A micro site, blog, social media strategy is not a set it up once and forget about it process.  It requires nurturing just as the Green Pea does when they are shown their new desk.  You need to identify the strength and weaknesses from your efforts and look for ways to capitalize, improve or move on from.
The End is Where it Starts
The easiest way to identify trends in what consumers are looking for in your market area is with a well planned dealership blog.  A great way to dominate your local market area online is through an aggressive micro site strategy.  Its fool proof that a well optimized social media presence will deliver consumers to the showroom and service lane.  When the three are working together it is an army of 800lb marketing gorillas.

Set a mission goal.  This is the most critical step.  Determine your objectives before determining what assets you are going to deploy.  For some dealers it may be just to protect their online reputation, the easiest effort, i...

When dealers are allowing review sites to show up for their name they are giving away to much brand equity. It does not even require the dealer name to be used in the title tag if the property using a name in content is authoritative enough.  Review sites generally speaking do not have an aggressive optimization strategy, they rely on contnet and home page linking strategies, because automotive seo efforts are fairly soft for dealer names they rank naturally for those terms.
In response to the dialog that Joe Orr and Brian Pasch are having about dealer name piracy.
Conversely the review site ranking strategy would be very easy for your competitors to take advantage of. With just a little bit of link building an aggressive competitor could have negative reviews optimized for your name. Negative review sites have more authority, more people will link to negative information than positive. Links to these negative review can be bought really cheap.  Which gives these negative revie...

Bloggers come under fire from many and that may be why dealers are not willing to participate in starting their own.  I know that I have personally come under scrutiny on more than one occasion for views that I have published, was eventually fired for a blog post and started my own business.  Two well know people in the industry have threatened to sue me over articles I have written on www.ismintraining.com. (here <one I was fired over and here) One of those stories caused a website provider to change their platform, whether they will admit it or not is another story, after I was informed by them how wrong I was in my opinion.

Another post that I did caused our dealership to get national attention, and our dealer principal wound up on many traditional media outlets over a blog post. The additional exposure came from social media after the story went popular on Digg.com. Over 30 car deals were directly attributed to this almost free exposure, he gave me a nice bonus check o...

During the Drivingsales Executive Summit there were several compelling presentations about maximizing your presence on dealer rating sites.  One of the most compelling was by Joe Orr of Dick Hannah Honda.  It would appear they are attributing a lot of their success to their participation at many of the review sites.  Brian Pasch did an article about their claimed success at Dick Hannah Honda which stated:
They worked hard to optimize SERP results so that when a consumer typed in “Dick Hannah Honda” in Google, that all 10 listings were controlled by them or contained  review sites.
This is a counter productive strategy for dealers that wish to aggressively market themselves.  They are giving away to much of their name equity and branding to sites that wish to profit on traffic for consumers searches for specific businesses.  The majority of websites are commercial every participant here at drivingsales participates in making money from their website, even drivingsales.  The...

There were three underlying themes that all that presented in the social media and search space brought forward at the Drivingsales Executive Summit.
Content -
Dealers that wish to aggressively market themselves online need to be publishing as much content as possible in a myriad of locations that the dealer does and does not control. This content will help drive traffic from search engines and social media. With changes in the works at Google content is going to mean even more for dealers.
Listening -
Arron Strout and Chris Brogan both tuned in on this in both of their presentations and reemphasized our belief. Dealer's need to keep up with what is being published about them online and in social settings and listen for ques from prospective customers. Chris even brought forward an idea of how a dealer could increase fixed opps revenue and an awesome prospecting tool for sales. I will publish on this later.
Engagement -
This is the one that dealers will struggle the most with ...

Dealers have started demanding more and more from their vendors from advertising sources to inventory providers, rightfully so. For years they have paid for products and services which they may not always completely understood or they did it because their competitors were doing it too. Ever heard an Autotrader pitch after being black there?

The web has increased their knowledge because there is tons of great content to help guide them to make better decisions, Jeff and Alex's DealerRefresh, Ralph's ADM, Jared's DrivingSales and even a few of my rants. It is too bad industry publications and institutions have not followed suit by providing great content to help dealers and people on the ground improve their performance.

We all are in this business to make money and drive revenue. If it was not for the money none of us would be doing it, from NADA to minimum wage lot guys, everybody is trying to grab their share. It's too bad that some do not try to provide value to their targ...

