Sean V. Bradley Interviews Daimen Boyd Of Cargigi At NADA & Announces That Cargigi Is Sponsoring The Internet Sales 20 Group from Dealer Synergy
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If there’s one word I hate using in marketing, it’s “engagement”. The term has been so overused and abused since the rise of social media that its meaning has become distorted. It’s defined in different ways and means different things to different people. Thankfully, the moves by search giants like Google and Bing as well as social giants like Facebook and Twitter have brought in at least a little uniformity to we should look for when trying to harness engagement.
First and foremost, websites today must be engaging. That’s not to say that they have to be interactive; heavy websites that make people jump through hoops to find what they want simply don’t work today and may have really never worked. Today, people want to go to websites and find what they’re looking for quickly and easily. To make today’s websites more engaging, one simply has to add content. I’m not talking about the SEO content that is too heavy on many websites or the “share this on Facewitter” buttons that are put on so many pages that nobody would every willingly share. I’m talking about unique content that is interesting, useful, entertaining, or all of the above.
For businesses, it’s often hard to find and produce content that people will find interesting, useful, or entertaining. It’s not that the content doesn’t exist on the internet today or in the minds of a marketing professional. It’s that they don’t always know what kind of content they can find and produce. Here are seven such types of content that can work for your business to make your websites more engaging. There are plenty of articles (some that I have written) that discuss the reasons that you would want your websites to be engaging from a search and social marketing perspective so I won’t go into those reasons here. If you need to be convinced that it will be helpful, start with those articles first, then come back and learn more.
The good ol' image gallery
If there’s one thing that internet is not short on, it’s images. If there’s one thing the real world isn’t short on, it’s cameras thanks to the rise of smartphones. Between the two, finding or taking images that pertain to your industry, your local area, or both is a piece of cake.
With Chevy’s recent release of the 2014 Corvette, the internet is loaded with plenty of pictures. A Chevy dealer could compile some of the best images and load them up on their site. Take note – any time you use an image from somewhere else, you should always link to the original source. Attribution is ever-important when posting content to your website. There will be those who still contact you even when you properly attribute and ask you to remove the images. If it’s taken by someone else, it is has a copyright. Always respect them. There are plenty of sources that love to get links to their content and are willing to let you share.
The written content on a post such as “10 Awesome Angles of the 2014 Chevy Corvette” doesn’t have to be huge. At the minimum, a paragraph or two of unique content at the top is fine. What’s better is a little description of each image below the content as well as the one or two paragraphs at the top.
YouTube video(s) and commentary
The last thing you want to do is post a video by itself on your website. This brings no value and the visitor might as well link to the video itself. What you definitely can do with videos is find one or more of them (again, they must pertain to your industry, your local area, or both) and post them with appropriate commentary. Let’s say you find a great video about the 2014 Corvette. You could write up a couple of paragraphs detailing what led up to this epic new design, show the video, then discuss how this Corvette is dramatically different from your perspective. Unique commentary is extremely important here. You do not want to be posting the words of others. This should be personal. Make sure that the visitors who find this video and commentary get value out of both aspects.
To really add value and make the page engaging, use more than one video. People can share a single video more easily from YouTube itself than from your website, but by making it multiple videos on the same topic, you’ve now compiled something that people will be more willing to share as a link on their own website or through social media.
Link lists
These are great, but be very careful with them. The ideas is that you’ll write a short article – one or two paragraphs – about a particular topic, then offer several links to other websites that are also talking about the subject. If you write up a piece about the Corvette, you could then link to reviews or commentaries from trusted sources such as Car and Driver or Motortrend. The title of these pages could be something such as “How the Internet Responded to the 2014 Corvette Launch”.
The part about being careful – make sure that the links open in a new tab or window. What you don’t want is content that drives people completely away from your site. Linking out is not a bad thing despite what many experts tell you, particularly when you’re working with engagement content. Remember, they aren’t there on that page to buy your products or services right this very moment. They likely landed on the page by clicking on a link in search or social and their interest is learning more about the new Vette. Your benefits (I know I said I wasn’t going to talk about it but I’ll just mention it briefly) are not in the visitors that come to the site but the benefit these pages give you through search and social to drive future traffic to more important pages on your website.
