Car Dealers Are Finally Starting To Realize The Power Of The Auto Blog
Blogs have been around for years, and many people like myself have used blogs to gain traffic and juice up another site.
Car Dealers spend a lot of money on their existing websites, and they usually establish a relationship of trust with their provider. This is becoming a problem.
Two of my biggest clients were talked into a dealer blog from their website providers. The problem is the blogs provided to them are not real blogs, it’s just an extension of their websites.
I could write for days about what should be done, but I’ll keep it simple. If you have a dealer blog, go to your last blog post. Copy and paste the title into a Google Search. Then, go to “more” and “blogs” (on the top left). Now search again and if needed, sort the results by date on the upper right.
If you have a blog that is respected by Google, your post should be listed. A proper blog will “ping” Google every time a blog post is written, and within 5 minutes of publishing your blog post should be there.
A simple self hosted Wordpress blog will suffice for any car dealer, and the cost is minimal. You can get a Free Wordpress blog from Wordpress themselves, but I wouldn’t recommend that because you will never own it. Even Matt Cutts from Google recently commented about the power of a Wordpress blog.
This Dealer Utilizes A Blog with Every Widget You Can Imagine: Orlando Car Blog
Spend the $96.00 a year and get your own hosting. The hosting company I recommend has self installers. Once you sign up there is a program called “Simple Scripts” that will automatically install your blog (including a data base). The hosting company will even provide you with a free domain name. For info on how to sign up, visit this page.
After setting it up, you will have plenty of time to play around with it. Make some posts, delete some posts. Change templates and add widgets. Once you feel it’s ready, add a link to it from your current dealer website.
Within a day or 2 it will be crawled and indexed in search engines.
Now add some widgets to the sidebar. You can add your Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds or whatever else you want.
Be sure to blog at least twice a week, and write unique content. Don’t be tempted to copy someone elses work, that’s known as “duplicate content” and the search engines hate that.
In time you will have a powerful blog and you can start asking for link exchanges with area auto bloggers. Give them a link from your blog for a link to your dealer website in return. Be sure to link to it from your site, or you will have a blog that will never be found organically.
One of my clients had 8 identical special edition Corvettes. There were only 500 made so they asked me if I could help them unload them. I did a carefully planned “keyword” blog post and within 2 days they actual ranked nationally on Google searches. When I see visits like this come in, it gives me satisfaction because this is why I do it.
For more information on setting up your own blog, read this article.
If You Plan On Using Twitter Later Sign Up Now Before The Good Names Are Taken
I can see car dealers throughout the United States signing up for Twitter by the hundreds every day. It is very important to get your twitter
Click Image To Get Your Twitter Account Today
account now before the good names are taken.
Twitter is free and takes less than a minute to register and go live. Be sure to follow through and fill out your profile information and don’t forget to put your town and state in their so people will find you. Upload your logo so you can start branding, a good dimension is 74 pixels by 74 pixels.
Twitter is here to stay and it will only get better. Both Google and Bing will now be showing tweets on search engine results page. This could be huge for you!
If you really want to get involved start following local people. The best way to find them is simple:
1) Every town or city has a major newspaper, and they’re all on Twitter now. Let’s say you work in Tampa Florida. Do a Google search for “twitter tampa tribune”. One of the fist pages should be the Tampa Tribune’s Twitter account. When you load the page, click “followers” on the right. Now start following them all. Maybe start with the first 200, wait a few days and follow the next 200.
2) Once a week it’s a good idea to go over your list of followers and unfollow anybody who isn’t following you back. If you do this properly you will eventually have more people following you, which will add credibility to your account. Another words, it won’t look good if you are following 2,000 people and only 50 are following you.
There are some companies that can help you with Twitter, including this one. Now that you have your Twitter going it’s time to start tweeting! I highly recommend checking out Showroom Logic’s Twitter tool.
Should Car Dealers Use Facebook To Advertise?
Facebook is probably the most personal form of social networking available. To create and manage a successful Facebook account takes time and patience, especially if you’re a car dealer.
Let’s say you have 20 employees using Facebook, and each have 100 friends. That’s 2,000 people that will see your inventory on a daily or weekly basis. Remember, those 2,000 people have friends too!
The first thing I would recommend is to not even try to start a “Fan Club” unless you are prepared to give something away. I’m not talking a free oil change either, I mean more like a plasma TV or a car. Otherwise you will have a fan page with very few followers.
Whoever runs your internet department should set-up a personal Facebook account, and converse with people as person to person, not dealership to person. This person must interact with their “friends”, making comments on their posts. Facebook is a 2 way street, and people love for others to comment on their status updates. You should only post updates when you have something to say, and don’t make it all business. Share cool websites and photos with your Facebook friends.
