One of the keys to being a true dealership partner amongst a sea of vendors is having the willingness to “share the playbook” with our clients and prospects. This is much more important today than ever before in the world of automotive internet marketing because the changes are happening too rapidly. Marketing professionals and companies must stay on top of these changes from day to day and adjust accordingly, something that the vast majority of dealers simply do not have time to do.

Search engine marketing has been in a state of constant flux for nearly a year now. It has always been a challenge keeping up with the changes, but today the changes are coming at us so rapidly that we have to stay tuned in at all times. This is good for those who truly do stay on top; dealers and vendors who have the right plans up front but who also keep them fluid enough to change on the fly are the ones that will have the most success in 2013.

Thankfully, there are certain rock solid activities that have staying power. Google and Bing love quality, so understanding the activities that will work today and that will continue to work tomorrow act as a wonderful hedge against the nuanced changes that happen constantly. Minor course corrections on a solid strategy is the key to sustained success (for us and for dealers).

Here are some of the things that we know work today and that will continue to work in the foreseeable future. There are risky moves that make rankings go up quickly and watch them fall even faster, then there are safe bets that play the SEO market with a steady hand. These are some of those things. The best part – you don’t need a vendor to make these things happen for you. The power is well within your grasp. Pick any one of these activities and do it right now. Bookmark this page and come back to it in a couple of days, a week, or whenever you have time to push forward. Search rankings move with or without your input. Take more control of the outcome by doing these simple tasks regularly.

1. Build a Content Page – I’ve harped on this point many times but it will never get old. Assuming you have a proper CMS that allows for it, you should build a content page. This isn’t a conversion page. It’s not a page that will compel visitors to buy a car. It’s a page with interesting content that only you can supply that supports your conversion pages. By bringing value to the table, you’ll be able to give Google and Bing what they want: quality. For example, you can build a page that lists five key components the 2013 Toyota Camry has that other makes and models do not have. Of course, you’ll be sure to add contextual links to conversion pages such as inventory search pages for the Camry, specials, or anything else that this page can support.
2. Get Social Signals to your Pages – This is much quicker than you might think as far as activities go. People at your dealership are on Facebook, Twitter, or Google+ right now. Take a stroll around the dealership with a particular important URL or two in mind and ask them to share the page on their social profiles. Some will not want to “pollute” their feed with what they may consider workplace spam, but this is another reason why you will want to have strong content pages (see tip #1) handy. They might not want to share the inventory pages directly, but who wouldn’t want to share an interesting piece of content such as this?
3. Write a Guest Post – You or someone at your dealership has expertise in cars and the ability to write about it. Find this person. Send out an email to the company and ask if anyone is interested in doing some writing on the side for the dealership. You don’t need much – a couple of pieces of content a month will suffice for now. Once you have some story ideas, pitch them to appropriate blogs and local websites. Some will not be responsive. Others welcome the opportunity to get fresh, unique content for free. This one actually requires a much longer article to describe in detail, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get started today.

Content, social signals, and links. These are the three key components to search engine optimization that are within your power even if you’re not a website developer. Remember to hold quality at the highest level when planning your strategies. A focus on quality over quantity is what has helped us stay on top of the game for so long. Tricks come and go. Quality optimization principles have staying power. Use them.

There was a time when the search engines rewarded content of all types. If a website syndicated content from elsewhere on the web and exposed it to their audience, it wasn’t as good as unique content but at least it didn’t hurt. Some of the content would be de-indexed as duplicate but the overall health of the domain itself was not harmed.

Today, it’s harmful. Websites that are taking a lot of content from others and posting it on their own websites, even if they link to the original source, are finding that their overall rankings are dropping as a result. It’s one of many changes in the string of content attacks Google has been building upon ever since introducing the first variation of Panda back in February, 2011.

Some have gone to “spinning” content as an alternative. In spinning, content is taken and many of the individual words are changed in an effort to beat Google’s duplicate content filter. This worked for a little while and is still somewhat effective today but Google has come out against spinning in several public statements. It, too, is dying.

With Google’s focus on quality being hammered into us from all sides, it’s clear that their orchestrating a shift towards real content. This is a challenge for many businesses who aren’t really journalists and do not have the time to do the research necessary to create strong content. The alternative: commentary.

Thankfully, humans are loaded with opinions. The internet is a venue through which opinions can be shared. Share yours. It can be difficult to pick a topic that’s relevant to your industry and write an article about something, but it’s easier if the research and writing are already done for us, leaving our role as one of reaction rather than investigation.

The process is pretty simple. Read an article or two that pertains to your industry, then respond to it. For example, you may see an article on Smart Planet about how Ford and GM are opening their APIs to third-party developers. A car dealer probably doesn’t want to do the research about the developments, but they don’t have to. They just have to read the article and respond to it from their own perspective within the industry.

The research has already been done. The news has already been stated. Nobody will go to a car dealer’s website to read the news, but they may be interested in seeing the response about the development from the perspective of those who will be affected, in this case a car dealer embedded in the automotive industry.

This gives websites the ability to add value and participate in the conversation without having to do the technical research surrounding the news itself. It makes bringing valuable content to the table a much easier process and allows businesses to focus on what they know and what they have time to do rather than branching out and becoming the content researchers.

There is plenty out there on any topic through which a business can add valuable commentary. You don’t have to break the news to be valuable in the eyes of both visitors and search engines. You just have to have a unique perspective.

By now, if you've been reading what I've been posting the last few months, you know that content marketing is the key to current and future search and social success. Businesses who really want to do what sites like Google and Facebook really want them to do will be using high-quality content on their websites as the hub through which they can make their marketing blossom.

This should by no means be interpreted that activities such as link-earning and social signals are not useful. In fact, the core of true content marketing to drive higher search results and stronger social interactions is still based around earning links and generating social engagement. It's for this reason that guest posting is a practice that should be considered if you want to get into more advanced techniques.

First, you have to be able to put high-quality content on your website and/or blog. Guest posting does not replace this. If you are having trouble finding the time to keep your own site active and growing, guest posting is something that you should consider. If you're doing well with your website and/or blog, then guest posting can generate exposure, earn links, and even send direct traffic to your website. As with all things in 2013, it all comes down to quality. I say it a lot, but it cannot be overstated.

Write What You Know

The biggest challenge is that we're often so immersed in "what we know" that we have a hard time identifying what can be interesting enough to get picked up by other blogs or websites. Sometimes the easiest way to fix this issue is to be mindful of what you learn about your industry. Fresh knowledge to you in your industry is likely brand new to others, so identifying "on the fly" can make it easier to find topics.

The second biggest challenge is that we tend to write in some pitching or marketing into our guest posts. At no point should you try to work in your credentials, products, or services into guest posts. You won't be accepted as easily if you do. The value that you receive from guest posting is in the links and the establishment of authority within the industry. Teach and/or entertain with your post, then link to your website either in context (we'll discuss that further later) or at the very least within the author's bio box.