Infographics
The beauty of infographics is that they’re visual. As an internet society, we love to see things more than we love to read about them. Even if the graphics themselves are loaded with words and statistics, they are often done so in a visually stunning manner that is more worthy of being shared. Take a look at this infographic we created for Mashable. There’s tons of data, but it’s easier to share because of the graphic nature of the content.
Just like with a video, do not simply post an infographic and walk away. You should post at least a little commentary about the graphic itself, what it means to your, your industry, your customers, your local area, or all of the above.
Full articles
This scares many people. For the most part, businesses owners and the marketing people that work for them aren’t journalists by trade. Thankfully, what most business owners do have is an expertise in their industry. Even if you’re not a great writer, you can probably come up with information that can be interesting to the layman and have someone else put it into a proper article format.
With the rise of AuthorRank, this may prove to be the most important overall form of content that we put on our business websites.
You don’t have to post too often, but if you can’t stay at least a little consistent by posting 2 or 3 full articles a month, there’s really no need to post them at all. If time is too scarce, stick to the…
Response articles
It may be hard to come up with original content, but it’s never hard to express opinions. There was a long article yesterday about Les Mis on FoxNews. I really liked what it had to say, so I wrote a response article to it. This response took no time at all – less than 20 minutes – but got the point across in a way that the internet likes without having to do a ton of research other than reading the original article.
As an expert in your industry and/or local area, you’ll find that writing response articles is one of the easiest ways to get a good amount of unique content on your website without having to do a ton of research. In essence, the research is already done by the real journalist. All you have to do is offer your opinions about what they got right, what they got wrong, or expand on what their basic premise was. With practice, these get to the point that you’ll be able to easily post them at your convenience.
* * *
Making websites pop on search and social isn’t as hard as most make it out to be. It starts with great content and continues into proper practices to make the search engines and social media sites love your stuff.
“POP” image courtesy of Shutterstock.
A recent study by AdAge, which has been tracking such things since 2009, shows that there are over 180,000 people on Twitter who claim to be social media mavens, experts, consultants, ninjas, pros, warriors, or some other noun that’s intended to fill you with confidence about their ability to save you from the evil world of Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. This is up from 16k when they first checked.
It’s challenging for businesses to keep up. The world of social media offers so much potential, so many options, and has so many people using it every day that the allure to get involved is high, but there are risks. Bad strategies, an inability to keep up with changes, and the potential to blow a lot of time and/or effort are all high. Businesses often look to experts who reside in this world on a constant basis to guide them through the mess.
The bad part is that the industry can be an extremely lucrative one, so many people are jumping in without having a true understanding of how to make it work for business. The good part is that there are things you can do to identify the good ones from the bad, the real ones from the posers. Here are some telling signs:
Check their personal accounts
The most important component here is that follower counts mean nothing. For under $100 a Twitter user can buy thousands of “followers”. Given enough time and a willingness to accept any friend requests, a Facebook account can hit the 5,000 “friend” limit in a couple of months.
You’ll be looking at two things when checking the accounts. Links – what kind are they posting? Are they posting links to notoriously spammy sites like Hubpages and Squidoo? Do the links lead to teeth whitening, Forex, or “how to make money from home” ebooks? Everyone has to start somewhere, but those who are worth their title should have gone beyond the spamming and moved into the realm of quality content posting, particularly with their personal social media accounts.
The second thing you’ll look for is interaction. Are people retweeting them? Talking to them? Engaging with them? Commenting, liking, and sharing their content on Facebook? Giving their posts +1s on Google+? If so, is it organic? Just as with the account size factor, it’s not hard to buy likes and retweets. Are the people engaging with them real people or fake?
Look at their advice, strategies, and tips
Most gurus have a blog. They may have a YouTube channel. They should be on Pinterest. Check out the content that they’re posting and the advice that they’re giving. While not every guru is a writer, it’s safe to say that they should be able to put together a list of tips at the very least.
Are they putting out advice videos? These don’t have to be regular – a video with the right content can be useful for months – but there should be something of interest, some rants or recommendations that work on video. Are they pinning quality infographics on Pinterest?