As a car dealer I would recommend getting all of your employees involved. Do you even realize how many of your employees already have a Facebook account? This could be a gold mine in branding your car dealership. Think about it, how many employees do you have? Count up all your salespeople, service, parts, etc…
Automatic Facebook Updates
You will soon realize that most already have a Facebook account. Have a meeting with all of them and offer bird dogs. Showroom Logic can add your entire inventory (with photos) to an unlimited number of Facebook Accounts. It will also automatically update as new cars come in.
As every new vehicle is added to your inventory, it will get posted as a status update for all of your employees using it. Let’s say you have 20 employees using Facebook, and each have 100 friends. That’s 2,000 people that will see your inventory on a daily or weekly basis. Remember, those 2,000 people have friends too!
OK, that’s enought about Facebook. I hope you’re using Twitter!
Are Car Dealer’s Internet Leads Just Showing Up Without Calling Or Emailing?
This has been a controversial topic for years now. Car Dealer’s shell out thousands of dollars a month to have their vehicle inventory posted to third party websites like AutoTrader, Cars.com and Showroom Logic. How can they properly know which is working and which is not?
I feel it’s the salesperson’s job to properly interview the car buyer to find out. Most will simply say “the internet” when asked, so it’s important to go a step further.
Last week I was talking with Dave Ingold over at Park Automall and he mentioned that his AutoTrader rep says as many as 80% show up without coming through as a lead. I personally think that number is a little high.
Last week I posted a survey on a website called ask500people.com. Here is the question (it is still live so the stats will change):
Now let’s look at the answers:
51 Percent Said They Would Just Show Up
I am part of the 51%. Last year when I was in the market for a used truck, I found 2 I liked at two different dealerships in Lakeland Florida. I printed each one out then drove to each dealership. I want to see the vehicle in person before I talk to a car salesman.
29% said they would call first, and only 20% said they would email first. Lets’ break this down even further (keep in mind these metrics are only recorded by some of the voters):
This Data Didn't Suprise Me
People in higher income brackets will show up at your dealership, so be ready. I was convinced when I worked at a tiny dealer in Haines City Florida. Many of our customers who were buying vehicles had Orlando addresses with credit beacons in the high 700’s. For a dealership in the middle of nowhere that didn’t advertise it was obvious to me. The problem was the salespeople were so excited to have a deal they didn’t care to “bother” the customer to find out where they came from.
If you go to the survey you can see more data. Hopefully we’ll see more people participate as long as this stay live.
I’m A Car Dealer Using Twitter. So, Where Does My Tweet Go?
Car Dealers are still hesitant to give Twitter a try. We all know the first step in a successful Twitter campaign is to get quality followers. Many people don’t realize that a single Tweet can go a long way.
Take a look at this screen shot and I will explain below:
Using The Bit.ly Plugin, anybody can track clicks.
The first example is a Tweet sent out for a car dealer in Tampa Florida. This dealer only has 26 followers, but the Bit.ly report says it received 28 clicks.
The second example shows a car dealer with only 9 followers, yet there were 16 clicks.
The last example show a car dealer in Orlando with 179 followers. This Tweet is only 4 hours old, and it was sent out on a Sunday morning. It already received 9 clicks.
So where do all of the clicks come from if a dealer only has a few followers? The answer is simple. The Tweet gets picked up by many websites, and that number is increasing daily.
First of all, Showroom Logic has a main Twitter account with 191 followers that follow us just to receive our used car tweets. These people are in the market for a used car, and they want to be notified here. You can see this account in action here. Any dealer in Florida will have their Tweets sent out on this Twitter Account as well.
The second source is a massive collection of websites that broadcast tweets using keywords. As an example, this website broadcasts any Tweet with the word “Kia” in it. So, any of our dealers who send out a Tweet to sell a Kia will automatically show up on this website, and thousands of others.
The same will happen with other car types, like Chevrolet, Dodge and even specific makes like “Honda Accord”. Website similar to these are being launched by the thousands every week.
You as a car dealer need to be proactive. You cannot wait any longer because your competition down the street may beat you to it.
Call Brandon at (866) 994-1601 Extension 106 if you have any questions, or visit Showroom Logic for more information.
If you want to learn more about how to use the Bit.ly Tool Bar, you can read about it here.
Showroom Logic Twitter Application | Automated Car Dealer Car Tweets
Showroom Logic has observed many car dealers who have started using Twitter, only to abandon it after just a few days. Twitter can be a potential gold mine for any type of business. The more followers you have, the more people will see your tweets.
Showroom Logic Automated Twitter and Twitter Widgets To Embed Anywhere
Although our software is fully automated, we still encourage car dealers to get involved and send some tweet themselves. The idea of our automation is simple, if you get too busy to manage your twitter account, Showroom Logic will continue to make several auto Tweets every day, until your entire inventory will be out there.
One single Tweet with the correct format can get picked up by thousands of websites, and it’s an important way to saturate the internet.
Starting next week, Brandon Bishop of Showroom Logic will start a series of Social Networking videos. Stay tuned for the first video. We suggest you bookmark this page.