Use Content on Your Website as a Resource

In the above example, you might have somewhere in the body of your guest post a paragraph like this:

One of the most common times when we go on longer trips is for summer vacations. There are [summer maintenance activities](link) that you can do prior to the trip that can handle much of the preparation you'll need to do before heading to the beach.

Find the Right Venues

You may think that the only place you'll be able to post is something that is hyper-targeted to your industry. This isn't true. In fact, it's sometimes easier to get a guest post in related industries rather than your specific industry because they likely already have experts in your industry. In other words, a car blog has plenty of car bloggers, so they might not need your car content, but a tech blog who has a bunch of tech bloggers might be interested in seeing interesting technology posts about cars. I know, as I accepted a guest post at our tech blog that was about automotive technology just the other day.

Local news publications are also good targets. They like local writers and with a strong series of content you can even get a regular posting spot. This is good, especially for branding in the local area, but don't get stuck on one site. The more places you can guest post, the better.

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Again, this is not a replacement for putting quality content on your own site. It's an enhancement if you're already putting the content there. Your goal in modern marketing is to use high-quality content to get exposure, links, social shares, and traffic. Guest posting is a tool that should be in your arsenal. Here's a video from last year from Google's Matt Cutts. Notice the importance of quality. Like I said, it can't be stated enough.

One of the biggest problems faced when businesses try to use social media as a marketing tool is that there are simply too many social media sites. A day doesn’t go by when I’m not asked about this new site or that old site and whether or not they can be used is marketing. Most can. However, most simply do not have the reach to make them worthwhile. For the majority of businesses, if they stay focused on four current social sites, they’ll have the vast majority of their marketing covered.

Some big sites were excluded. It’s not that Tumblr doesn’t have its place or that Foursquare is useless. It’s that the time and energy necessary to make them stronger is not worth the return on investment. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest are the big dogs right now. They don’t take a ton of time to master and the results are strong compared to the effort put into them.

• Facebook – This is the only no-brainer out there. If you only use one social media site for your marketing, this is it. From both a social interaction perspective as well as a public relations perspective, Facebook can cover as much as 70% of your social media marketing efforts.
• Twitter – This is often the hardest for businesses to understand. They look at it, give it a try, and believe that the results aren’t worth the effort. The problem with that argument is that Twitter is still extremely popular and more importantly the time necessary to have a rock-solid Twitter presence is minutes a day at most. Don’t abandon the low-hanging fruit just because the results aren’t apparent. If you use it right, the results will come.
• Google+ – Even if you don’t believe that Google+ will emerge as a true social media force (it will, but I won’t argue that here), the search engine marketing benefits of building up and maintaining a strong presence on the platform cannot be argued. Few would say they couldn’t use better search results or more traffic from Google. Their social network is one of the ways to improve those results.
• Pinterest – Just like Twitter, Pinterest falls into the category of low-investment, higher-returns. One of the things that differentiates Pinterest from other social sites is that they’ve embraced business usage more readily than other platforms. Posting and maintaining a quality Pinterest presence can be literally less than a minute a day and many of those who use the platform swear by it.

There’s a common theme here. Effort versus reward. If you measure your returns relative to the amount of effort put into the maintenance, you’ll find that these are the sites that generate the highest level. Used properly, just about any business can benefit from a strong presence on these four social media sites.

The marketing adage “content is king” has been around for a long time. In 2013, it appears that both the search engines and social media sites are focusing on content as their driving forces, but in a different way than most understand. Things are changing in the world of internet marketing. Here’s what you need to know.

Content was never really “king”. Though it made a nice talking point and allowed marketing companies an opportunity to charge for their labors, it was always a temporary fix. In search, it started off as extremely important for a little while until marketers started learning how to manipulate it, so the search engines switched to focus on external signals such as links. Then, the links started turning into link farms and “splogs”, so content re-emerged as a focus point.

Companies were built on the premise of “more is better” and started putting out low-quality, spun, or light content in an effort to fool the search engines once again. Google made moves to shut this down in February, 2011, with the first of many Penguin algorithm updates that effectively put an end to content farming.

Social media saw a similar shift towards spam in 2011 that was quickly sorted by secretive algorithm adjustments that took into account the different layers of liking, sharing, retweeting, and other social media activities to once again force quality of content to the front ahead of bulk.

For the first time ever, content is truly emerging as the leader in internet marketing activities, but it has manifested differently than most have seen in the past. There’s no longer SEO content, social media content, and conversion content that act separately from each other. Going into 2013, these three primary types of internet marketing content are consolidating into a singular strategy. It’s not that they are becoming the same. It’s that they have to work together for maximum results.

In essence, content is not king. It’s like a president. It has power, certainly, but the majority of that power must be shared, enhanced, and complemented by other factors such as links and social signals. Here’s how the president of internet marketing will work in 2013…

The different hats of a president

Just as any good president must wear different hats depending on the circumstance, a strong content marketing strategy requires that the content falls into the different categories depending on the needs of the moment. I mentioned the three most important – SEO content, social media content, and conversion content – but there are others that often come into play.

We’re going to focus on the three important ones for now:

• The President as an Organizer – The President can’t do it all. He or she must bring the leaders of Congress and the states together to demonstrate a coherent strategy for their country. SEO content works must the same way. Creating SEO content is different from creating content that acts as SEO for a particular page. True SEO content is designed to help generate inbound links, points the search engines in the right directions once they land on a particular page, and enhances the conversion pages through context and appropriate internal links.
• The President as an Ambassador – It’s important for a President to be strong, friendly, and build relationships with others. What the President says and how he or she says it makes a difference in perceptions. Done properly, the message is shared. The same holds true for social media content. You can have interesting things to post from your website onto other sites, but if the relationships aren’t there, you won’t get very far regardless of the quality of the content.
• The President as an Administrator – Despite what anyone says, a President has to be a good salesperson. They have to take their ideas and make them work within their country which requires the ability to direct the people appropriately and get things done that work. It doesn’t matter how good a President is at being an organizer or ambassador if they can’t deliver the goods at the end of the day. This is where conversion content finds similarities. You can have people interested, but if you don’t turn them into leads, customers, or clients, your other efforts are worthless.

From a practical perspective, you content must be able to bind all of the major internet marketing efforts into a working strategy. This is where content comes in. Turn it into the centerpiece of your internet marketing for 2013. Links, social signals, traffic, conversions – all are necessary for success. The easiest way to achieve them is through the strongest content that you can muster.

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“Mt Rushmore” image courtesy of Shutterstock.

https://www.mouthfulsocialmedia.com/

Let's face it. Facebook (and Google+) love pictures. It ranks at the top of the news feed food chain above text posts, videos, and links. It's the primary reason that many people visit Facebook in the first place. They want to see pictures of little Timmy sliding into third base, the places that their friends and family are visiting, and cats. Don't forget the cats.