Dealers have been beat over the head by many "go to guys" in the auto industry about social media.  Every time an article is written social media and social networking you can hear Kumbaya in the back ground as us automotive vendors rush to comment and give their point of view, however....

The most important element element of social interaction is never discussed.  All we ever hear about is:

How to build a big twitter following.
Don't use Facebook groups create a fan page.
Only send two or three tweets a week with targeted specials.
Just the opposite of number three, RSS your inventory in there and shout loud and fast.
Don't waste time on myspace.
Keep your employees off this stuff get them to create profiles at website with a terrible name and we will spam blast your customers for a fee.
Make sure you start a dealership specific Ning site.
Umpteen other things you got to do.

What is this important element they all are missing?

Nobody is listening.  No I ...

Attracting new customers via social networking is an arduous task. There are two ways to attract new business using these mediums, advertising and building connections. In a B2B environment it works wonders because all participants have a common goal, improving their bottom line.

In a B2C environment social networking/social media is not a prospecting tool,it is more of a CRM function. Businesses that look to attract retail customers need to understand that a myspace profile, facebook page and twitter account is best suited for use as follow up tools not lead generation.

B2C organizations can generate revenue in social networking environments and that is the end goal, build a list of raving fans who constantly buy and send new business. Your primary purpose is staying in contact with your customers with social networking.

For B2C organizations who are looking for an quick return on investment social networking may not be the answer. When you are just starting out using the...

From dealer websites vendors and automotive seo consultants to lot service companies there are many ways for a conflict of interest to exist. I have discussed this with several dealers and vendors and there does not appear to be a clear cut way to define a "conflict of interest" or even if there is one.

Recently I was contacted by a dealer who wanted my company to provide them with the same level of search engine domminace that we have for a dealer group in their market area.  We refused to take them on as a client, the dealer (the one who contacted us) also carried the same brand as our current customer.

We have three core product offerings -

Automotive SEO
Dealer Micro sites - ( Chevy Silverado | Chevy Malibu Micro site examples )
Inventory distribution to Craigslist

We refused to offer the first two products but were willing to accommodate them with our inventory distribution service.  My justification was our first two services are uniquely tailored to each cli...

Many times we are asked by dealers "Should we really do that?" when we are designing dealer micro sites for them.  We will work to have a marketing property show up for competing dealers names and other market areas.  The type of content that we use to do this is neither offending nor do we try to confuse the surfer on the source of the content, they know which dealer sponsored the site.

We were amazed when we found a property that was obviously created by someone close to one dealer slamming another, despite the denials in the content.  Below is a screen capture of one of the post with the names and cities of the innocent and guilty changed to protect their identity.







The title of the site was "Bad Rep Nissan" and the url was www.badrepnissian.popularfreehostingplatform.com.  Some of the other content was republished Rippoff Reports, Bad Testimonials and the slogan was "We will, we will srew you" as well as a blanket denial stating "I am in NO WAY affiliated with ...

"Social Media Marketing", "Social Networking" catchy buzzwords used to push new platforms and for dated industry "experts" to claim a newfound mastery.
Opinions on proper use of popular platforms vary immensely. 

From one tweet a week to many per day.
Website providers putting Digg and Delicious buttons on Inventory?
Ning sites for car dealers?


The real question is what are you using different social media platforms for and what are the methods you are using to promote awareness?
The image above comes from a viral event as a result of an idea on Facebook.com.  Users in the UK plotted to reproduce this commercial by T-Mobile in real life and effectively closed down Liverpool Street Station in London.  (<also source of the image)
Think of the cheap marketing that T-Mobile got, even if the whole thing was plotted by a social media marketing firm or happened "organically".


To be effective using social media to drive awareness and sales it requires GREAT CONT...

Traditions in the automotive industry are slowing down dealer progress, in relationship to online marketing, at an alarming rate.  Well known industry publications, the NADA, some vendors and consultants do not realize how fast changes come about in relationship to online initiatives.

In the April 2009 edition Digital Dealer published an article to encourage dealers to use Facebook as part of their online marketing portfolio.  While there was some valid points at the tail end of the article it was probably missed by 95% of the people who saw it, because the author’s opening line was:

  "I will start with a confession. I didn’t open up a Facebook account until I started working on this article"


Later in the article the author bandied about the success a dealer group attributes to the use of Facebook and ruined it with this:

"If the comments are negative, the salesperson has the ability to take that specific customer off the site an...

