For the past several months, 5 I believe, we have dedicated this blog to be a working demonstration of our RSS Marketing product. The purpose of RSS Marketing is for SEO promotion and it is highly effective for that, but RSS Marketing does not engage your audience. So, the time has come to re-connect with our audience. Here we are, on a Sunday evening, June 01, 2008, sitting down to initiate a new era for the AC Blog.

I miss the networking aspect of blogging, and the empirical mentality that good blogging perpetuates. We call this Relational Marketing in our product and it is a next step in the evolution of AutoConversion products. That’s right. Now that we have proven the effectiveness of RSS Marketing and have built it in as a core component to our SEO promotion, we are evolving into the next realm of Blog Marketing for Car Dealers - Relational Marketing.

Two years ago when I first got in to blogging, it wasn’t even a buzz word in automotive. There were a few people doing it, such as Jake Jacobson from Higher Turnover, Jeff Kershner from DealerRefresh, Umer Farooq from AutoJini, and Brian Hoecht from Ai-Dealer. We got to know one another a bit from our blogging and still do today. In fact, as many have witnessed, Kersh’s blog has elevated his own career and even inspired many another to take a crack at it.

But there are numerous applications of blogging which pose a choice for Car Dealers today. You have guys like Alex Snyder effectively blogging for Dealership awareness and promotion. You also have guys like Paul Rushing of ISM in Training who blog for what we call Personal Branding, which is essentially using the blogosphere to literally sell cars. I see this as the future of a Car Dealer Salesman quite frankly.

So, as I reflect on the magnificence of where blogging today leaves us, I truly look forward to getting back in to the swing of things at the “relational” level here. For those that still frequent the AC Blog, I commend you for your diligence considering the impersonal nature of our content these past months with the RSS Marketing. But if you are out there and reading this, then may the force continue to be with you.

Here’s to blogging and relationships!

Cheers, -RG

Do you know what an RSS feed is? If you’re like 90 percent of your fellow Internet users, you don’t. You’ve probably heard the term. And chances are you’ve seen the little orange square that symbolizes an RSS feed, too. But have you actually used one? Or have you even done research to learn what it is?

One blogger wants to make more people aware of this essential Internet Marketing tool. He proposes making May 1 RSS Awareness Day. Although RSS users are already aware of this feature, he believes creating a specific day for awareness will get more people talking about it and wondering what it does. Hopefully, he says, the mainstream media will even feel the buzz and put it in the public’s mind.

Here’s what you can do to help. If you have a blog, write about it. A couple of posts on the days before May 1 is great, but blogging about it on the actual day is great, too. Link back to RSSDay.org so readers can click for more information.

As a bonus, you can even win prizes if your blog is picked from a random drawing before May 1. Prizes range from $50 cash awards to credit vouchers and copies of resources for your website. You can find more details here if you’re interested.

At the very least, educate yourself on RSS feeds. You might just save a lot of time in your web surfing sessions. If you’re an auto dealer, it’s also a great way to stay updated on the latest news and information in the automotive industry and your competition, too.

Imagine having hundreds or thousands of local customers who knew that the next time they buy a car, they’re buying it from you. That’s what blogging can get you.

Think blogs are just online journals? Think again. According to a recent article in Dealer’s Edge, customers are not only visiting dealer blogs — they’re coming back. Blogs inherently create a community feel, maybe as a result of their diary style origins. The sense of community in the blogging world can create intense customer loyalty and can get people involved and in touch with your business, even when they’re not yet in the active buying stage.

Blogging can “show consumers that your dealer employs real people, gives back to the community, and operates a business under ethical standards,” says Jeff Kershner, founder of Dealer Refresh, an automotive sales and Internet marketing consulting firm and blog. Customers and readers can ask questions and leave comments in a much more informal style than would be necessary with a traditional, static website, and that can make your potential customers much more comfortable initiating contact.

Once your potential customers have initiated contact, you have the opportunity to create a two-way relationship with them. You can position yourself as an expert, someone your readers can go to when they need help or advice. One recent entry on Checkered Blog, the offshoot blog of the Checkered Flag website, featured the question of a reader who wanted to know what to do when someone keyed their car. The manager of the Collision Center answered the question for all of their readers to see, creating the start of a valuable community resource.