Unfortunately, many businesses have focused on cats (or similar Facebook-friendly images) as their source of content. It simply doesn't have to be that way. It's the lazy approach to find things that make us laugh and then post them on our business Facebook pages in hopes that other people will laugh as well and like, comment on, or share the image. What's worse than the laziness factor is that it's insincere; it's like trying to fit in at a party where people are frolicking in order to spring a sales pitch on an unsuspecting soul while in line for a drink.

What's worse than the insincerity is that it simply doesn't work. Sure, people may like the picture of the Sistine Chapel that your sister posted. They may even share it. You may even be able to loosely justify it by saying that it's improving your branding. These are fine delusions, but they don't address the core problem you have with your Facebook page. You aren't actually becoming anything to your fans other than another interesting page that posts content that they occasionally see and rarely enjoy.

If Facebook (and Google+) are mostly visual platforms and you want to capture some of the "magic" without being a poser, you'll want to find the various treasure troves of content to post. Here are some...

Finding Images for Facebook (and Google+)

One of the most annoying practices that businesses employ on Facebook is that they talk about anything other than their business. Don't get me wrong, it's much more annoying (and completely useless) to post a feed-based flurry of links to your website every day. Still, if you're going to post images (and you should), there are places to find them that will improve your overall presence by staying interesting while also staying on point.

In this example, we'll look at a local Ford dealership. What do they do? They sell and service Ford vehicles as well as used vehicles of other manufacturers. There's no reason for a Ford dealership to post pictures of cats. They have plenty of content available to them that would serve them much better.

• Google - The obvious choice. It's the other form of the lazy person's approach, but it works and can still help you to stay on point. Search for specific cars. Search for engines. Search for images from the various car shows around the world. When you find something you like, post the image with a unique description. Be sure to add a localized or otherwise-relevant spin to the description. For example, if you're posting an image of a concept 2015 Mustang, you could ask a question such as, "Is this different enough to make it stand out from the current body style?" or simply make a statement such as "We can't wait to get these here in Fond du Lac!" As always, you'll want to post a link to the source, but only after you've included the image. You don't want this to be a link post with a preview generated, so add the link to the description after you've already selected the image. This works on both Facebook and Google+.
• Shutterstock - There are various paid image galleries that offer different packages. These are particularly useful when you're posting content to your website or blog about the local area. In this example, we used Shutterstock to find interesting images of Wisconsin, the home state of the dealership itself. This gave us very sharable content (23 shares from a dealership's website isn't too shabby) on the website itself as well as a dozen images that we can share on the dealership's Facebook page spread out over time if necessary or posted as an album.
• Your Store - This is quite possibly the most under-utilized source of content for most businesses. It's also the most useful. Sure, there are plenty of businesses that are starting to post images of their happy customers, but it's not really super-engaging content. The buyer and anyone who knows them might like or share the image, but it's not going to get liked, commented on, or shared by anyone else. However, there is plenty going on other than the customers. In the example of the Ford dealership, there are often "cars with a story" coming through service. It could be a Ford with 300k miles. It could be one that just came back from a trip in the mountains and is now covered in mud. It could be an interesting or funny bumper sticker, a cool modification that someone made to a motor, or even something very simple like a silly outfit the boss wore to work today. There's content floating around the store every day. You just have to keep your eyes open for it.
• The Area Around You - Every place has something photo-worthy. Whether you're in a bustling metro area or a desert wasteland, there are things happening or interesting scenes that can be captured with your smartphone. Do it. I couldn't tell you how many times I would stop in every city I've been to in order to take a picture of something cool had I managed a localized social media profile in that city. Take advantage of your surroundings and you'll find treasures that your localized fans will recognize and enjoy.
• Your Imagination - This is rarely used as well but when it's done right, it's awesome. By using your imagination, you can explore both the store and the local area and manufacture scenes that would make for great posts on Facebook (and Google+). For example, you can go to the roof of the dealership and take a picture of the lot itself, then apply tilt-shift manipulation to the image for a really cool final product. The image above was a normal image, but when tilt-shift is applied, it makes it look like it's a miniature car.

Peter Martin Speaking At The Internet Sales 20 Group On "Permission Based Email Marketing & Data Mining" from Dealer Synergy on Vimeo.

http://www.internetsales20group.com

Peter Martin, CEO of Cactus Sky, Speaking At The Internet Sales 20 Group On "Email Marketing & Data Mining"

When Instagram decided to block Twitter from being able to post the images directly onto the platform, we all knew it was a matter of time that Twitter would have its own variation. We didn't realize that it would only take a few days. We also didn't expect it to be such a useful portion of the app.

As it turned out, the app is very strong, possibly even better than Instagram in UI. Granted, it's not a true replacement for Instagram, but with a little manual effort it can actually be used to generate interesting content directly from the lot onto all of your social media pages and profiles.

Here's how:

Understanding the Twitter Photo Filtering Tool

If I have one complaint about what Twitter has done with their photo filtering tool, it's that it's only available through their mobile apps. It would have been nice and a great differentiator between the app and Instagram, but it will suffice.

When you take a picture of something at the dealership with your smartphone, you can then bring it into Twitter. There is a cropping tool, an auto-fix button, and the filters that many are familiar with if they've used Instagram. Adjust the image appropriately and it's ready to post.

Now, just come up with a clever Tweet to go with it and you're ready to go. If you're using a picture that you've already taken with your smartphone, no problem. Twitter allows you to either take an image at that point or insert an image already in a gallery on your phone.

Depending on your smartphone, you may face challenges if you're trying to import an image from your computer. You can always use syncing software, connect your phone directly to your computer, or just upload the picture to an image sharing site like Imgur and then download it to your phone.

Get it Posted to Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, and (yes) Instagram

Now that you have it on Twitter, it's time to upload the image to Facebook, Google+, and anywhere else you might have a strong social account such as Pinterest, Tumblr, and even Instagram itself.

When posting to Facebook and Google+, you'll want to add the image, THEN add the link to the Tweet itself. When you add an image, it prevents the link from expanding. This is important because links do not do as well on Facebook or Google+ as images. Still, you want the link to the original Twitter post for a couple of reasons, most importantly to get some exposure to your Twitter account for some cross-channel promotions.

Why Go Through the Trouble?

There are easier ways to post to the various social media sites. This is a very manual effort and may discourage dealers from doing it like this. Everything listed above is done so for a reason.

Twitter is one of the most under-utilized tools for dealers. Utilizing the filters and linking to the Tweets from your other social networks allows you to highlight your Twitter account and draw in other followers. Used right, Twitter can be a tremendous marketing and communication tool, but that's for another blog post.

