I ran across an obstacle with a dealer's Facebook page the other day. They were heavily supporting the local chapter of the March of Dimes and had some great pictures and videos compiled by the staff. None of this was on their website, Facebook page, or anywhere in their social media presence.

"We aren't doing it for the exposure. We're doing it for the charity," he said.

When we do good things, it's in our nature to want to feel like we're doing these things for the benefit of the recipient rather than for some self-serving reasons. Most do not like to "toot their own horn" about the good things they do in the community and within society in general. Doing so sours the experience and makes us feel like we're not properly motivated.

This couldn't be further from the truth within a dealership environment. Showing support doesn't end when the check is written. There is exposure for the charity, awareness of the cause, and the influence as a community leader that comes into play. For these and other reasons, dealers who "hide" their good deeds are doing a disservice to those they're trying to help.

Exposure

Sharing exposure is good for everyone involved. If, as in the case of the March of Dimes dealer described above, you're goal is to help raise money through an event, then the dealership and the charity benefit from getting the word out as much as possible. This should be put on the website, blasted out multiple times through social media, and be very visible within the store itself.

Exposure helps to get people to know what's going on. They can't help out by donating themselves if they don't know where or how to donate.

Awareness

After the event is over, some say that it's time to stop posting (if they were posting from the start). Posting pictures, videos, or stories describing the event and the charity around it seems like "tooting" since the time to donate is over. This couldn't be further from the truth.

There are two primary tools that charities can use: money and awareness. Just because you're done with the money component doesn't mean that you shouldn't participate in raising awareness after the event. Dealers should latch on and increase the publicity levels of the charity well after the checks are cashed and they've moved onto the next event.

Leadership

This is arguably the most beneficial of the three primary reasons to expose your dealership's participation with charities. If you're dealership is doing business right, you're already a leader in the community. If the dealership is new or hasn't done things right for the community in the past, these charitable events are a great way to get started.

As a dealership, your influence in the community can be strong. People can look up to you as a strong local supporter of the community. Businesses can look up to you as an example to follow. When you're leading by example and getting involved in the community or through charities, you have the opportunity to inspire others to do the same thing.

At that point, you're not just a business. You're a leader.

* * *

Post your activities regardless of how "self-promotional" they seem. If your dealership is operating from a sincere perspective, you're doing more harm than good by hiding what you're doing in the community.

When the topic of SEO comes up, many people envision HTML code and meta tag adjustments. They think of keyword stuffing. They consider the bounds set by the OEM of what they can and cannot do with their websites and how far they can push the boundaries to extend their market reach.

They don't usually imagine finding cool images and videos of epic cars or amazing places, but that's one activity that dealers and SEOs can do to affect their overall search rankings as well as reach out to their communities with amazing and sharable content.

Today, social has become a tremendous SEO tool. Content is the key to true social interactions. The best content is informative, fun, or both. You should see where I'm heading with this, but just in case...

Step 1: Find Content that YOU Enjoy

There are two connections between our virtual world and the real world that need to be noted. On one hand, you have the "sell sell sell" mentality that often prevents dealers from adding content to their website that isn't totally on point with the goal of the dealership: more sales. On the other hand, we're car people. If you're in this business, you love cars (at least you should). As such, thatconnection should definitely come through to the online presence of the dealership but it's often absent.

Above, you'll see an image of a 1956 Ford F-100. It's one of the coolest trucks (in my humble opinion) that was ever built. Why not pay tribute to it on a Ford website? That would be fun, right?

Perhaps more importantly, it can help your search rankings as well as your social outreach by doing so. Find content you love. Then...

Step 2: Put It On Your Website

The most important part here is attribution. I'm not a fan of stealing content. Whenever possible, use images that you've taken. If you must use the internet, there are sites such as Shutterstock that allow you to pay for content images and they have tons of pictures of both cars and locations. If you're going to rely on Google to get the images, be sure to attribute the source with a link to them. They are supplying you with content that will help your website. The least you can do is help them back by supplying them with a link.