Content is a tool of the trade. If they aren’t putting out content on their own sites or social profiles, do they really know what they’re doing or are they regurgitating strategies they read on Mashable and Social Media Today?
Look at their clients
As with any agency or individual that you hire, it’s important to look at the results of their efforts. Check to see if the pages they run, the accounts that they manage, and the content that they’re posting is effective.
Again, size doesn’t matter here. It would be easy for me to say, “don’t work with people who only have a couple of clients” since my company is loaded with clients, but it’s simply not true. Some of the brightest minds and most effective social media experts that I know only keep a handful of clients. Size is not important. If anything, being too large means that your needs won’t get the personal touch that you might require.
The most important component here is to call or email the clients. Be very skeptical about experts who use the “client confidentiality” ploy. It’s true, there are times when businesses do not want it known that they use a social media agency, but that really only applies to being out in public. I’ve had clients that do not want us to post that we work with them on our website, but none of them in the last 5 years have ever said they were unwilling to be a reference to a potential client. If they’re unwilling to let you contact their clients, they might not have any.
Social media isn’t hard. It’s time-consuming. It requires a constant attachment to the changes that are happening. That’s the main reason to hire gurus, experts, and agencies – if you’re running a business, do you have the time and energy to devote a couple of hours a day keeping up with it all? Finding the right person or agency isn’t hard, either. Yes, it requires an investment of time to find and check out candidates, but that is time well spent. It’s better to have no strategy or presence than a bad strategy driving a poor presence.
http://www.internetsales20group.com
What you need to know to developing and evolving the Internet Department at your dealership.
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This is an AWESOME new Reality Show on SPIKE TV... You have to check it out!
Does Your Digital Marketing, Internet Sales, Social Media SUCK Like this...? Car Lot Rescue - Tom Stuker
Semantics. That's what many will say. They'll tell about how trying to define the difference between being a marketing platform and being a marketing tool is pointless.
Others will say it's much more of a platform for marketing than it is a tool. They'll say that it's the community and the venue that offer the benefit and trying to corner Facebook into a toolbox is unwise.
Both, in my humble opinion, would be terribly wrong.
When looking at Facebook as a platform, we see certain elements that stand out. It's huge - a billion users can't be wrong, right? It allows businesses to create pages and market their wares on these pages and within the news feeds of their fans. It allows apps which can be used to do nearly every business operation directly from the platform. With all of this evidence, it's clearly a marketing platform, right?
This is the biggest mistake that many businesses make on Facebook. In many ways, it's a trap, and the majority of businesses who look to Facebook fall into that trap.
Facebook wants to be a business interaction platform. It wants to be a marketing platform. It wants businesses to look to it and (in some cases) pay them money to get their merchandise and services exposed. The only thing stopping them (other than poor decisions regarding business since 2009) is that the power of Facebook, namely the people, want nothing to do with it.
This is the key point that businesses must understand. It's the point that steers Facebook away from their unstated goal of being a marketing platform and towards the unfortunate reality that they are a tool in an overall content marketing strategy. Through Facebook, a business is better served promoting the things that are not necessarily "business focused" in order to gain favor with the Facebook algorithm. They can (and should) do this through ads, but the reality is that a business must be willing to interact with people and engage with the community before they can have any chance of getting marketing benefit from the site.
Once this is done through any of a dozen groups of techniques, it now becomes possible use the tool for marketing that Facebook truly is. It's a tool in a toolbox that includes LinkedIn, YouTube, and, of course, the four majors of today (which can change at any time).
Businesses must understand this distinction. They must learn that what happens on their Facebook page is minuscule compared to what happens off their page, that what they say is meaningless compared to what others are saying about them, and that to make their message work, they have to get involved rather than put themselves into a box.
Platforms are boxes. Tools lead to the freedom to explore.
It’s this simple. When given the choice between being ranked in the top 5 for good keywords or being ranked #1 for a great keyword, I will (after asking for further qualifications and some examples) almost always opt for the former. Search has changed dramatically in the last couple of years. As a result, above the fold for many is normally better than at the top for a few.