The other reason to do it like rather than posting directly to Facebook from Instagram is because of exposure. As cool as Instagram can be, it presents challenges in your Facebook timeline. If you're posting more than one image in a 24-hour period, Instagram photos get "batched" into an album. Neither this album nor the individual images can be liked, commented on, or shared directly from your news feed. People will have to click through to the image to be able to interact with it, and most won't. They'll just pass it right by.

Also, Instagram doesn't post directly to Google+ or Pinterest anyway, so you'll be adding them manually either way. Posting it like I detailed above to all of your social profiles takes about 2 minutes and expands the potential reach greatly.

Lastly, people recognize the filters from Instagram. It makes images look more real. It makes them look authentic. These are your images and people appreciate images that you took more than images you found on the internet. While the Twitter filters aren't exactly like the Instagram filters, they're still pretty darn cool.

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Social media is about authenticity. If you're making the effort to take images at your dealership, you should be taking the time to separate yourself from the competition by positioning the photos in the best possible light. This process, long (2 minutes) as it is, will give you an edge over your competitors and will let your customers know that there are real people behind the profiles.

It was one of the most used made-up words of 2012 (and in many cases, one of the most annoying). Just about every marketer in and out of the automotive industry used some variation of "SoLoMo" (Social/Local/Mobile) in a blog post, video, presentation, or declaration of things to come. The underlying concept - that many people and the sites they visit are becoming more social, more localized, and more mobile based - is likely here to stay for a while, but is it something that dealers should embrace in 2013 or something that they should wait on until it either explodes or fades into the same obscurity that QR codes and SMS marketing seem to be heading?

Before anyone jumps on that last statement, I'm not downplaying the effectiveness of either QR codes or SMS marketing. Used right, they can be very effective. They simply didn't materialize into the "next big thing" that many thought they would back in 2011.

I have three questions which I'll answer briefly just to spark the conversation, but I really want to hear from the ADM community.

Q1: Should they really be grouped together or should they be treated as independent marketing and communication forms?

There's a certain beauty in SoLoMo. With the rise of smartphones and tablets, the improvements by Google and Bing in serving consumers localized results, and continued expansion of social media into our daily lives, it all seems to tie together nicely. Social is accessed most often from mobile devices. Mobile devices and their operating systems are generating search results, apps, and other tools that tie in perfectly with localized engagement. Local interactions are becoming more prevalent in social media and through review sites.

It would seem that grouping them together is easy enough and presents the ability to save time and resources by consolidating strategies. However, each of the three components also have their own nuances and attributes that may require an active automotive marketing professional (both at the dealership and vendor level) to split the strategies into more focused campaigns and separate styles.

Should they stay grouped or not?

Q2: Is the time and effort required to make them "hum" worth it from an ROI perspective?

Let's get local out of this question immediately. Few would argue with the clear trends and data that shows the value of localized focus. Reviews, search traffic, retargeting - all have shown benefits that make the question silly in regards to local.

Mobile and social are different. Mobile is a tough beast to tame. It requires the right software, platforms, and strategy to get the desired effect, but is the effect worth the effort? Is there a large enough difference between good and great to make it worth the wholesale changes necessary to get to the highest level? Social is always a question from an ROI perspective - enough has been written for and against it so there's no need to rehash here.

Is there enough ROI to justify going to the next level?

Q3: Will SoLoMo grow in relevance or decline in 2013

I'm going to leave that question open. I have very firm beliefs about the direction of SoLoMo in 2013, but I'll hold my opinions until others are posted so as not to spoil the conversation prematurely.

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What say you, ADM?

There is a very distinguishable difference between SEO content and content that brings SEO value.

The easiest way to look at it is that SEO content is what you put on each page of your website to let both visitors and the search engines understand what the page is about, while content that brings SEO value isn't necessarily there to help the page rank but to help other pages on the site rank better. The easiest way to create content that has the ability to bring SEO value is to make sure that the content is engaging and that people will be willing to both link to and share the content itself.

This is Part III in the series about “Killing Birds With Content Stones”. Read Part I and Part II first.

It has to be real.

When most internet marketers think of using content for SEO, they think along the lines of using the appropriate keywords in the html content on the page to demonstrate the keywords for which they want the page to rank. This is, in many ways, harder than writing engaging content. There's a lot less science and practically no risk in writing engaging content. It's what Google and Bing want. As a result, giving it to them gives you little chance of triggering anything negative as a result, at least not from the search engines themselves.

With modern SEO, content has gone from being a tool to being the hub. If you use content marketing properly, you can enhance your SEO while still bringing value to the website and social media sites at the same time. Here's how:

How Engaging Content Works for SEO

If you are trained in search engine optimization, get one thing out of your head for the rest of this article. Keywords don't matter in engaging content. Our goals with writing engaging content have nothing to do with getting that page ranked for any particular keywords. It will rank because it's valuable and the keywords that it ranks for do not really matter. The goal is to get traffic, links, and social signals. These types of pages do not have to rank for the keywords that you want and they don't have to convert visitors.

It's hard to understand for many marketers. It's almost unnatural, to want to put out a piece of content that has no direct value from a search or conversion perspective, but it's the indirect value that can be so much more powerful when done right.

These engagement pages are designed to stay loosely on topic with the goals of the company or website, but only so much as to have a reason to exist. Using a car dealer as an example, the vast majority of the site might be geared towards selling cars, servicing cars, or highlighting the dealership, but the engagement content will only touch on the appropriate topics. It could be an article about the local area or even the state itself. At that point, it becomes an opportunity to highlight landing pages that are area specific.

When you create the page, it will be about a topic that allows you to work in links (or in many cases, a single link) to the target landing page. In the example below, the page is about iconic images in Wisconsin while the landing page it links to is specifically geared to rank for the term "Milwaukee Ford Dealers". Do what you can to make sure the link is naturally situated within the content.

The goal is to build a page that is engaging enough to be shared on social media to generate social signals for the domain as well as have the potential to be linked to by other websites that find the content interesting or useful.

Write What Your Visitors Would Want to Read

I've always thought it was easier to take a writer and train them on SEO than to take an SEO and train them to write well. Don't get me wrong - a strong SEO content writer is still valuable, just not as much as they have been in the past. Natural writing is prevailing in the search engines, so as long as someone knows how to properly describe what's going on with a particular page or the website/company as a whole, they should be able to piece together good SEO content.

Writing engaging content is harder and potentially more valuable from an SEO perspective. The example above was designed to appeal to people around the state itself. The subject should always tie in with the target landing page in some way. Since our landing page is targeting Milwaukee but the dealership isn't in Milwaukee, we posted about the entire state and worked in references to the bigger cities in the state - Milwaukee and Madison. Let's say our goal was not to target the brand and a city but rather a model and the local area. We might have posted something like "Most Used and Abused F-150's in Fond du Lac". A piece like that would require much more research and help from either the service department, locals in the community prompted by social media, or both. In that case, the landing page that we would create would likely be an inventory search page for F-150s or even a landing page highlighting the vehicle.

