and everyone on Driving Sales, I would hope) know that this is far from reality. Today, people are using the internet to do more than ever before. They're shopping your inventory while on test drives at a competitor. They're doing research from the toilet. It's a digital age. We all know that. What we often forget, particularly on social medi... Read Post

There’s a case against Twitter and Pinterest that is being waged by some in the automotive industry. They’ll say that there simply isn’t a good return on investment, that they aren’t worth messing with because it’s just too hard to find a benefit from them. This is true until you look at one major factor: time. Twitter and Pinterest require very little time to maintain and keep vibrant. Before we get into the ways that dealers can streamline their efforts to make them more suited for a proper ROI, let’s first take a look at the three major aspects of them that make them worthwhile: Time Driven Algorithm – Unlike Facebook and Google+, the Pinterest and Twitter feeds are completely time driven. When you post something, it appears in the feeds of your followers immediately. Over time, they move down. This is a good thing for their purpose because they’re ideal for getting real-time engagement. Communication – At the end of the... Read Post

Branding is important. It’s something that most businesses want but few do well enough considering the tools that we all have at our disposal through the internet in general and social media in particular. However, too many are starting to use social media as a branding tool only. The reality for local businesses is that it can and should be used to drive foot traffic and website visitors. Branding should be a secondary benefit, a side-effect of a proper promotional strategy. Look at the image above. It’s compelling. It’s branded (though not by the company that posted it). It combines the power of the OEM’s brand (this is posted on a Chevrolet dealer’s Facebook page), the trust associated with a partner brand (in this case, Black Book), and the clever wording in the description designed to achieve a goal. In this case, the goal is website traffic to a form that is specific to the message of the post. Here’s how the message reads: “First an... Read Post

Over the past several months, we’ve been doing a ton of research in the automotive industry about how dealers perceive social media marketing. It’s something that has both thrilled and alarmed us because the results have been greatly mixed. On one hand, many dealers are starting to realize that social media is more than just a fluffy form of marketing that has not demonstrable ROI, a perception that had been growing in 2011 and 2012. Those tides have turned. However, the one alarming piece of information we discovered is that many dealers are considering social media to be a “checkbox item” for reputation management. In other words, if their reputation management provider offers social media, they’re covered. Unfortunately, this is a bad trend. There are some pretty strong reputation management services available today. They perform some of the right activities that can be performed on the dealership’s behalf when it comes to getting more positi... Read Post

Everyone who plays in the Facebook page strategy game has their opinions about the types of content to post. Car dealers and vendors have tried different things over the years. Some have found success while others have let it fall off completely, dismissing it as unimportant or too time-consuming to mess with on a daily basis. For those who are doing well or wanting to do well with engagement on their pages while still demonstrating real ROI, here are some content types that have worked well for us. It’s important to mix things up on Facebook. Fan fatigue happens regularly, especially when a dealer or vendor finds a particular type of content that works well. They tend to favor this type of content in their posts. Some even go so far as to post only one type of content such as cool cars. Your fans watch. They know. By the 10th car in a row, they start to get tired of seeing them regardless of how cool they are. Mixing it up is important. While there are definitely more than t... Read Post

Facebook has been a challenging venue for marketers and advertisers ever since it started really getting popular in 2009. At that time, it was clear that it was the social network to beat and the company started trying to cash in with different types of advertising options. Most of them failed miserably for the same reason that many marketers continue to fail today: people go to Facebook to be entertained, not to be the recipient of ads. Today, it’s getting easier. People are more accepting of ads. A lot of it can be attributed to the way that Facebook has handled their promoted posts. They have done an excellent (some would say Draconian) job of keeping messages off of news feeds that are too promotional. Between the manual vetting they do of ads and the 20% text rule they apply to images, they’ve been able to keep a relatively strong balance between letting advertisers get their message out and keeping their users happy through minimized spam. When it comes to putti... Read Post

