Press This Feature in WordPress for Posting

When adding content to a site or micro-site is made to be easy then you will add more right? Well the Post this feature in WordPress is about as easy as it gets.

This is a short video on how to use this super easy tool.

In my last post we discussed how it is possible to control your Facebook tabs from within a WordPress website.  We added a coupon and "fan gate" so that you can earn more likes by providing value.

In this video you will learn how to add videos to a Facebook tab.  Think video review channel on YouTube, e.g. create a YouTube channel called Dealership Name Reviews and post 30 second to one minute video testimonials.  As soon as your video is posted (directly from your smart phone or tablet) it will show up on your WordPress site, your Facebook tab and possibly be Tweeted out (set up requirred) without touching a computer.  

Make sure that you tell your customer that they are going to be famous :) so that they can tell their friends too.

As always if you have any questions or comments please don't hesitate to add them in the comments, and if you have any other ideas on how to use this please share.

Coupons Drive Traffic

If you have coupons on your website then you already know the traffic that they can create.  Once again WordPress comes through with another plugin that can make this task super easy. 

Create a Coupon Specific Website

Just like creating a "blog" you can create a website that is http://coupons.yourdealership.com or come up with a completely separate domain. This allows you to create additional content that can be distributed via email, twitter, facebook, etc. in just a few moments. You can also include coupons into your Facebook business page tabs so that your customers can consume them on their own terms.

Remember the goal it to create consistant value for your customers when they aren't in the market to buy a car.  This way they won't even consider going somewhere else when they are in the market.

This video was created by Jason B. of the DealerTrend team as a step by step to creating a coupon.

Giving Social Proof a Boost with Facebook tabs for FREE

When it comes to marketing online, it is pretty much a given that you want to focus on pull marketing. This is when your potential clients follow you on Twitter, Facebook, etc., or even give you their email in order to get your updates regarding products and services. Even though Facebook business pages have changed to work with the new timeline, tabs can still be a big part of your online marketing strategy.

Give your clients a reason to like you on Facebook

On just about every site we have built in the last few years dealers have requested a "Like Us On Facebook" link on their home page, header or footer. For the most part these "Like" buttons get very few clicks when just randomly added. You may be familiar with Fan Gates or Reveal Tabs in Facebook; this is where you can add content to a tab that can't be seen unless the user is logged in and "Likes" your page.

Another use case for WordPress

Watch the video below to see just how easy it is to create your own Fan Gate and/or custom tab(s) content with WordPress.  

Is Responsive the Answer?

There has been a lot of buzz in the website world regarding responsive layout over the last year or so; and really gaining steam in the last 6 months. Being heavily involved with WordPress and continually researching themes and plugins as they are introduced, I have witnessed a huge demand for responsive WordPress themes.

What is responsive layout?

Responsive layout is a way to design websites so that they are optimized for all portal sizes; desktop, tablet, mobile and everything in-between. This can be as simple as scaling everything (images, text, etc.) down for a mobile site or even displaying completely different content based on device.

The future of responsive websites.

With proper consideration of your content and users, responsive design promises to be the future of web design. Now you can add content to one website to have it available on any device. Of course there is still some maturing that needs to happen before this technology can be effectively used in all industries, but we aren't that far off.

What do you think of responsive website layout?

Jared At NADA

At the NADA convention in Las Vegas in February there were a few speakers that I wanted to sit in on, and Jared was one of them. With a crazy schedule and various conflicts the only time I was able to go to his session was a translated version.  So needless to say it was entertaining to see Jared try and slow himself down so as to not have the translators throwing things at him from the back of the room. In addition to seeing Jared struggle to keep his passion and message at a translatable pace I received some additional entertainment from the international crowd.  About 15 to 20 minutes into his talk, Jared uses a football analogy that he modified to soccer to help connect better with this World audience.  It had to do with how different peer groups would determine who the best soccer player in the world was/is.  Both of the examples were Brazilian players, Ronaldo and Pele.  I just happened to be sitting behind a group from Argentina that for the rest of the talk couldn't get over the fact that Jared had used two Brazilian players instead of Lionel Messi, and quite frankly I don't think they heard another word he said for the next 45 minutes.  Although I probably get more humor out of that than most of you having been married for 20 years to a Brazilian woman, had you seen the look on the face of the youngest of the group I guanentee that you would have been laughing with me.

Back to the point of my post - Tracking OFFLINE marketing

So in watching Jared speak on how to set up your Google Analytics to track your online marketing, it reminded me of a talk/post that I did about 3 years ago. It was a tutorial on using Google Analytics to track your offline marketing. All of the same principles apply, but they are even more relevant now that Google has become a more powerful tool. By setting up custom channels for your Google Analytics reports you can use this process to determine the efficiency of your offline marketing and keep the vendors involved accountable. The steps are very simple;

1. Market a vanity URL in your radio, TV, Direct Marketing, billboard or other type of offline marketing. By vanity URL I mean an easy to remember URL that you own but don't use for a website e.g. www.SaveBigNow.com
2. Create a destination page on your site or micro-site. This page can be either your home page or preferably a landing page made specifically to convert your message.
3. Create a Google Analytics tracking URL using Googles URL builder tool.
4. Shorten the link and create a QR code if you want (this step is optional)
5. Forward the link to your destination page.

That's it. Here is a video on how to accomplish the steps.

Using WordPress plugins and tools for SEO

WordPress is known for being a great website platform for SEO. It is also known for having a lot of really cool plugins. So in this video we will add a free SEO plugin and a Firefox add-on that make building SEO'd pages a breeze.

The image below is a quick review of the page elements used for SEO. It displays the basics that you should have on a web page for your chosen keywords. Once you have these basic elements covered then you can start adding image tags videos and other content.  

In this video we will cover how to use an SEO plugin for WordPress and a great SEO add-on for Firefox.

Adding Factory Incentives to Your WordPress Site

Iframing content is something that you want to avoid whenever possible on your site, especially with key content. There are times however when it not only makes sense to iframe, but required. In the case of service appointment schedulers and factory incentives utilizing an iframe will help keep your customers on your site.

The following video will walk you through how to add Toyota factory incentives to your site.

Xtime is another popular tool that gets framed into sites quite a bit. If you ever thought of having a site for just your service department, you could create one with WordPress and add a scheduler like Xtime using the iframe plugin. You can also build your own form using Gravity Forms as described in in this post;

Leveraging your time 

By now you have heard that content is king when it comes to Internet marketing. Getting your message out and in front of as many interested eyeballs as possible is what the ultimate goal is. There are several services available that can help you leverage your time better and Twitterfeed is one of them. In the following video you will see just how easy it is to take an RSS feed from your WordPress website or blog and put it into Twitterfeed. Once the RSS feed is set up every time that you post a new post on your site it will automatically syndicate out to the sources that you choose.

As an example I am putting this post on our blog which will then go to our Facebook page and in our Twitter account: see images below

How to set up Twitterfeed video:

The best WordPress plugin for Forms

So I must admit that I haven't used every form plugin available in WordPress, but this is a plugin that I have never heard otherwise. With WordPress there are plugins for e-commerce, membership sites, SEO and much much more.  Out of all of those plugins you will hear some prefer one over another for various reasons. Anyone that I have spoken with who has used Gravity Forms has rated it well over any other form plugin they have tried. 

In this video you will see just how easy it is to create a contact form and also how to import a schedule service form. 

By the way if you would like the Service form in the email just let me know and I would be more than happy to send it to you.