If you have any doubts about the power of Social Networking just look at the results from this year's election. The Obama campaign was the first to utilize it and they raised a new record of $150 million in September up from their previous high of $66 million. A major part of that was accomplished through Social Networking utilizing everything from their presence on Facebook, Twitter, My Space etc to name a few, to connecting with people who held rallys in their homes and neighbourhoods. They also encouraged people to download phone lists and make calls and even offered the ability to "mine" your personal phonebook and match up demographics and then download that to your iPhone as a list to make calls when you had time. The McCain campaign eventually saw the power of this and has jumped in with both feet. The benefit has been the personal touch and the empowerment that cannot be retracted and has made everything more transparent now and in the future.

This has the same application to the Auto Industry and by engaging and interacting with your customers in a meaningful way that is important to them you will reap the benefits. Get a blog going and a presence in the Social Networking world and you will find that you will build lasting relationships that result in more sales and a higher gross profit that everyone has been looking for in this new economy. Don't you buy from people you have a relationship with and trust ? What if they referred you to a relative or friend that was in the market for a car, would that increase the likelihood of making a deal ?

To read more on the election and social networking:

Election and Social Networking

COSTA MESA, CA – Car dealers spend a bundle on conventional advertising, yet balk at small allocations for Internet marketing efforts.

That baffles Todd Stainbrook, even though he says he understands the dealer “mindset” after spending much of his Ford Motor Co. career in the field.

“Same-brand auto dealers at regional marketing meetings will approve millions of dollars on co-operative TV ads,” he says. “But then, when there’s a proposal to spend $25,000 on digital advertising, you’ve never heard so many skeptical questions.”

His job as digital integration manager for Ford, Lincoln and Mercury brands is to nudge dealers into the brave new world of digital marketing and make it a foundation of their ad plans.

“We’ve made a lot of progress but we have a lot to do,” he says at ENG’s annual automotive customer relationship management conference here. “There’s a lot of room for improvement.”

Stainbrook adds: “The days are changing from dealers saying, ‘I must have a TV (ad) plan, I must be in newspapers, I must do direct mailing, and, oh yeah, what about digital?’”

Still, he adds, many dealers have a last in, first out mentality when it comes to such marketing that ranges from online banner ads to search-engine marketing.

Digital marketing has become a $28 billion part of the ad industry. But at 11.5%, it accounts for the lowest portion of automotive advertising, Stainbrook says.

Still, many dealers – some faster than others – are “getting it,” he says. “I’ve seen a whole new perspective. Dealers today are much more receptive. You can’t escape that huge online presence. In a few years, there will not be a digital discussion anymore.”

Because Ford reaches 70% of its buyers online, “we want to make sure we are relevant to them,” he says.

Relevance is essential when dealing with the younger generation of Internet-savvy car buyers, he says. “Their expectations are high, they are focused on themselves and they are shocked if they get something that’s not relevant.”

As Internet marketing evolves, “we’re beyond, ‘Why digital?’’ he says. “Today, there is no arguing with it. Now, it is a question of what to do next.”

Also evolving are opinions on the best way for dealerships to interact with Internet customers. Responding quickly to their emails once was – and largely is – considered a must.

“But it’s not all about speed,” Stainbrook says. “The mantra used to be: ‘I’ve got to respond to their emails within five minutes.’ That helps. But consumers are looking for information. If all you are interested in is speed, you are missing out on opportunities.

“If consumers, who’ve done their homework, email you with questions, and you quickly reply, ‘When can you come into the dealership? I’m here until 9,’ that speedy response isn’t going to impress them.”

He cites what dealerships should do online to enhance the chances of a sale. Some of those “key drivers” are:

• Show real interest.
• Give pricing. That remains an issue with some dealerships, but Stainbrook says 72% of Internet users who readily get prices online end up buying.
• Confirm vehicle availability. When that’s done, 75% of customers buy vehicles.
• Make multiple contacts, including long-term follow ups. “The reality is that people are in the market a long time, so you need a robust CRM (customer relationship management) application that will follow up for a long time,” Stainbrook says.

sfinlay@wardsauto.com

The problem with so many web sites today is that they are built around an advertising model – but the wrong kind. As a result, business owners are throwing away money hand over fist when they could be pulling in tons of qualified, interested prospects and customers.

If you want your web site to capture more quality leads, this article is for you. You see, there are two types of advertising, but only one kind of web site. Unfortunately, most web site designers don’t seem to know this.

Read more of this exciting article by clicking here !

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Look past the yakkers, hobbyists, and political mobs. Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch up…or catch you later

by Stephen Baker and Heather Green

Editor's note: When we published "Blogs Will Change Your Business" in May, 2005, Twittering was an activity dominated by small birds. Truth is, we didn't see MySpace coming. Facebook was still an Ivy League sensation. Despite the onrush of technology, however, thousands of visitors are still downloading the original cover story.