In reality, it isn’t that simple. You’d have to look at all of the factors to make an educated decisions. This general rule, however, works a vast majority of the time. The reason is based upon search habits. People trust Google and Bing to be a guide but not necessarily to be 100% accurate. In the past, the clicks for the top-ranked listing received the lion’s share of the clicks. #2 got fewer but still more than the rest, and so on, and so forth.
This is still the case for very specific searches. For example, if someone searches for “Dell” and dell.com is at the top, it will get over 90% of the clicks. However, for searches that are more general, the ones where the searcher is looking for options such as “Seattle Dodge Dealers”, the gap in clicks between #1 and #5 is minimal. In fact, there are times when the #2 or #3 listings get more clicks than #1.
People doing these general searches are looking for possibilities, not to have a definitive answer. Searching for “Seattle Dodge Dealers” gives them options. From there, they decide which to click on based upon reputation if they know the dealerships, the listing titles, descriptions, and position on maps when appropriate. The look at reviews, domains, and even previews in some cases. The point is this – being “above the fold” is the first goal. Moving up to the top is the second goal.
Some might wonder why we would only shoot for being above the fold. In most cases, the effort it takes to get a site moved up from #5 to #1 is about equal to the effort it takes to get several keywords into the top 5. It isn’t that dealers shouldn’t strive to be #1, but they shouldn’t do so at the detriment of getting more keywords driving traffic to the site. From experience, we’ve seen where the benefits are highest for dealers.
Step 1, get as many keywords into the top 5 as possible. Step 2, once a good chunk of the possibilities of valuable keywords are in the top 5, it’s time to circle back around and push those listings up higher. It’s not as glamorous as focusing on getting a few keywords to the top and forsaking the rest, but it’s definitely more effective in the long run.
http://www.automotivedigitaltraining.com
Danny Alkassmi - The BEST Automotive Showroom Sales / Car Sales Training
Google has stuck with its story that the various components of Google+ and the +1 button don’t have an effect on search rankings. They have to. Once they admit that it does (as countless studies and tests have indicated), the flood of spam and blackhat SEO techniques will grow larger than it already has. This is important to understand for anyone doing research on the topic. Google isn’t trying to deceive people for the sake of being deceptive. They’re trying to protect the sanctity of what will become their greatest advantage in the ongoing search engine wars. They will not sit back and do what Yahoo did a decade ago, relying on mass adoption to carry them through. Just because Google is on top today doesn’t mean that they have no fears for the future.
Thus, Google+.
With that out of the way, let’s take a look at the three primary components of Google+ and the various +1 buttons (they look the same but they have different uses) that have an effect on your search rankings.
The Google+ Business Page
There’s a good chance that if you’ve been following the advice of internet marketing experts out there for the past couple of years, that you have a Google+ business profile. If you don’t, get one now.
The page serves two purposes from a search perspective. If you’re posting content from your website onto your page, it counts as a +1 for that particular piece of content. +1s are weighted differently and the ones from your page have more weight than spammers but less weight than most users, but it’s still a good thing to have. It doesn’t hurt, so why not?
The other component is a relative scale. Your page itself has +1s, demonstrated in the image above in the bottom right by “+346″. There have been a couple of studies that have looked at this and shown that it’s the most important aspect of overall search rankings that Google+ affects. I disagree based upon my own research, but it definitely has an affect. By being a “relative scale”, it isn’t a matter of gathering hundreds, even thousands of these. It’s a matter of having higher quality ones relative to your competitors for search rankings. As with everything in this article (and pretty much in search and social altogether), quality trumps quantity. You only see the number. Google sees the quality of the accounts within the number.
Domain Content +1s
The rise of content marketing from a search perspective has been most positively affected by the +1 buttons on your site. Inbound links are still extremely important, but they have remained at a steady value ever since the Penguin update. The +1s accumulated on content within a domain have risen in overall power.
This is why true content marketing on your website is so important from a search perspective. We can no longer rely on strong HTML content and organic links to rank higher than competitors. Sure, they work, but the real differentiator that so few are willing to explore is the fact that social signals to a piece of content affect the overall rankings of a domain. If a piece of content is strong enough to get some viral love on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook, the rankings of many keywords are affected.