Twitter, Facebook and Ning sites are the craze in automotive online marketing.  Almost daily I get requests to connect on facebook or an invitation to join a new ning site from a car dealer or automotive vendor.  Twitter is a little different in that I do not have to give someone permission to follow me. I even had one vendor ask me to connect with the linkedin profile for their mascot, how is that a business connection?
As networking tools these sites are great resources, they can build your brand, protect your reputation and help you maintain contact with current customers -or- do more harm than good in those same areas.
The purpose of these sites is to interact with others and that requires personal interaction and that is who people want to connect with not spam profiles whose only purpose is to pitch links.  To create profiles in the name of a dealership to do this with is as bad as sending bulk emails to bought leads who have not opted in to receive them.
My friend JD Rucke...

I work with dealers coast to coast and was alarmed when one of my dealers send me this text chat in reference to a pitch they were given by a major automotive classified provider.

Shortly after assuring this dealer that a 10% click through rate (ctr) would be an extraordinarily, highly, unbelievably successful campaign and that the 10% ctr was probably an error in his recall of the pitch, I received a phone call from another dealer asking me about the same claim. Later that afternoon I reached out to some of my other clients and they also verified that they were given the same "tall tale". Three of the dealers I spoke with also said that a rep from a major search engine was also in tow.
Below are the stats from one of my online properties the content and banner relationship are in sync, as would be expected with a banner that is behavioral and geographically targeted, all traffic comes from the search engines.

Over one half of a million impressions I am personally happy with ...

The "Automotive SEO Exposition" held this year in Washington DC was a huge success. Top level automotive seo practitioners from all over the country came together for two days of powerful round table style discussions.
The topics discussed exceeded expectations and delved into a level of knowledge beyond that of basic seo offerings available to car dealers today. While many website providers do offer basic services the discussions delved much deeper.
Some of the topics covered were:

Changes in search that are becoming a reality such as universal search and the Google search wiki.
Why tag and keyword stuffing are a waste of bandwidth and the negative implications to be expected from these practices.
Website analytics and why independent third party site performance measurement trumps vendor provided tracking.
Building search engine trust and the importance of outbound links and linking partners.
Techniques for ranking for competitors names.
Inbound linking strategies and int...

Screen cap of the email I got from Dealer.com after registering for their webinar.

I get in the next day...

Automotive search terms are not as static as many would have you believe.  There is a core of terms that you should always optimize for such as your dealership name, brand and city name, model and city,used dealer city name and hopefully your content and linking strategies will allow you to pull in from neighboring cities and states.
While I see errors almost daily in dealer pay per click marketing initiatives such as buying terms for the dealer (running the campaign) name and city, brand and city dealer combos.  If your directory and map listings are well optimized then you are spending money unnecessarily.  Of course exceptions abound with the biggest being that your competitors are buying your name and keyword combos.  If your campaign is set up properly and your site content is optimized properly you should be able to take the top spot for these basic terms.
I have been told by dealers that their SEM provider actually suggested buying these terms and after reviewing the campa...

We cannot hide from it. The negatives surrounding the economy and the biz right now, but how much of it is self imposed? Sure it makes big news when a congressman tells the big three executives they are being irresponsible when they ask for a had out.
"There's a delicious irony in seeing private luxury jets flying into Washington, D.C., and people coming off of them with tin cups in their hands,"It's almost like seeing a guy show up at the soup kitchen in high-hat and tuxedo. . . . I mean, couldn't you all have downgraded to first class or jet-pooled or something to get here?" Rep. Gary L. Ackerman (D-N.Y.)
That is like begging for food as you open a fresh pack of cigarettes It just does not appear to be genuine.
Sure the media is talking it up, in and out of the auto industry. Why? Because you are participating. It sells advertising and even worse it distracts you from looking for ways to better your business.
The big three did not get in the shape they are in overnight. ...

Yesterday was my fathers birthday, the big 60, and I had the perfect gift idea for him.  A copy of Seth Godin's new book Tribes, which my son and I are featured in. (Get a copy see for yourself)  The problem was I left the nicely wrapped copy I had for him at my home and did not realize it until after we traveled thirty miles to his.