You know your area. You know your brand. You know your products. There's plenty of valuable content available to post about. It doesn't have to be an article or a list of images like the one above. It could be a video, an infographic, a review (written, not scraped or syndicated), or any of a dozen different types of content.

Always think about it from a sharing perspective. Would YOU be interested in sharing the content on social media sites if you didn't work there? Would you be willing to link to the page as a resource or piece of interest if you had a website about the subject? In the example above, the page could be sent to local newspaper websites (particularly if the images were unique to the business), a tourism site, or any website that had an interest in the state of Wisconsin. Schools, government agencies, travel sites - all make for a good potential link. They don't have to link to your target. Your page takes care of that for you. Your goal is to get links and social signals to the engaging content that links to your landing page. It's not as good as getting a direct link or social signals to the target itself, but the vast majority of landing pages do not have enough general interest to make them sharable. This is an alternative to direct links and if done right, it's the most effective way to move the needle in your search rankings.

In the next part, we will describe in detail how to get the most social media benefit from the same piece of content. Stay tuned.

There's really no way around it. The only technique to truly maximize the effectiveness of your content to be engaging on your website, relevant for SEO, and useful for social media is to think three-dimensionally.

This is Part II in the series about "Killing Birds With Content Stones". Read Part I first.

It's hard. It's not impossible. Here's how.

Asking the Right Questions Before Producing the Content

Before you can produce the content, you have to make sure that the proposed piece is going to fulfill the goals appropriately. For this portion, we're going to use the example of a car dealership who is diving into content marketing. They want to produce content for their website that is engaging to their visitors, that assists in improving their search engine optimization, and that can effectively be used as content to spread through social media.

Some content is born from brainstorming or simply pops in one's head as a good piece of content to post. Other times, inspiration comes in the form of an event. For example, a Ford dealer in Seattle might have a purple Ford Focus drive into the service bay that inspires a marketing manager. They decide that they want to do a picture post about the different colors of Fords. Before coming up with the plan surrounding the content, they have to ask themselves a few questions.

• Will this be a piece of content that's interesting to people who visit my site? In this case, the fact that the topic is Ford vehicles makes it interesting enough, but they can add an additional touch to it if they can keep it localized. Rather than just different colors of Fords, they may decide to make it different colors of Fords around Seattle.
  
• Can this help with SEO? This is the easy question to answer. For this particular piece of content, since the topic surrounds vehicles themselves, they will be able to link to pages on the website that sell those vehicles. Under the image for the Ford Focus, they'll be able to link to an inventory search for a Focus and anchor it, "Ford Focus for Sale in Seattle".
  
• Is it interesting enough to be shared on social media? It might be, particularly if the images are strong enough. Getting it shared on Facebook will be pretty easy if at least one of the images is strong. Getting it retweeted will require some clever titling. Since social media in general and Twitter in particular love trending topics, the marketing manager may decide to latch onto a semi-current topic and title the piece, "15 Shades of Ford Across Seattle", playing on the 50 Shades of Gray phenomenon. It's a little risky considering the subject matter of the book, but it's also been played with enough to allow certain discretion.

Force it Now or let it Simmer?

There are two options for a piece of content like this. Since it's only time-sensitive based upon the popularity of the title, it's possible to let the piece simmer and grow over time. More on that later.

The first and most common option is to go for it now. We have the concept. Now, let's put the piece together. We should have the image of the first purple Focus (with permission from the customer, of course). Now, we need more. There should be at least a couple more vehicles on the lot that have interesting colors that make the vehicles look great. This is important - by mixing in some in-house images, it makes the overall story more compelling as it pertains to the business itself. Let's say we have 4 images total. Now, we need more.

Most will go to the internet for this, and they may get lucky and find some good images by searching for "Ford Seattle" in image searches. Even better, they may search for "Ford Mustang Club Seattle" and find images there. Wherever you find the images, always attribute the actual source. If you didn't take the picture, give credit to those who did.

There may be a desire to cheat a little and include images of Fords outside of Seattle, but that would be too risky. If there simply aren't enough available to make a valid piece, they may want to append the title to say, "15 Shades of Ford Across Seattle and Beyond". It's a cheat and not ideal, but efficiency is more important than perfection. If you don't have enough content, don't force it.

In this hypothetical instance, the marketing manager has 9 images - four from the dealership and five local cars they found online. Nine is good but doesn't have the oomph of 15, so if they absolutely must get the piece out now and they don't want to settle for non-local images, it's time to find them in the real world. It could be as simple as sitting at the corner and shooting pictures of a couple of cars at stop lights. This seems cheesy, but there's nothing wrong with it as long as you don't have license plates visible. The marketing manager may drive around searching. This is not ideal, but again, this is assuming you want the piece to go out immediately.

What would be ideal is to go with option two: patience. The content will come. Tell the service writers what you're doing and ask them to keep their eyes out. You may even want to be specific - "I need green, maroon, and light blue to fill out the spectrum."

The other technique is to reach out through social media itself. If your Facebook page is vibrant and has a lot of local fans, ask them for help. Tell them what you're doing and ask them to send in pictures of their own Ford vehicles if they have something that matches your needs. Over time, between what happens at the store and what happens on social media, your patience will pay off and you'll have a much more impressive piece of content than if you force it. This is the difference between good 3D and bad 3D. Both deliver the desired effect but one is more memorable than the other.

Make it Three Dimensional

You've asked the right questions. You have the right content. Now, it's time to make sure that it fulfills all of the goals.

• Engaging Website Content - If you have a "fun" section on your website such as a blog, this is where you'll want to place the content. The worst thing that can happen is to take someone who wants to do business and distract them with frivolous content, so by placing it on the blog or in an area designed for "fun" topics, you'll keep the serious visitors serious while still engaging with those who are visiting for other reasons. Keep the spin of the content localized - people love seeing what's close to them on the great big internet. It helps to highlight their surroundings, gives them pride in their city, and offers a way for them to get involved with comments such as, "I saw that F-150 at Target the other day."
  
• SEO Content - There's nothing wrong with linking to internal pages that are about business. People expect it. While they might not click directly to a search for Ford Fusion inventory, the search engines will definitely follow the link and attribute additional weight to the page as a result.
  
• Social Media Content - With a proper three dimensional piece of content, there will be an inherent desire to share it. The content must be interesting enough to share and then must be exposed to locals so they can share it as well. This is most effective on Facebook, of course, where the degrees of separation between people makes an image much more likely to be seen by the owner of the vehicle. Have your employees share the page. They can highlight individual images in their Facebook feed. If you reached out to a local car club, contact them or simply post it on their wall with credit going to them as deserved. The art of exposing the content properly on social media is another blog post entirely, but I think you get the picture.