With that out of the way, let's talk content. The reason that you're supposed to find content that YOU enjoy is because you'll be able to write much more easily about it. If it's something that you don't care about, it'll show in your writing. If you adore it (just as I adore the '55 and '56 F-100's I used in this project) then it'll show.

There doesn't have to be a ton of written content. If anything, that can be a detriment to have too much. Let the images or videos speak for themselves. With that said, you musthave some unique content on the page or it won't last. One, two, maybe three paragraphs is plenty.

Make it personal. This doesn't have to be the Wikipedia version. It can come from your heart. At your soul, you like cars, right? Let that shine through in the writing. Speaking of Wikipedia, you have to fight the urge to copy and paste. The content must be unique.

Check out the page itself on Holiday Automotive's 1955 Ford F100 page.

Step 3: Make a Couple of Quick SEO Decisions and Apply Them

It's great to have fun with your content, but you want to be able to get a benefit out of it without risking loss of a customer. The first benefit is to help with your search rankings. While it's possible for the page itself to rank for terms associated with F-100s, unless you're a classic truck dealer you're not going to benefit from this.

Instead, use the page to help your domain rank better in general and to help another page rank better for a specific keyword. In this case, we're going to work on getting the homepage ranked for "Wisconsin Ford Dealers", a keyword that they're currently not hitting with on page one. There are two other SEO benefits that we'll talk about below.

The other decision that you'll want to make is whether or not to include the page in your navigation. In most cases, one-off content like this should not be in your navigation. You want to drive traffic to a page like this through social media. No need to distract your normal website visitors with a "fun" page.

The exception to this rule is if you're going to create a lot of pages with amazing content. In such a case, you may want to consider having a section of the website dedicated to this type of content. It can be "Amazing Ford Vehicles through the Decades" with collections of pages similar to this one. It could be "The Best of the Best in Chicago" with pages dedicated to the amazing things and landmarks within the city. There are many options, but a time commitment is required. If you go with occasional one-off pages, you should probably keep them out of the navigation.

Step 4: The Social Buttons

Most pages on most dealer websites have social buttons. Some even go so far as to have toolbars at the bottom or "Share This" widgets. These are acceptable for most pages because, let's face it, nobody's sharing your site anyway. These toolbars and share widgets are smoke and mirror tactics used by some vendors to sell... nevermind - that's another blog post in the future.

The share buttons you'll want on a content page like this will be the ones supplied by the sites themselves. We recommend Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and Pinterest, though some may want to include others such as Tumblr, StumbleUpon, etc.

This is the second (and arguably most important) aspect to helping your SEO. Both Google and Bing have acknowledged that social signals play a role in the search rankings of a domain. For the most part, the content on dealer websites is unsharable... until now. These types of pages can be shared if you have the right content and the right social accounts in place to share them.

This is where the disclaimer must be made. This isn't A Field of Dreams. Just because you build it, that doesn't mean they'll come. At KPA we have accumulated some incredible social media experts that give us the resources to make sure our dealers get the social signals they need for success. Some would say it's the unfair advantage that keeps us at the top in SEO. It's definitely possible to get social signals without the "power accounts" that we have in our arsenal, but that, too, is another blog post altogether. For now, do what you can and even "fake it 'til you make it" by having employees, friends, and even family share the page on social media. After all, it's a content page. It's not like you're asking them to spam their social friends with a car for sale. This is an epic Ford F100. Share away!

Finally, you'll notice the "Embed this Image" code. This is best for infographics but it works for images as well. This is to assist in helping to get links to the page, which brings us to...

Step 5: Get Links to the Page

The concept of "link bait" is still a valid play in the SEO world and this type of page qualifies. However, unless you're able to drive massive traffic to the page, you won't get a ton of links organically. It's time to share it yourself.

Find content sites that would like to see this type of content on their pages. You have blogs (even your own blog), Tumblr, and other content sites that love compilations. In this case, we used Buzzfeed as well as some blogs.