The person who reads that entry today may not have had their car keyed, but six months from now, they’ll remember you answered the question and there’s a good chance they’ll come back.

The possibilities here are only limited by your imagination. You don’t just have to talk about selling cars, either you can discuss maintenance issues, after market ideas, even talk about the benefits of getting a new paint job. With each new entry, you can gain more and more search engine traffic, and give more and more people a reason to come back.

The beauty of this strategy is that you’re not limited to an audience of people already in the market to buy a car. Modern consumers are educated and savvy, and often on the defensive when it comes time to buy. As you become a trusted resource — one that isn’t pushing for a sale or asking for anything in return for their advice and information — you stay on your customer’s radar for years to come. When it comes time to buy a new car, they’ll think of you, and not your competition.

Chances are, pretty much everyone in your area is going to buy another car someday. They may as well buy it from you, and a sharp social media marketing strategy might be just the way to make that happen.

Reddit is one of the more important social news websites that allows Internet users and bloggers to post links to web content. Other users then vote on whether or not they like those links or if they think they are beneficial or useless. The posted links then appear on the Reddit page based on the number of positive votes they get.

Recently, Reddit announced it was going to allow users to customize their “reddits.” According to its website’s blog, a handful of users could “play around” with some of the new features in a beta stage to see how it goes. If the feature turns out to be beneficial to users, customizable reddits will be open to everybody.

Currently, there are three types of reddits users can create:

Public
Any user can view these posted links and submit to them.

Restricted
Any user can view the posts, but only selected members can submit to them. This means either voting on them or commenting.

Private
This is much like a restricted reddit, but it goes a step further in that only members can view the posts.

In addition to these customizable features, Reddit is also offering a new support for language translation in addition to its current German and English capabilities.

If your business relies on online marketing, at least to some degree, these changes are exciting, especially the new language support. They allow a wider audience to access your message more readily. We’ll watch for any new developments to keep you informed.

The buzz is growing. Dealers are online. So too are vendors. Everyone is blogging. Everyone is starting their own blog and everyone is commenting on the blogs of others. Everyone is beginning to see the potential of blogging and social networking for their businesses. It’s a great time to be in the business of blogging for dealers.

One of the greatest challenges every dealer is going to encounter is how to make blog marketing a good investment of their time and their money. Car dealers for the most part look at the Internet as a haven for generating leads. But blogging is not about that. Blogging for your business is about reputation management, brand awareness, and networking. Why would a car dealer want these things? How does social networking help you sell more cars?

Well, right now these questions can only be answered theoretically. There isn’t any data to show where and how online branding and social networking impact your bottom line because it really is only just now starting to occur. But is there any doubt that these things can and do impact dealerships in a positive way?

We could get in to a whole theoretical discussion about these things, but one area where blogging and social networking can impact dealerships in a tangible way is through SEO. Anyone can start a blog, for free even. Anyone can post to a blog and comment on it. But not everyone can make that be impacting on their business for the long term if they do not know SEO and how to apply it to their blogging efforts.

Forward-thinking dealers understand this and are beginning to educate themselves and experiment with blogging and social media.

Technorati Tags: automotive marketing, social media, social networking, automotive blogs, car dealer marketing, search engine optimization

Search engines have a tough job. Thousands of websites, particularly blogs, are introduced almost daily that are designed to trick search engines into responding certain ways so as to benefit a shady blogger. Examples of some of the “shady” techniques search engines encounter each day include:

• cloaking
• keyword stuffing
• mis-spelling of well-known words and websites
• pages loaded with irrelevant words
• hidden text or hidden links
• and more…

Fortunately, efforts are constantly in place and evolving to detect these unethical behaviors and shut down these blogs. Unfortunately, this make it all that more difficult for ad agencies to maintain their own blogs effectively because they are constantly walking on glass so as to not be misjudged by search engines and shut down.