So we decided to update it. Over the past month, we've been calling many of the original sources and asking the Blogspotting community to help revise the 2005 report. We've placed fixes and updates into more than 20 notes; to view them, click on the blue icons. If you see more details to fix, please leave comments. The role of blogs in business is clearly an ongoing story.

First, the headline. Blogs were the heart of the story in 2005. But they're just one of the tools millions can use today to lift their voices in electronic communities and create their own media. Social networks like Facebook and MySpace, video sites like YouTube, mini blog engines like Twitter—they've all emerged in the last three years, and all are nourished by users. Social Media: It's clunkier language than blogs, but we're not putting it on the cover anyway. We're just fixing it.

Monday 9:30 a.m. It's time for a frank talk. And no, it can't wait. We know, we know: Most of you are sick to death of blogs. Don't even want to hear about these millions of online journals that link together into a vast network. And yes, there's plenty out there not to like. Self-obsession, politics of hate, and the same hunger for fame that has people lining up to trade punches on The Jerry Springer Show. Name just about anything that's sick in our society today, and it's on parade in the blogs. On lots of them, even the writing stinks.

Go ahead and bellyache about blogs. But you cannot afford to close your eyes to them, because they're simply the most explosive outbreak in the information world since the Internet itself. And they're going to shake up just about every business—including yours. It doesn't matter whether you're shipping paper clips, pork bellies, or videos of Britney in a bikini, blogs are a phenomenon that you cannot ignore, postpone, or delegate. Given the changes barreling down upon us, blogs are not a business elective. They're a prerequisite. (And yes, that goes for us, too.)

There's a little problem, though. Many of you don't visit blogs—or haven't since blogs became a sensation in last year's Presidential race. According to a Pew Research Center Survey, only 27% Some newer numbers: According to Forrester, 11.2% of online adults in the U.S. publish a blog at least once a month. Of the same group, 24.8% read a blog and 13.7% comment on a blog at least once a month. The numbers are higher for youths. Of online youths, 20.8% publish a blog, 36.6% read a blog, and 26.4% comment on a blog at least once a month. But I suspect the numbers are unreliable because many mainstream sites with millions of readers—celebrity site TMZ and gadget sites like Gizmodo—are actually blogs. But are all the readers aware of this? I doubt it. This is the blurring of the blog/mainstream divide, a theme we'll see again and again in these revisions. of Internet users in America now bother to read them. So we're going to take you into the world of blogs by delivering this story—call it Blogs 101 for businesses—in the style of a blog. We're even sprinkling it with links. These are underlined words that, when clicked, carry readers of this story's online version to another Web page. This all may make for a strange experience, but it's the closest we can come to reaching out from the page, grabbing you by the collar, and shaking you into action.

First, a few numbers. There are some 9 million blogs out there, Yes, there were 9 million, but how many of them were active? Probably only a fraction. In early 2008, says Technorati Chairman David Sifry, the search company indexes 112 million blogs, with 120,000 new ones popping up each day. But only 11% of these blogs, he says, have posted within the past two months. That means the active universe is closer to 13 million blogs. Kevin Burton, CEO of FeedBlog, argues that the number should be lower, from 2 million to 4 million blogs. with 40,000 new ones popping up each day. Some discuss poetry, others constitutional law. And, yes, many are plain silly. "Mommy tells me it may rain today. Oh Yucky Dee Doo," reads only one April Posting. Let's assume that 99.9% are equally off point. What we didn't see in early 2005 was the advent of the spam blog. These blogs, produced automatically, are designed to show up in search results and to attract Google advertisements known as Adsense. Sifry estimates that fully 99% of the blog posts reaching search engines are spam. So what? That leaves some 40 new ones every day that could be talking about your business, engaging your employees, or leaking those merger discussions you thought were hush-hush.

Give the paranoids their due. The overwhelming majority of the information the world spews out every day is digital—photos from camera phones, PowerPoint presentations, government filings, billions and billions of e-mails, even digital phone messages. With a couple of clicks, every one of these items can be broadcast into the blogosphere by anyone with an Internet hookup—or even a cell phone. If it's scandalous, a poisonous e-mail from a CEO, for example, or torture pictures from a prison camp, others link to it in a flash. And here's the killer: Blog posts linger on the Web forever.

Yet not all the news is scary. Ideas circulate as fast as scandal. Potential customers are out there, sniffing around for deals and partners. While you may be putting it off, you can bet that your competitors are exploring ways to harvest new ideas from blogs, sprinkle ads into them, and yes, find out what you and other competitors are up to.

Follow this link to read more :

http://www.businessweek.com