Over the past couple of months, I've been working on a standard operating procedure for a comprehensive social media marketing service. It has been a while since I had to develop an overarching strategy rather than one that was individualized for a business or organization, so my daily reading of the industry trends and changes has had my eyes bleeding by the time the kids get ready for school. My fingers have bled as well... from making adjustments to the SOP as the industry continues in its unending state of metamorphosis.

In the worlds of search marketing, there are needs to stay on top of things. Google and Bing make changes to their algorithms. Consumers make changes in their searching habits. Devices make changes in how they present the data. It's pretty rough trying to keep up with search. However, keeping up with the changes in search is a piece of cake compared to keeping a social marketing service fresh and operating properly.

My conclusion in putting together this SOP is simple - keep it general and fluid. It must be allowed to grow and adjust based upon the changes that are made by the social media sites and the users themselves. Here are a few examples of activities that may have been a part of a social media SOP if I made it last week:

• Post an image to Instagram and have it feed through to Twitter.
• Sponsor one post a day on Facebook that is business-oriented.
• Get people to +1 your Google+ business page as well as recent posts.
• Post to Pinterest three times a day and feed it through to Facebook.

Social media moves way too quickly for concrete practices. Any full-service company that wants to run your company's social media needs to demonstrate the ability to stay informed about the maelstrom of changes that happen every week as well as the ability to keep a fluid service that moves with the trends and the changes themselves. If they're offering a social media service that is static, that is using techniques that have been "proven to work for a long time", then they do not understand the very nature of social media and should not be trying to run yours for you.

It’s pretty well known that YouTube is the second largest search engine with more than 4 billion views per day. While your dealership isn’t likely to produce the next “Gangnam Style” YouTube sensation, your presence on and use of YouTube can be part of a successful online strategy. If you allocate a significant budget towards SEO and SEM, you may want to think about allocating a percentage of it to increasing the number and types of videos on your dealership’s YouTube channel. Videos have been proven to engage customers, boost credibility and drive traffic to websites.

If you’re not already incorporating these five types of videos into your Internet marketing plans, consider adding them in 2013:

1)    Inventory. Posting inventory videos on YouTube is very effective when a link to your website and relevant search term keywords are included in the description. Also post the videos on your website and Facebook page. Then, post links from classified ads sites like Craigslist. Craigslist gets more than 50 billion views per month, and can drive traffic to both your website and Facebook page from customers wanting to view your inventory videos.

2)    TV commercials. Most dealers at some point or other have spent a significant amount of money on creating commercials. Are you maximizing that investment by uploading your old commercials to YouTube and posting them on your website? If a commercial was to promote a specific event such as a Labor Day sale, you may want to include something in the description that encourages customers to keep in touch for news about this year’s Labor Day sale.

3)    Videos that brand your dealership. Customers want to feel good about who they are buying a car from. Whether you brand yourself as the price leader, the honest, no-haggle dealer, or the small, family-owned dealer, have a professionally produced video that reflects this. Highlight your involvement in community service or incorporate humor if you can, and include your service departments by weaving in expert technician interviews or service advisor maintenance tips.

4)    Customer testimonials. Word of mouth and online reviews have tremendous impact on customer consideration. Potential customers want to know what your current customers have to say. What better way to advertise than combining both of these effective marketing methods in a series of testimonial videos? The key to making this successful is to keep testimonials current. If a customer sees that your last testimonial was posted more than six months ago, they may wonder if your service has been slipping.

5)    Personalized videos for lead follow-up. Have you ever received a personalized video message in your e-mail? I did recently and it got my attention. If you want a customer to think, “Wow, this person actually took the time and effort to create this video just for me,” then you may want to consider this idea. If you are a salesperson who is comfortable and personable on camera, sending a customized video to select Internet leads is a surefire way to outperform your competition.

Which types of videos have you found to be the most effective in increasing traffic to your dealership website? Are you able to track leads that come in as a result of your videos? 

In an ideal world, we would have the time and resources to create four types of content: converting website content, engaging website content, SEO content, and social media content.

Throw in public relations content, supporting content, and consumer resources and now you have a ton of content needs without a ton of time to create it.

This is where the bird-hunting content producers of the world can shine. Thankfully, just about anyone at a business can kill multiple birds with each content stone if they know how to do it right.

Understanding the Importance of Each Type of Content

Content that is placed on your website, blog, supporting sites, and social media is normally done so for a reason. Sure, there are people who love to write, take pictures, or shoot videos as a hobby, but in the business world we normally want to get a benefit from our efforts. One of the biggest speed bumps that businesses often make is that they don't know how to properly define the goals of their content. With a proper definition, the content has less of a chance of being successful.

For now, we're not going to look at conversion content, PR, support, or consumer resources. They are much more focused types of content and while it's possible to hit them with content that achieves multiple goals, it's best to attack them individually. For example, you can say that a press release is something that can help with SEO as well as get shared on social media, but it doesn't replace the real SEO content or content that is designed for social media engagement. It's an addition and therefore is normally not crafted to accomplish the other goals as well.

Let's focus on engaging website content, SEO content, and social media content. Done properly, the vast majority of the pieces of content you create for one can apply to all three.

• Engaging Website Content - This is the content that is designed to bring people in who are not necessarily looking for your product at that particular moment. They were a nice-to-have type of content prior to the Google Penguin update of April, 2012, but now they are absolutely essential thanks to Google's adoration for content that can be enjoyed, that brings value to the visitor, and that can be shared through social media as well as being the target of inbound links. Engaging website content does not sell a product or service. It supports the sale of those products in some way. It might be as direct as showing clever integration methods between an iPhone and a car, showing how the new Ford Fusion has systems that SYNC nicely with your smartphone. It might be as indirect as a gallery of images from different angles of the Seattle Space Needle. For a Seattle Ford Dealer, both of these examples would work nicely to accomplish the goal of making their website engaging to their potential customers.
  
  
• SEO Content - The days of writing content on or off of your site or blog for the sheer sake of manipulating your search rankings are far behind us. 2011's Google Panda update and the several tweaks and improvements since then have forced businesses to take a longer look at quality over quantity. It's about manual and unique versus automated and duplicated. Today's SEO content brings value to the table. This ties in nicely to the other two types of content listed here.
  
  
• Social Media Content - It's hard for many businesses to understand the levels of quality that are required on social media because of the camouflage created by all of the bad content that's shared every day by others. It cannot be understated that well-crafted content posted on social media can bring more value than dozens of low value posts. In fact, these low value posts can actually do harm. Crafting the right content for social media is the only way to tie it in directly with SEO and website engagement.

In the next post, we will go into details about "Thinking Three Dimensionally" to help you select the right topics and take the appropriate steps to post. Stay tuned.