I've written about this before and I hope I never have to write about it again. Unfortunately, this past week at Digital Dealer proved to me that more companies are pushing the concept of having the dealership present on 50+ social networks. Let's get beyond the argument that they're not useful. As I've said before, many used to sell SEO by saying that they'd get dealers listed on thousands of search engines. The same holds true in social. There are only 7 social sites that truly matter to a business today. What's more important to understand is that getting on all of these social sites is not only useless, it's detrimental. Here's why:   If You Have Them, Be Active On Them What's worse than when a potential customer doesn't find you on their favorite obscure social network? When they do find you on their favority obscure social network and you haven't been active in a year. Believe it or not, it's insulting to some people. Sti... Read Post

For years, the acquisition of a bigger, “better” Facebook page has been a focus of many in the social media marketing realm. There are companies that are dedicated to the task. The reality now (and for a long time, actually) is that fan acquisition for business Facebook pages is such a minor piece of the puzzle that it’s something most businesses should push to the back burner. It’s not that you don’t need them at all, but the success of a Facebook page is determined by reach and fans are only a small part of the equation. When someone likes a page, they have the potential of seeing your posts. For better or for worse, Facebook has made it challenging for the majority of your fans to actually see your posts on their news feed. They have to really, really like your posts a lot for them to appear on their news feed without help, which causes a chicken and egg conundrum. They have to see your posts to be able to like, share, or comment on them, but they ne... Read Post

In the early days of search engine optimization, the pitch that many companies used was very appealing. “We’ll get you listed on thousands of search engines so that everyone can find you.” Today, this seems like a ludicrous statement. There’s only three real search engines that account for 97% of the search traffic and it’s been like that for some time, but back as recently as 2008, many companies were still pushing automated search engine submission as their primary selling point for search engine optimization. The same thing is happening today, only with social media. There are companies out there promoting the concept of building and maintain profiles on dozens of social media sites. This is a joke on many levels. First, the majority of social media sites are not profile-driven. In other words, having a presence on them is only somewhat useful based on high levels of activity on the feeds and interactions with other users. The profiles of individual... Read Post

I was moderating a small panel at a conference about two and a half years ago that focused on Facebook fans. The two panelists represented the two different sides of Facebook promotion at the time: one focused on local quality fans and the other focused on bulk fans. After the debate, one might have called it a draw. That was over two years ago. Today, there’s really only one side that deserves any representation at all. Local businesses should focus solely on getting local fans, period. To get a broad reach of fans outside of the market area as a local business can do more harm than good. Only one side of the argument “deserves’ to be mentioned today, but unfortunately that’s not the case. There are still plenty of companies out there that try to use contests or other incentives to coax people to like their pages. Some even purchase fans. Both methods are antiquated.   Don’t Reach Too Far This is still very prominent today and it needs to go aw... Read Post

This is a rant so I’m going to keep it short and not so sweet. There’s a trend in the automotive industry towards putting out really, really bad webinars. It hits really close to home because I absolutely love them, have been doing them for three years now, and get really annoyed when other professionals in the industry use them as pitch sessions. In essence, it’s giving one of the most important components of pushing the automotive industry forward a bad name. Let’s go back a few years. There was a time when many would consider the automotive industry to be behind the times when it came to internet marketing. Things have changed in the last several years and now there are shining examples at every level, from individual salesperson all the way up to the OEMs, where ours is an industry of trendsetters instead of being behind on the times. I believe that webinars have played an extremely important role in this change and I’m proud to have been a part o... Read Post

EdgeRank. It’s a mythical beast in many ways, not because it isn’t real but because it is very misunderstood by many. It’s one of those things that makes total sense once you get it but that can be very misleading before the light bulb ignites. The basic way to understand it in one sentence is this – when your content gets positive engagement, it can be seen by more people, but when it gets negative sentiment, it gets hidden. There is a science behind it but that’s not really necessary for success. When you post good content and the people that do get to see it interact in a positive manner, the chance that others will see it too goes up. The opposite is true as well. This is where posting the right content and “earning” the right for your business to market on Facebook comes into play. Some will say that Facebook can only be used as a branding tool, that if you focus on putting out high-quality content and never actually talk about the bus... Read Post