The primary thing to look for when presented with a blog marketing strategy is what the overall objective is of the system. A quality blog marketing strategy should be a win-win-win result for all parties, i.e. for search engines, for Internet searchers, and for the client websites.

Search engines want well-optimized web copy and quality straight forward HTML code on landing pages. Searchers want quality relevant information that makes their search efforts fruitful. And clients want quality site traffic with truly interested visitors so that bounce rates are low and retention is high. These things can only be accomplished by putting forth transparent and ethical efforts to promote websites, not through trickery and deceit.

Be sure to keep on the look out for the quality, transparency, and ethics of a blog marketing system. If you are being presented with the guarantee of receiving dozens or hundreds of leads each month then you could be at risk of jeopardizing your site and even worse, your online brand awareness. While blogs can produce leads, their true value lies in their ability to represent your business with integrity.

Technorati Tags: blog marketing, search engine marketing, brand marketing, online marketing, internet marketing and advertising, reputation, reputation management, ethics, ethics and business, unethical business, unethical blogs

Blogging for your business or car dealership can be an invaluable marketing and networking tool. It can also be a lot of work. The idea of blog marketing is to promote and grow your business, but this can be accomplished even without a blog. In order to make blogging a viable part of your marketing strategy, it must accomplish something that nothing else can, or else it must accomplish something more efficiently and cost-effectively than do other means.

Blog Marketing is best distinguished in two forms. Both require an indefinitely long-term commitment in order to be fruitful. Both also require regular if not daily production of quality relevant content optimized for search engines. .

1. Relational Marketing
2. RSS Marketing

Relational Marketing is the idea of using your blog and other peoples’ blog to build relationships and network with others in your vertical. This involves you reading other blogs, commenting on them, and networking with other bloggers in addition to producing regular content and establishing yourself as an expert in your field. Very time-consuming but very rewarding and it can be done within your company umbrella or off to the side. There is a good article on SearchEngineLand called, “Managing Your Small Business Blogging Schedule” which discusses the pressure business owners can put on themselves about how often and how to prioritize their blogging activities.

RSS Marketing is the idea of using content and SEO to gain authority with search engines on select keywords and phrases, or search markets. This is a sterile approach to blog marketing that can be farmed out, thus requiring zero time and involvement from you. It also is a platform for Relational Marketing.

This is one of the great things about RSS Marketing. Businesses can apply it to their Internet marketing strategy as a hands-free investment and then as they become more comfortable and familiar with the idea of blog marketing and SEO they can begin making cracks at the Relational Marketing aspect. In other words it can be used as a stepping stone to the true power and glory of Blog Marketing.

There are no overnight successes or benefits to blog marketing. Therefore it is imperative to understand what you are getting in to. If you go in to this expecting leads to start pouring in right away you will be disappointed. While the leads will come, it is the other benefits and contributions blogging for your business helps to accomplish. Similar to how you go to business social events for networking purposes that lead to business deals in their own time, running a successful blog is like having a 24/7 business social going on for YOUR BUSINESS.

Technorati Tags: blog marketing, rss marketing, relational marketing, search engine marketing, internet marketing, automotive marketing, marketing strategy, internet marketing strategy, blogging for your business

The highest priority for auto dealers of course is to sell and service vehicles. This requires personnel to handle things such as managing and qualifying leads, closing deals, upgrading finance packages, delivering vehicles, maintaining an effective CRM process, and running a service department. All things that are typically done in-house with trained personnel.

But some functions, such as blog marketing, can and should be farmed out to expert professionals.

Since automotive blog marketing is in its infancy, dealers should be outsourcing this part of their business so they can reap the benefits of blog marketing without being required to train, educate, and manage personnel on this complex form of search marketing. Blog marketing requires time and expertise that is a distraction for dealership personnel. The industry knowledge has not yet accumulated and the tools for automotive blogging have not matured yet to make this a feasible internal business function inside the dealership.

With a full-service blog marketing service dealers are able to select a handful of search markets that they can orient their marketing strategy which in time achieves stand-out results with a fixed budget. The residual impact of organic search marketing makes this calculated approach a good investment too. Once the strategy is defined and implemented, the effort is put on auto pilot and the blog marketing provider can oversee it on a daily basis, producing periodic reports for the dealership to analyze and make necessary adjustments.