As you can see in the image, we link again to the target keyword and include the images as the content on the page. The text content is unique - no copy and paste here either. It will only take a couple of links to get this particular keyword ranked if you're using the right sites.

Google's Penguin update is looking for link spam, so don't participate in those types of tactics. If you're going to be building a lot of links, make certain that it's natural and organic. Building links that all have the same anchor text is one thing that can trigger the algorithm's filter.

Do it the right way or don't do it at all. To much is at stake. In this case, the handful of links that we built will not hurt the domain and will help to get it ranked for our target keyword. It will also help the overall link authority of the domain. Whenever participating in link-building, always think quality over quality.

Step 6: Social Outreach

Now that you've got the page and supporting pages built, it's time to share it. If your social media pages are strong, it's as simple as sharing it by creating an image gallery. Keep in mind - this will not count as a Facebook like or Google +1. You can share the link from the page itself on your social channels but they will not get as much exposure that way.

Photos rule.

I did, however, link to the page in the comments.

The goal here is to drive some traffic. It won't be much, but if your social media presence is strong you'll get some traffic to it, particularly from Twitter and Pinterest. The goal is to "double dip" with the content so that you're allowing it to help your social pages to flourish. It's great content. Share it!

Step 7: Rinse and Repeat

Set a schedule for yourself. It could be once a week, once a month, or once in a while, but be sure to set aside some time to creating these types of pages. A content-rich website supported by links and social interactions is the key to overall success on both the search and social fronts.

A final note - this is fun and once you get good it can all flow very efficiently, but it does take understanding. If anything at all in this was unclear, please reach out to me. This isn't one of those things in automotive internet marketing that can be done partially well. You either do it right or you do it wrong - there's very little grey area and there's even less room for error.

When the topic of SEO comes up, many people envision HTML code and meta tag adjustments. They think of keyword stuffing. They consider the bounds set by the OEM of what they can and cannot do with their websites and how far they can push the boundaries to extend their market reach.

They don't usually imagine finding cool images and videos of epic cars or amazing places, but that's one activity that dealers and SEOs can do to affect their overall search rankings as well as reach out to their communities with amazing and sharable content.

Today, social has become a tremendous SEO tool. Content is the key to true social interactions. The best content is informative, fun, or both. You should see where I'm heading with this, but just in case...

Step 1: Find Content that YOU Enjoy

There are two connections between our virtual world and the real world that need to be noted. On one hand, you have the "sell sell sell" mentality that often prevents dealers from adding content to their website that isn't totally on point with the goal of the dealership: more sales. On the other hand, we're car people. If you're in this business, you love cars (at least you should). As such, thatconnection should definitely come through to the online presence of the dealership but it's often absent.

Above, you'll see an image of a 1956 Ford F-100. It's one of the coolest trucks (in my humble opinion) that was ever built. Why not pay tribute to it on a Ford website? That would be fun, right?

Perhaps more importantly, it can help your search rankings as well as your social outreach by doing so. Find content you love. Then...

Step 2: Put It On Your Website

The most important part here is attribution. I'm not a fan of stealing content. Whenever possible, use images that you've taken. If you must use the internet, there are sites such as Shutterstock that allow you to pay for content images and they have tons of pictures of both cars and locations. If you're going to rely on Google to get the images, be sure to attribute the source with a link to them. They are supplying you with content that will help your website. The least you can do is help them back by supplying them with a link.

With that out of the way, let's talk content. The reason that you're supposed to find content that YOU enjoy is because you'll be able to write much more easily about it. If it's something that you don't care about, it'll show in your writing. If you adore it (just as I adore the '55 and '56 F-100's I used in this project) then it'll show.

There doesn't have to be a ton of written content. If anything, that can be a detriment to have too much. Let the images or videos speak for themselves. With that said, you musthave some unique content on the page or it won't last. One, two, maybe three paragraphs is plenty.

Make it personal. This doesn't have to be the Wikipedia version. It can come from your heart. At your soul, you like cars, right? Let that shine through in the writing. Speaking of Wikipedia, you have to fight the urge to copy and paste. The content must be unique.