We work to make money. That’s the point. While many of us find fulfillment through our work, it still normally comes down to money as the driving force that gets us up in the morning, puts us in our cars, and heads us down the road to our job. While money might be the motivating factor for having a job, it’s not the most important motivator for keeping employees happy. In this infographic we created for Salesforce, we explored many of the factors that keep employees happy and working at their peak levels of performance. While 56% of senior managers thought their company was above average at delivering appropriate appreciation, only 23% of their employees agreed. Take a long look at this graphic. If you’re not the boss, maybe you should send this link to them as a not-so-subtle hint of information they could use to make them better at their own jobs. ... Read Post

… you should only care about the ones that can buy from you. With global brands, it’s a different story, but when we’re talking about localized businesses trying to use social media to make an impact, the community itself is all that’s important. In fact, having too many fans outside of your market area can actually do more harm than good. This hasn’t always been the case. There was a time a couple of years ago when it made some sense to go big, to build a strong fan base on Facebook or to accumulate followers from around the world on Twitter. Those days are well behind us, particularly with Facebook. Quality trumps quantity by a mile when it comes to Facebook for local businesses. This isn’t even really debatable anymore, but for those who aren’t sure, here are some reasons for this which we’ll be covering one by one in future blog posts: Local Interaction Boosts Local Interaction You Probably Can’t Sell to Someone in Jaka... Read Post

Facebook has been a promising venue through which to market a dealership ever since it reached a high level of popularity back in 2008. Back then, it was just breaking the hundred million user level and was showing signs that it would be able to be business-friendly in contrast to its rival MySpace. Now, it’s 10 times bigger and commands more time of humans than any other website. The problem is that it’s not the easiest marketing platform to master. Unlike Google, Twitter, and other players that are used on a daily basis, Facebook has algorithms that keep dealers from finding success. Google has an algorithm, of course, but because people go to it to find businesses, they make it very easy for those willing to pay money or play by the optimization rules to get the exposure they need. On Facebook, users aren’t going there to engage with businesses so trying to “sneak in” marketing and advertising is an act that goes contrary to the desires of the users.... Read Post

The statistic or something similar to it has dominated the sales pitches and marketing materials of search engine optimization companies for a very long time. I just saw a mention of it in an article from 2005 and it’s been reiterated again and again ever since. Nearly every study seems to come to the same conclusion. Nearly every study is wrong, at least from a business perspective. If you torture statistics long enough, you can make them say anything you want. I could go into a long-winded breakdown of why this is a completely bogus statistic, but I’m going to appeal to common sense instead. If you take a second to think about it, the reality of search engine optimization becomes very clear. If you include all searches, the number is probably accurate. The problem is that the majority of searches should not be considered when judging the importance of the top ranking in Google. They aren’t the type of keywords that need to be optimized. For example, the top keyw... Read Post

Let’s first take a moment to let the cover image of this story wear off a bit. It’s pretty freaky, I know. Once that’s done, let’s talk about how the evolution of search marketing has come to the point that we need to use freaky images to get your attention. SEO and PPC are very different which is why for years it has been okay to have one company running one and another company running the other. They have always been complementary of each other but they didn’t necessarily have to talk to each other. The separation between paid and organic has for some time been considered a positive – trying to do both is hard because of the potential conflict in strategy and purpose. Things have changed in 2013. The two must talk to each other. Whether it’s two different companies working each separately or through a single company that handles both with different departments, the best way to have a solid search marketing strategy is by making sure that ... Read Post

I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's the main point, but it's definitely one of the keys. Exposure on social media is an extremely high-potential benefit of having a strong presence on social media sites, particularly Facebook. There has been a lot of talk lately about social signals for SEO purposes. This is another key, but it's completely separate from getting exposure. There are other key points and goals - driving foot traffic, driving website traffic, and having a proper communication and reputation management tool are just some of the others. Today, we're talking about exposure. It's the one thing that has been very commonly used in the past by many dealers but it's also something that some have fallen away from in recent months. In many ways, social media is like television. People don't go there to hear about car dealers, to see the brand, or to hear about the big sale this weekend, but that doesn't mean that the message doesn't ... Read Post