Technorati Tags: CRM, automotive blog marketing, blog marketing, search marketing, organic search marketing

Last week I began using Twitter after reading posts about it on DealerRefresh and Publishing 2.0. Twitter is a unique Web 2.0 service that has been around since March 2006. The idea behind it is that you can post extremely short messages, literally 140 characters max, that can be emailed or text messaged to those following you. All you do once you have your own profile is visit the Twitter home page, enter your short message, and voilà, it will appear in the inboxes and cell phones of your followers. Additionally, anyone can visit your Twitter page and see all of the entries you made. For example, click here to see my Twitter page which I only recently began using.

Twitter has a page rank of 7 right now which indicates a tremendous amount of traffic to the site (in addition to good indexing). I would suspect that the people using Twitter are what I call Internet power users, i.e. people that blog, run blogs, run social networks, and frequent discussion forums. The question to ask then is…

How many Twitter users are shopping for a car, or need service on a car, or might need after-market parts on their car, or have some sort of automotive need or interest?

If 100% is not an accurate number, then what is? Does it even matter? The point is, everyone in America is an auto consumer of some sort at some point, and Twitter users are no exception. So now the next question to ask is…

How can car dealers use Twitter to sell cars?

Car dealers have an opportunity here to explore. Imagine a car dealer with Twitter, posting tidbits about specials and promotions that might be of interest to shoppers. You visit a dealer site because you are shopping for a car, you start following their Twitter, and every day or so you get a text message or email (your preference) about something relevant to your interest. You do this with several dealers that Twitter and when the information they are Twittering no longer is relevant to your interests, you stop following. No harm done, nothing personal, you just don’t need Twitter messages from the dealer anymore and when your needs change you can start Twittering again with them.

This concept might be a stretch for some, but the simplicity and effectiveness of it is real. So real that you can expect to see it incorporatd at some point into our own Blog Marketing program.

Technorati Tags: Publishing 2.0, Twitter, Web 2.0

An article by Gary Nixon of CIMA systems recently published on IMedia Connection provides some useful statistics and insights about auto dealer blogs and the consumer market.

[...]16 percent used interactive marketing in the form of blogs or discussion groups and more than 20 percent of respondents between 18-34 years of age used web groups and social forums when compiling information [for shopping autos].

The key points in his message are:

1. Newsletters are declining in their effectiveness
2. Blogs fill that gap
3. Blogs should be used for relational marketing purposes

The term “relational” marketing was not used specifically in Gary’s article, but that is essentially what he was driving at. Read the first paragraph in the section labeled, “It has to inspire feedback “. He states,

[...]dealers that are taking full advantage of technology are the ones who are blogging about their own thoughts, theories and opinions of the vehicles on their lot and the industry in general.

This is a noteworthy insight, and I am certainly an advocate for dealers using blogs in this way. But this is a stretch for dealers. He cites Fiesta Ford’s blog which has been around since January 2007 and is being utilized for relational marketing purposes in an effective manner. But this is rare for dealerships. Mercedes-Benz of Haggerstown is also doing this, but I know they have some dedicated and expert resources (DealerRefresh) behind that effort too.

The reason I point this out is because like lot management, getting dealers to blog is a challenge. The knowledge is not there and the culture certainly isn’t either. This is why a full-service blog marketing solution for auto dealers are important. While out of the box, a full-service blog like AutoBurst does not focus on the relational marketing aspect of blogging, it does not restrict it either. With this approach, the blog can be optimized for driving traffic through effective hands-off RSS Marketing regardless of whether or not the dealer utilizes it for relational marketing. And if the dealer does take advantage of the blog for that purposes, then all the better.

Take a look at our recent post titled, “The 5 principals of an effective blog marketing strategy for auto dealers” which explains more about why full-service blogs for auto dealers make sense and how they can create a foundation for dealers to delve in to relational and social marketing aspects of blogging.

Kudos to Gary for the great article, too.

Technorati Tags: AutoBurst, RSS Marketing