I was not going to let that stop me from putting a copy in his hand on this day.  The boys and I visited the local big chain book retailer to pick up a copy and it reminded me why I prefer to shop online for certain things.  It also proved how much more efficient it is as a consumer to do so.

We trotted to the business book section and started scouring the books to find our coveted copy.  It appearded that there was no rhyme or reason to how the books were shelved and after 10 minutes we visited the kiosk to see if there was even a copy in the store.  Theirs was not self serve so we had to wait 3 or 4 more minutes for so...

"Mr Customer press firmly and sign here your payments are only $538 per month for 6 years, not bad considering we had to give up most of rebate to pay off your negative equity."
How many times have you heard these words in a dealership?
These types of transactions are not a solution for the customer or the dealer long term and it wont be long before lenders realize this is just bad business for all parties concerned and change their lending guidelines.  A car or truck with a large rebate as a tool to move them and cover negative equity is soon to be part of the "good ole days".
It is these type of transactions that inflated home values and brought around the inevitable market correction and now is the time for the automotive industry to wake up to the fact that this is not financially sound for any party.
Large rebates on vehicles held by the manufacturer can cripple cash flow for a dealer and cause them to pay interest on their own money.  Basically dealers are giving the manufa...

Every Internet consultant in the automobile business is wrong when they tell dealers that they need to divert advertising away from traditional marketing to Internet marketing.  The problem is they are using the wrong terminology!!
Today's traditional media is online.  Radio, cable tv, direct mail and print are antiquated forms forms of marketing.  To call those forms of advertising "traditional marketing" is like telling your kid to go to the record store to get a needle to play the new 45 you just bought.
Dictionary defines traditional as:
tra⋅di⋅tion⋅al   [truh-dish-uh-nl]  – adjective
1.     of or pertaining to tradition.
tra⋅di⋅tion  [truh-dish-uhn]  –noun
1.     the handing down of statements, beliefs, legends, customs, information, etc., from generation to generation, esp. by word of mouth or by practice: a story that has come down to us by popular tradition.
2.     something that is handed down: the traditions of the Eskimos.
3.     a l...

The car business is known for it's slow adoption of new ideas and paradigm shifts.  I speak with dealers and vendors daily about online automotive marketing.  Some of the things I see and hear are comical.  Most dealers shun social media, mainly because they do not understand it.
When they think of social media and networking it is mostly myspace and facebook and the problems they have experienced with them.  Mainly by employees downloading software that chokes machines so they can add zwinky's to their myspace profiles or spending to much time using these networks and not working or they feel that it has no practical application to business and these types of activities are for children.
Online social interactions go way deeper than that even though both of the sites mentioned can be used to generate business and stay in touch with past customers.  As part of my affiliation with DrivingSales I try to stay on the cutting edge of how dealers can benefit by using social media.
Th...

Using social networking sites to attract customers and to form friendships is not as difficult as you think.  You can make connections daily with others using the platform here at www.drivingsales.com, but you need to become part of the gang, not just a silent observer.

Right now we have some very talented people providing us with blogs, forum discussions and strategies.  Personally I have been in contact with just about all of them via the telephone or email.  Everyone of them are willing to help dealers and vendors with issues they may face or they would not be here contributing. 

The site and traffic here is growing by leaps and bounds and it due to the great contributions by the members who take time to interact with the community.  Sure we have had some issues with our software and scripts and we are working daily to enhance your experience with the brain trust that is being formed here.

As a member you need to leverage the power of the combined ...

I received my copy of Tribes by Seth Godin it is a must read for anyone serious about marketing their business, trying to bring about change or build a loyal customer base. It is not about advertising hooks, gimmicks or gorilla marketing it is about adapting to today's market environments and gives many real life examples of people and companies that get it.
Customers do not care how long you have been in business. How many times have you heard a new broom sweeps good? There is a certain amount of stodginess that comes with being the old faithful, a certain amount being the man and a lot of complacency by having the status of the landmark.
Think of businesses we have seen rise and fall because of their unwillingness to adapt.
Remember when AOL was the internet?
Remember when you waited in anticipation for the Holiday Sears catalog?
How many vacant Blockbusters Stores in your area?
And now the big three are holding on by a thread.
Think about companies that are almost nothin...