Check out the page itself on Holiday Automotive's 1955 Ford F100 page.

Step 3: Make a Couple of Quick SEO Decisions and Apply Them

It's great to have fun with your content, but you want to be able to get a benefit out of it without risking loss of a customer. The first benefit is to help with your search rankings. While it's possible for the page itself to rank for terms associated with F-100s, unless you're a classic truck dealer you're not going to benefit from this.

Instead, use the page to help your domain rank better in general and to help another page rank better for a specific keyword. In this case, we're going to work on getting the homepage ranked for "Wisconsin Ford Dealers", a keyword that they're currently not hitting with on page one. There are two other SEO benefits that we'll talk about below.

The other decision that you'll want to make is whether or not to include the page in your navigation. In most cases, one-off content like this should not be in your navigation. You want to drive traffic to a page like this through social media. No need to distract your normal website visitors with a "fun" page.

The exception to this rule is if you're going to create a lot of pages with amazing content. In such a case, you may want to consider having a section of the website dedicated to this type of content. It can be "Amazing Ford Vehicles through the Decades" with collections of pages similar to this one. It could be "The Best of the Best in Chicago" with pages dedicated to the amazing things and landmarks within the city. There are many options, but a time commitment is required. If you go with occasional one-off pages, you should probably keep them out of the navigation.

Step 4: The Social Buttons

Most pages on most dealer websites have social buttons. Some even go so far as to have toolbars at the bottom or "Share This" widgets. These are acceptable for most pages because, let's face it, nobody's sharing your site anyway. These toolbars and share widgets are smoke and mirror tactics used by some vendors to sell... nevermind - that's another blog post in the future.

The share buttons you'll want on a content page like this will be the ones supplied by the sites themselves. We recommend Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and Pinterest, though some may want to include others such as Tumblr, StumbleUpon, etc.

This is the second (and arguably most important) aspect to helping your SEO. Both Google and Bing have acknowledged that social signals play a role in the search rankings of a domain. For the most part, the content on dealer websites is unsharable... until now. These types of pages can be shared if you have the right content and the right social accounts in place to share them.

This is where the disclaimer must be made. This isn't A Field of Dreams. Just because you build it, that doesn't mean they'll come. At KPA we have accumulated some incredible social media experts that give us the resources to make sure our dealers get the social signals they need for success. Some would say it's the unfair advantage that keeps us at the top in SEO. It's definitely possible to get social signals without the "power accounts" that we have in our arsenal, but that, too, is another blog post altogether. For now, do what you can and even "fake it 'til you make it" by having employees, friends, and even family share the page on social media. After all, it's a content page. It's not like you're asking them to spam their social friends with a car for sale. This is an epic Ford F100. Share away!

Finally, you'll notice the "Embed this Image" code. This is best for infographics but it works for images as well. This is to assist in helping to get links to the page, which brings us to...

Step 5: Get Links to the Page

The concept of "link bait" is still a valid play in the SEO world and this type of page qualifies. However, unless you're able to drive massive traffic to the page, you won't get a ton of links organically. It's time to share it yourself.

Find content sites that would like to see this type of content on their pages. You have blogs (even your own blog), Tumblr, and other content sites that love compilations. In this case, we used Buzzfeed as well as some blogs.

As you can see in the image, we link again to the target keyword and include the images as the content on the page. The text content is unique - no copy and paste here either. It will only take a couple of links to get this particular keyword ranked if you're using the right sites.

Google's Penguin update is looking for link spam, so don't participate in those types of tactics. If you're going to be building a lot of links, make certain that it's natural and organic. Building links that all have the same anchor text is one thing that can trigger the algorithm's filter.

Do it the right way or don't do it at all. To much is at stake. In this case, the handful of links that we built will not hurt the domain and will help to get it ranked for our target keyword. It will also help the overall link authority of the domain. Whenever participating in link-building, always think quality over quality.