Let's face it. Websites are becoming a commodity in the automotive world. Most quality website vendors are putting out solutions that are good enough to work well. Few are coming up with innovations that can differentiate them, and those differences are relatively small in the whole scheme of things. The difference between a good and a great website is minimal when translating it to increased sales.

The reason for this is that consumers are becoming increasingly impatient when in car shopping mode. It's not that they don't spend as much time doing it as before. It's that they are doing most of their research on websites other than a dealer's site and only visiting when they're ready to look at live vehicles. At that point, they're going straight to inventory or specials and deciding from there whether to consider doing business with a dealership or not. If you have the right inventory items that they're considering, a bad website isn't going to keep them from contacting you. Conversely, if you don't have the vehicles they're seeking, an amazing website isn't going to coax them into doing business with you.

Websites are websites. Some are better than others and have strong conversion tools, but the real arena through which dealers can move the needle is in the quality of their digital marketing efforts. One of those efforts, search engine marketing, is arguably the greatest opportunity for advancement because it translates into more visitors, more leads, and potentially more sales when done right.

The biggest challenge that dealers with OEM-mandated search marketing products face is in defining competition. From the OEM's perspective, a Ford dealer's competition is the Chevy dealer down the block and the Honda dealer around the corner. They want search exposure that can take sales from the other brands. This is a good and noble cause, but unfortunately it's not the most practical target for individual dealers and dealer groups.

From the perspective of the Ford dealership itself, their primary competition isn't the Chevy dealer and the Honda dealer but rather the other Ford dealers in the area. It's how they're graded; we all see reports every month that tell us how we're doing against other dealerships in the area that sell the same brands. It is for this reason that OEM-mandated search marketing, as affordable as it is, simply isn't the best way to improve sales. At the dealership level, the lowest hanging fruit for increased business is by taking sales from the real competition, namely the other Ford store a few miles away.

As mentioned, there is one advantage to the OEM-mandated search marketing: it's cheaper. It's often paid for in whole or in part and can act as a check box on your marketing. "Yep, we're doing SEO and PPC. The OEM is taking care of that for us."

Unfortunately, that's really the only advantage. It's designed in most cases to keep every dealership inside their own little box. Reaching outside of the direct market area is a no-no for companies that work for the OEMs. In fact, they're goal is to keep the boxes neat and tidy.

When the search marketing is focused at the dealership level, it's a completely different strategy. The goals have changed; it's not that a Ford dealer doesn't want to take market share from a Chevy dealer, but that's a heck of a lot harder than taking a deal from the Ford dealer down the road. Let's say there's a dealer in a small town a few miles from you. They're the only Ford dealer in that town. Everyone in town knows them. When they want to do business with that dealership, they'll search for the dealership by name.

Consumers who search for the dealership by city are looking for an alternative. They know about Bob Ricky's Toyota in the heart of town. If they do a search for "Somewhereville Toyota Dealers" or "Toyota Dealers Near Somewhereville", you'll want your dealership to pop up. People that do searches like that are trying to find someone else from which to buy their Toyota. If they wanted to buy from Bob Ricky's Toyota, they would have searched for "Bob Ricky's Toyota". They didn't. They want someone else. They want you. If you're ranked for that search, there's a good chance they'll check out your website to see if they can do business with you instead of Bob Ricky.

Unfortunately, the OEM-mandated search marketing products aren't designed to help in this regard. In many ways, they're designed to prevent this from happening.

If your goal is to beat the competition, your competition, then don't look to the OEM's search marketing company. Don't just check off the search marketing box and call it a day. Explore your options and see if there's a way to improve your search marketing to focus on helping your dealership the best way you can, by being aggressive and getting your dealership in as many relevant searches as possible.

14 Experts Predict 2013 Social Media Marketing Trends for Car Dealers and Local Business Owners

First of all, I want to thank Mr. Bryan Armstrong for posting a link and article snippet on the Google+ Community titled "Automotive Social Media Marketing" which led me to an article... which referenced and led me one step further to the AT&T Networking Exchange Blog that I am re-posting for the benefit of ADM Professional Community members below.

My goal is to get our community of automotive marketing practitioners to think about where the car business is heading with our use of social media marketing strategies and tactics, in the hope of stimulating some valuable discussion and commentary.

For example, take a look at Jeff Bulas' (#3) prediction (more of a projection?) where he describes what sounds like car dealers connecting the dots between search engine marketing strategies and how they will begin to understand the correlation between sound content creation and publishing programs as part of their overall marketing strategy. There are few areas within the very large world of automotive digital marketing that has more effectively captured the attention of car dealers than taking action to ensure having their websites and published information show up in the Google Search Engine results which appear for their customers making automotive related inquiries... To Jeff's point, as more and more dealers grasp the connection between publishing "User Generated Content" as part of a daily Content Marketing and Earned Media strategy, their perspective on Social Media Marketing and how it delivers a Return On Investment (ROI) will evolve and become a lot more sophisticated.

All 14 of these predictions are well worth carefully reviewing and considering in your dealership's 2013 marketing strategy, but take a close look at Margie Clayman's (#4) predictions. Her words make a lot of sense and sound very likely to occur, at least to my admittedly biased ears... Here's a quote from Margie predictions:

"I predict that in 2013 small businesses will start seeing social media more as a tool and less as an entity unto itself. Instead of asking what social media is, they will ask how they should be using it and why."

What Margie says under the guise of a prediction makes a lot of sense, and is just plain good guidance, whether or not labeled with the "Predictions for 2013" moniker or not. As you read through these 14 so-called predictions, you will find that most of them should be considered good advice, and brimming with opportunity for competitive advantage.

All of the renowned and highly respected writers, speakers and practitioners whose "predictions" are listed in the article below are knowledgeable and obviously put serious thought into their answers to Cheryl Burgess's questions. I found that reading the predictions caused me to think and consider many of my own strategies and tactics, so as to be positioned for a competitive advantage in 2013... When it really comes down to why any of us would bother with social media and the marketing, engagement and communications capabilities it offers to car dealers; if there were no opportunity for competitive advantage, then why would we bother with it?

After you check these predictions out, please post a comment about which ones you found credible and ringing of truth, and which ones you considered to be more fantasy than fact... Finally, the question that Cheryl closed her article with, which I have boldened and highlighted in red font. I will echo to our professional network... What are YOUR predictions regarding social media and the way car dealers will use it in 2013?

When Cheryl started this post, she wanted to share 13 Social Media Predictions for Small Business (including car dealerships) in 2013. However, for those of her readers who might be superstitious, Cheryl didn't want to jinx the New Year before it even began. So, she decided to go with 14 predictions instead. Cheryl suggests that there is no need to worry about doomsday prophecies from the Mayans or Nostradamus. As shown by their predictions for 2013, the experts Ms. Burgess consulted see only a bright future ahead for small businesses, car dealers and their ability to receive business benefits from social media marketing practices. ADM Professional Community members are encouraged to visit Cheryl's article on the AT&T Networking Blog for Small Business at NetworkingExchangeBlog.ATT.com/Small-Business.