Social Networking in the automobile industry is starting to take roots and will propel the industry into the 21st century. Social networking is nothing new to anyone that has had an internet connection for more than 30 days almost all of our online activities incorporate some level of networking.
The core of any business is to attract more customers, while social networking by design is to start conversations. Using social networking to grow your business can come in many different forms.

Attracting customers - Making New Connections.
Retaining Customers - Find out what they really think about you and providing support.
Exchanging Ideas with Others - Find out what others are doing to build their business and letting others know what you are doing to build yours.

One of the things that web 2.0 has brought to the world is transparency. It is not just a buzz word anymore. The exchange of information in our world today moves faster than it ever has and it will continue to ...

The benefits of being involved in the network here at DrivingSales are huge.  For both dealership personnel that participate and the vendors alike.  It allows us to be exposed different schools of thought on a variety of subjects and discovering best practices.
The only real constant is change.  Things that worked yesterday fade away fast in the digital age.  While the bulk of the content and topics for discussion relate mostly to Internet marketing and processes to facilitate moving customers from Internet lead to sale, it is just the start of things to come.
Right now in our membership is growing at a rate that is far exceeding expectations and members are engaging each other on a variety of subjects on the blogs and in our discussion forum. 
We have seen successes already in dealership ISM's asking for and receiving actionable feedback to address an issue on updating specials on their site.
SEO seems to outscore Search Engine Marketing based on the comments from industry ...

DO YOU YELL EVERYWHERE YOU GO?  YOU SURE DO IT WHEN YOU COMMUNICATE WITH OTHERS ON THE INTERNET.  It is too bad that most car guys really do no realize that it is rude to send communication to others with their cap lock keys on.  Most blame it on their DMS system, having been a recent user of the one that is blamed the most I know for a fact that capitol letter inputs are not required.
It is just not in email communication this phenomenon is witnessed, I see it in forums, blogs and even on website content.  Using cap locks in online communication is just bad form, unless you are talking only to people who still wish they had a coin f&i system and still feel like they need to print a credit report on paper to make it easier to access.
Another thing while I am on a mini rant.  If you want your emails read do not type until you get to the next line and use bold html fonts.  Email is primary a text communication and "fancy" emails with multiple fonts and ladded with images not ...

I am not a web designer by any means.  I have created a few websites an blogs in the past.  Each one has a different purpose.  Some are to make money by creating high bounce rates others just to get my points and views out there.  None have ever been as important or profitable as a dealership website.
One thing that I am starting to pay a lot more attention to is what is considered best practices in the web design world.  There is plenty of opinion in this regard out there.  Today I stubmled across a blog post titiled 43 Web Design Mistakes You Should Avoid.  There are some things I noticed that just leaped out at me manily is some of the things they talk about are shared by many others.
Most noticably these points:
Make the content scannable: this is the Internet, not a book, so forget large blocks of text. Probably I will be visiting your site while I work on other stuff so make sure that I can scan through the entire content. Bullet points, headers, subheaders, lists. Anyt...

Do you ever just feel like enough is enough?  Too much negative press, too many one sided conversations rehashed again and again until it feels like gospel or you dread to hear the next update.  Let's face it, it gets old after a while. 
Now we are constantly being hit with old stuff rewrapped to look different.  Buzz words come and go an they are usually defined by something we already know or have heard about.  It is just renamed to make it look fresh.  Yawn...  It makes me tired to even write about it.
Blurred are the lines and finding an easy way to manage and decipher all of the things we are hit with is not an easy task.  Personally I subscribe to around 100 blogs via RSS, two dozen daily email newsletters and don't forget the "special updates" that entails.  What is amazing though in all of that content that comes to me daily I can pick and choose what matters.
One thing I have surely noticed is the updates from auto indu...

Dealerships are closing daily.  In my local market area over the last week eight stores have closed and a new group which owns three stores is teetering.  This after the announcement of the Bill Heard fiasco.  This has really affected a lot of people I know and the strong professionals have already repositioned prior to the notice of the closings.  I personally worked for a dealer that folded in the early 90's and probably held on longer than what was prudent before finding a new home.
When I look at the closing that have taken place one thing really stands out, in my opinion, is that these dealerships closing was long over due.  It was amplified by the current market conditions and poor management and consumer perception finally caught up. The groups that have shut their doors were constantly having problems even when business was good.
This has placed the dealerships that have sound business practices in a position to capture business that these stores were...