Step 6: Social Outreach

Now that you've got the page and supporting pages built, it's time to share it. If your social media pages are strong, it's as simple as sharing it by creating an image gallery. Keep in mind - this will not count as a Facebook like or Google +1. You can share the link from the page itself on your social channels but they will not get as much exposure that way.

Photos rule.

I did, however, link to the page in the comments.

The goal here is to drive some traffic. It won't be much, but if your social media presence is strong you'll get some traffic to it, particularly from Twitter and Pinterest. The goal is to "double dip" with the content so that you're allowing it to help your social pages to flourish. It's great content. Share it!

Step 7: Rinse and Repeat

Set a schedule for yourself. It could be once a week, once a month, or once in a while, but be sure to set aside some time to creating these types of pages. A content-rich website supported by links and social interactions is the key to overall success on both the search and social fronts.

A final note - this is fun and once you get good it can all flow very efficiently, but it does take understanding. If anything at all in this was unclear, please reach out to me. This isn't one of those things in automotive internet marketing that can be done partially well. You either do it right or you do it wrong - there's very little grey area and there's even less room for error.

One of my responsibilities with Hasai, the non-automotive social media marketing division of KPA, is to "pull and Enterprise" as we often say around the office. We explore strange new worlds. We seek out new social media life and new social civilizations. We boldly go where no automotive marketing firm has gone before.

With that said, it's a lot less fun and romantic than it sounds. In reality, we look at dozens of startups every week that will offer zero value to the car business (and at times, to any business at all). Every now and then, a startup comes to life that piques our interests. Little Birdby former tech journalist Marshall Kirkpatrick is one of those startups.

In essence, it appears to be a localized social media influence engine. There are others already out there but initial tests and browsing around the sample reports shows that this one might actually be able to tell the difference between real influencers and those who have artificially inflated their Klout or whatever other measures there are out there.

We'll keep a close eye on it, but for now here's the launch video:

One of my responsibilities with Hasai, the non-automotive social media marketing division of KPA, is to "pull and Enterprise" as we often say around the office. We explore strange new worlds. We seek out new social media life and new social civilizations. We boldly go where no automotive marketing firm has gone before.

With that said, it's a lot less fun and romantic than it sounds. In reality, we look at dozens of startups every week that will offer zero value to the car business (and at times, to any business at all). Every now and then, a startup comes to life that piques our interests. Little Birdby former tech journalist Marshall Kirkpatrick is one of those startups.

In essence, it appears to be a localized social media influence engine. There are others already out there but initial tests and browsing around the sample reports shows that this one might actually be able to tell the difference between real influencers and those who have artificially inflated their Klout or whatever other measures there are out there.

We'll keep a close eye on it, but for now here's the launch video:

One of the promises of social media in the early days was that it would help dealers generate new customers by exposing their brands and vehicles to people who otherwise might never see them. It was a great reinforcement tool; much in the same way that television ads work through passive acceptance and absorption of messages, so too does social media allow for exposure while people are in their “happy place”.

The biggest roadblock to seeing this promise become real is that the options available to dealers to allow them to market properly are so abundant that it can become extremely confusing. For some networks such as Twitter and Tumblr, it can be non-targeted and cost-prohibitive. Facebook is the social media master of targeting and cost savings in social media ads, but are dealers really using all of the tools available to them?

More importantly, are they using the right tools?

One of the tools that is used so rarely is the custom audience feature for ads. The standard thought process is that dealers want to reach new people. Doing so through Facebook means exposing ads to anyone who is in the area regardless of whether they are past customers or not. In many cases, dealers prefer that their past customers didn’t see their ads. They’re already customers so why waste the budget when there are plenty of non-customers to attract?

This is a mistake in the automotive industry. The first place they should go with their Facebook ads is their current and previous customers. There’s (hopefully) a built in trust factor associated with current and past customers. For car dealers, there is an opportunity for them to get their happy customers liking their page and interacting with their posts. They are more likely to like a product or service on Facebook that they’re familiar with. The exposure from engaging with these people is potentially very high.