It's very possible that I'm beating a dead horse on this one, but I'd rather beat a dead one than a live one. If you hear me speak or read my writing, you'll know that I've been pushing this concept for a long time. This is the last plea I'll be making. It's the eleventh hour, so everything I post going forward on the subject will be tips for those who have decided to do it the right way. No more heartfelt pleas - either you get it or you don't. Social media is embracing search as a primary missing piece to the time-domination puzzle. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest - they all realize that being integrated properly with external search while allowing for robust search features of their own is the key to taking the tremendous amounts of personal data they have on us all and turning it into something useful for both users as well as the all-important advertisers and data-collection services. Google and Bing are acutely aware that they... Read Post

When Facebook rolled out threaded comments last week, there was a clear lack of excitement from most of the social media blogs. It was a news item, nothing more, for most of them. Cool feature, about time, yadayadayada. What the majority of them missed is that this is arguably the most important change that Facebook has made for businesses this year. The touch factor is back. By that, I mean that businesses and organizations now have the ability to interact directly with questions and comments, making the comments made by others more useful and enabling longer comment threads to make much more sense to those who are viewing them. For a while, the “touch” factor was missing. It was there in the beginning when Facebook pages were much less populated and it was more of a personal discussion point through which consumers could reach businesses. Then, Facebook got huge and things have changed dramatically over the past couple of years. Popular pages weren’t really ab... Read Post

Some may try to call me out on the title of this post. “Don’t you mean ‘strategies’ plural?” No. Search and social strategy. One thing. Different processes. Slightly different goals. Same strategy. As we move forward through the second quarter of 2013, it’s important to understand how the dynamic between search engine marketing and social media marketing is operating. We’ve been saying for a long time that search and social were intersecting, that Google and Bing are getting more social while Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks were integrating search and becoming more popular as venues to find things, but the way that this dynamic has accelerated in the first part of 2013 is noteworthy. For years, search and social have been separate disciplines. Most online marketing companies either focus on one or the other, or they have separate products and services. It is now clear that trying to separate the two is like trying to separate ... Read Post

The rise of content marketing and more importantly the focus that Google and Bing have put on website content engagement have changed the way we view the types of content we put on our websites. It’s no longer sufficient to focus all of your content on the basic search engine principles of keyword targeting. You have to have content on your domain that draws in the important social signals and time spent on site. In other words, your websites have to be interesting to a wider range of people, not just those specifically looking for your products and services. There are several types of content that go on websites, but the two we’re going to be talking about here are the two most important content additions. There is basic content that is relatively stagnant on your website; product descriptions and inventory items rarely have to change, for example. There are other types of regular content additions that somewhat influential as well such as press releases and service an... Read Post

The social media world and offices across America were joined in laughter last week when a video by Pepsi featuring race car driver Jeff Gordon exploded all over Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. The video showed an unsuspecting salesperson getting put through a harrowing experience during a test drive while being recorded by hidden camera. The only problem was that it was completely fake. In reality, that wasn’t a problem at all. It’s approaching 30 million YouTube views and has been shared over 2 million times on Facebook. The ad worked even if it was completely staged, even if the car salesperson is an actor, even if a stunt driver took the Camaro up ramps, around poles, and up to speeds that are more NASCAR than test drive level. This is advertising in 2013. In many ways, it’s not right. The video was so well produced that most disbelief in the validity of the video were suspended just long enough to get small crowds gathered around cubicles while bosses were a... Read Post

I don't believe in coincidences. Everything happens for a reason and there's a particular harmony in this world that cannot be denied if you really look into it. Last week, I was reviewing a dealer's marketing strategy when I came across their content posting style. They had an offsite blog, an onsite blog, and they posted many of their posts on different automotive websites. All of this is good except that they were posting the same content everywhere without exception. There are times to take content and syndicate it out and there are times when it's best to give a particular piece of content a single home. There are two factors to consider when making the decision - the content itself and the venues. For the content, you should decide on the goal(s) of every piece of content you publish. Is it intended to be a direct communication with your customers that is newsworthy and specifically about the dealership such as sales announcements? That can be syndicated. You... Read Post