1. Meghan M. Biro @MeghanMBiro – Founder and CEO of TalentCulture Consulting Group and the TalentCulture World of Work Community. “In 2013, for businesses small & large, I predict that the quality of online relationships and content will rise to the occasion in the vast sea of social media. Also, crowdsourcing will become a more active player in the mainstream social enterprise.”

2. David Brier @DavidBrier – Chief Gravity Defyer at DBD International, Ltd. – “In 2013, small businesses will need to strengthen their ties to their customers as the world keeps getting smaller. So much more is available than ever before. Thus, the competitive edge will be built on those relationships and bonds. In addition, small businesses can become the official ambassadors of excellent customer service in a world that’s going increasingly automated. As more and more “touch points” become “streamlined” at the expense of personal human contact, the companies with excellent personnel and live customer service representatives will outshine and outperform their competition.”

3. Jeff Bullas @jeffbullas – Account Director- Infinity Technologies, Social Media Marketing Blogger, Speaker and Strategist – Author -”Blogging the Smart Way – How to create and Market a Killer Blog with Social Media” “Google has realized that people voting for content they like with Retweets, Facebook likes, plus +1′s and comments is important and increasingly relevant in what they serve up in Google search results. Google+ was launched just over 12 months ago to capture those social signals, and today the Google +1 button is used over five billion times every day. In 2013 you will see small companies starting to realize that social media is also important for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Companies will begin to understand that social, content, and SEO are linked and more integrated than ever.”

4. Margie Clayman @MargieClayman- Vice President of Client Services, Clayman Marketing Communications, Inc. “I predict that in 2013 small businesses will start seeing social media more as a tool and less as an entity unto itself. Instead of asking what social media is, they will ask how they should be using it and why. In the end, this will increase the effectiveness of their social media marketing efforts.”

5. Jon Ferrara @Jon_Ferrara – CEO Nimble, Inc. “Nearly every small business is experimenting with or planning on using social media because they understand they need to go where their audience is. Listening and engaging and being discoverable online is critically important today in growing their businesses. 2013 will be the year Social Media moves out of Community Management and Marketing to Social Selling and Customer Engagement.”

6. Sam Fiorella @samfiorella – Partner at Sensei Marketing and Author of Influence Marketing “Small Businesses in 2013 will tire of broadcast social media campaigns and messaging and invest in monitoring tools like Jungoo.com, Shoutlet.com or others to better segment their audience, effectively target influencers and accurately measure the impact of those efforts. Next, employees—the businesses’ biggest brand ambassadors—will become trained and empowered to become actual influencers across social channels.”

7. Mike Johansson @mikefixs – Lecturer in Communication at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and Social Media Strategist for Fixitology LLC – “2013 is the year that small businesses finally acknowledge that social media needs to be part of the daily workload. Depending on whose numbers you believe, somewhere between 20 and 25 percent of small businesses use social media for customer engagement, customer service, community building and selling. In 2013 small businesses will realize they either get on that bus or they’ll be waving goodbye to the opportunity to be in front of people … and some, if not all, of their business.”

8. Wendy Marx @Wendy Marx – President – Marx Communications-“In 2013, for B2B small businesses it will be more use of content marketing, especially content curation, as a way of engaging customers. Small businesses will make greater use of LinkedIn as the platform continues to expand its offerings. Finally, the coming year will see a greater integration of social media into all marketing practices so it becomes a part of a small business’ way of doing business.”

9. Steve Olenski @steveolenski – Sr. Content Strategist at Responsys – “In 2013 I think (and maybe it’s wishful thinking) that more and more small businesses will begin to dive into the visual side of social media, (i.e. Pinterest and Instagram). I have said this a million times, but you have to look at your computer/mobile screen the way you do a TV. People do not read TV, they watch it. Consumers want to see something—not just read it.”

10. Tom Pick @TomPick – Digital Marketing & PR Consultant – Webbiquity- “In 2013, small businesses, and larger ones too, will get more sophisticated about their measurement of social media results. They will view social media marketing tactics within the larger framework of their overall Web presence—how it supports what they are doing in PR, website optimization, search advertising and other areas of marketing. Their measurement will be less about direct, linear ROI and more about how social sharing and engagement fits into and enhances their overall web marketing and lead generation strategies.”

11. Alex Romanovich @AlexRomanovich – Managing Partner - Social2B, Inc, Adviser – The CMO Club – “SMBs will continue to test social media, while more aggressively increasing their budgets allocated to social media in any form. By now, the SMB community is seeing some positive results via social media and will continue to test the channel, conversions, ecommerce or social commerce, etc. For the first time, SMBs will start paying even closer attention to metrics and analytics—they will want to know more about their conversion rates and ROI, although they will continue to be challenged by the complexity and growing pains of the social environment. SMBs will also use more social networks—besides LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, SMBs will continue to discover Google+, Slideshare, etc.”

12. Gary Schirr @ProfessorGary – Assistant Professor – Marketing, Radford University - “In 2013 savvy small businesses around the globe will learn valuable photo and video-editing skills to help drive their social media marketing efforts. Using their own cameras, smartphones and tablets, small businesses will leverage newly found creative skills to create content that impacts their audience. They will also solicit visual content from employees and customers. Small businesses will develop an eye for visual content marketing opportunities while learning editing tools such as iMovie, MovieMaker, Photoshop and PaintShop to help energize their business marketing approach.”

13. Deborah Weinstein @debweinstein – President & Partner, Strategic Objectives “2012 saw a major surge in mobile adoption rates, and 2013 will be all about the apps that lead to social sharing. Mobile is an effective brand building tool for small business given its powerful ability to geo-target consumers and promote local sales. In 2013, we will see a focus on quick, easy and highly visual apps, including Instagram, Viddly, Cinemagram and Keek. These apps are the ‘140 characters’ of visual, social sharing. Small business can use these free, easy-to-use tools to get the message out to their audience on such a short, quick-consumption platform.”

14. Patricia Wilson @brandcottage – President/Founder BrandCottage - “The biggest shift we will see is in content creation. It is relatively easy and inexpensive to create beautiful photos and videos for social media. Small business are beginning to reach their comfort level with social media and will employ more tactics with Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr and other social nets.”

What trends in social media do you see taking shape in the coming year?

Check out the original source of this post:

networkingexchangeblog.att.com/14-experts-predict-2013-social-media...

The following Automotive Social Media Infographic gives us some historical perspective on where the car business was with our use of social media back when we were headed into 2012... A lot has changed, so what will 2013 have in store for the ways in which automotive marketers seek to gain a competitive advantage via innovation and more effective use of social media channels?

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.