It isn’t what you’re saying about your business that’s important on Facebook. It’s what others are saying about you. Promoting this is easy when you apply some (maybe even all) of your Facebook advertising budget to “friendlies” out there. Let them do the spreading of your message for you.

One of the promises of social media in the early days was that it would help dealers generate new customers by exposing their brands and vehicles to people who otherwise might never see them. It was a great reinforcement tool; much in the same way that television ads work through passive acceptance and absorption of messages, so too does social media allow for exposure while people are in their “happy place”.

The biggest roadblock to seeing this promise become real is that the options available to dealers to allow them to market properly are so abundant that it can become extremely confusing. For some networks such as Twitter and Tumblr, it can be non-targeted and cost-prohibitive. Facebook is the social media master of targeting and cost savings in social media ads, but are dealers really using all of the tools available to them?

More importantly, are they using the right tools?

One of the tools that is used so rarely is the custom audience feature for ads. The standard thought process is that dealers want to reach new people. Doing so through Facebook means exposing ads to anyone who is in the area regardless of whether they are past customers or not. In many cases, dealers prefer that their past customers didn’t see their ads. They’re already customers so why waste the budget when there are plenty of non-customers to attract?

This is a mistake in the automotive industry. The first place they should go with their Facebook ads is their current and previous customers. There’s (hopefully) a built in trust factor associated with current and past customers. For car dealers, there is an opportunity for them to get their happy customers liking their page and interacting with their posts. They are more likely to like a product or service on Facebook that they’re familiar with. The exposure from engaging with these people is potentially very high.

It isn’t what you’re saying about your business that’s important on Facebook. It’s what others are saying about you. Promoting this is easy when you apply some (maybe even all) of your Facebook advertising budget to “friendlies” out there. Let them do the spreading of your message for you.

I vividly remember a conversation I had with Wikimotive's Tim Martell back in 2008. Even four and a half years later, the conversation has remained in my mind. We were discussing the rise of social media. We both agreed that Facebook would be the big thing, but he told me something that surprised me.

"I actually get more traffic from my MySpace page than Facebook," he said.

We knew it wouldn't last, but it was hard to let go completely. His team maintained the strongest MySpace page in automotive for a long time until the social network stopped really being a social network. He then started focusing on the world of Facebook and the rest is history.

Today, Google+ is a "player" in the automotive social media field, but very few are sure how to use it properly. Some would say that at this stage it's a ghost town and isn't a valid part of the social media strategy. My argument to the contrary is similar to my argument against abandoning Twitter: it just doesn't take a lot of time to keep it ready.

Even if you don't believe it will materialize into anything, get these words stuck in your head: "Just in case."

There are reports of it helping from an organic search ranking perspective. These reports are confirmed, then unconfirmed, then refuted, then reconfirmed. Google has said that it is important. Then they've said it doesn't have an affect. What people often don't realize is that they're masterful at spin, particularly when it comes to their search algorithm.

In mid-2010 they vehemently denied that social signals had any effect on search rankings before stating for the record later the same year that they definitely had an effect on search rankings and had been having an effect for nearly two years. It's no coincidence that they made the latter statement six months before launching Google+.

With Google Local having a direct impact on business and being tied in with Google+, you can't afford to think that it will fail. Assume it won't. Assume it will be a thing. Here are three things to do to make sure it doesn't die on the vine.

1. Post on it Like Facebook - Whatever you're posting to Facebook, post it to Google+ as well. It's an extra step that takes about 2 minutes if you're slow and requires nothing more than copying and pasting.
2. Use Hootsuite - This shouldn't be your only method of posting as everything comes across as links (even images) but it's a good way to keep the page scheduled and going strong.
3. Manage Your Page Weekly - Posting is quick. Managing takes a little more time. You don't have to do it daily like you do with Facebook, but once a week check out your new followers, follow the appropriate ones back, and go through your feed (logged in as your page) giving +1s to good content. Total time: 10 minutes.

Nobody worth their salary has a ton of time to waste in the automotive industry, but it's important to keep this high-potential network from dying on the vine.