Individual Content +1s
This is a two-headed beast. Google has not seen the +1 abundance of data that they had hoped when they first started putting the +1 button everywhere. They’ve gone through many changes over the last year, including changing the way that the search results interact depending on browser and device. Now, you can “share” pages from results into Google+, but it’s unlikely that this is being done very often.
What Google IS seeing is an increase in the number of shares directly from content. It isn’t just a rise from the clicks on the page itself, but also an increase in the +1s happening on the Google+ network within users’ feeds. This is translating into very strong improvements in overall search rankings and traffic for those who are able to get activity on Google+ with their content. The catch-22 is that many businesses are finding it much easier to get +1s to “fun” content. This helps with the second component above, but if we’re not able to get +1s to the “money” content, we’re missing a large part of the strategy.
To achieve this, websites have to start being built with “fun” and “money” on the same pages. It’s a challenge – the entertainment or educational value of content often makes it hard to use as a conversion piece, but that’s the golden ticket at the end of the day. If you can turn your fun content into something that also has the ability to generate leads and sales, you’re definitely a mile ahead of your competitors.
In business, we often look to social media as another venue through which to achieve our business goals. It's a marketing goldmine - at least that's what the experts are telling us. Sites like Facebook and Twitter are the websites and apps that the people, our potential customers, are visiting, so putting out our marketing messages on these venues makes absolute sense.
The problem with that premise is that people aren't going to those sites to receive marketing. One can argue that the same is true for television and they would be right. Television is an extremely effective advertising platform for many despite the fact that most people don't like seeing advertisements. The real difference is choice. On television, radio, and other venues, we have the choice to change the channel but normally we sit through and watch the marketing in between our shows because we don't want to miss it when it comes back on. On social media, the messages are chosen. Those who are posting content that doesn't appeal can be easily unfollowed. In the case of Facebook, they can be blocked, removed from the news feed, unfollowed, and even reported as spam.
It's a paradox. How does a business achieve their goals on social media while maintaining a connection with the audience that prevents them from blocking us? There are several answers to this question and many different strategies that can work, but one of the easiest and most underutilized is simply posting the things that we and our audience enjoy.
In the example above, the city in which a car dealership resided had their local team playing for their playoff lives. Sunday was the day that would determine whether it was time to pack it up for the season or continue on into the playoffs. The post itself, a simple message, was put on Facebook the day before the game and promoted through Facebook ads. The results were very strong. It had over 100 likes, a handful of comments, and dozens of shares, the majority of which were done by locals to the area since the Facebook ads were extremely geo-targeted.
How will this help them sell more cars? First, it expresses the dealership's personality. They love their local team. It's not a marketing ploy - the owners and most of the employees are strong supporters of their football team. Second, it's a shared love - many of their customers and potential customers are fans. These two things are great from a PR and branding perspective but they don't answer the question of how this directly helps them sell more.
That answer is the algorithmic response. When a piece of content resonates and is widely liked and shared by the target audience, it dramatically improves the ability for the marketing messages that follow to be seen by the same people and their friends. Facebook's and Google+'s algorithms are designed to reward businesses and individuals who post popular content with more visibility. By working in the truly likable things within a business' market area into the overall social media mix, the marketing messages will see more exposure. One strategically placed and properly promoted "fun" or "inspiring" message followed by one or two marketing messages will have a dramatically higher reach than a flurry of marketing messages that are not set up by the fun pieces.
The easiest way to find the right content is to look inwards. What do you know? What do you like? What do you enjoy that your audience will enjoy as well? For local businesses, it's best to stay laser focused; don't jump on a movie's buzz bandwagon, for example, but stay in the realm of your business' expertise and/or the local area's interest.
As with so many pieces of advice that I've been giving lately, the moral of the story is that if you "keep it real" and deliver authentic messages that resonate within you, there's a good chance they'll resonate with your audience as well.
http://www.internetsales20group.com
Make Money Mondays With Sean V. Bradley - Do You Know The #1 Reason Why People Don't Buy?
Nada Says the # 1 Reason why people don't buy a car is because they are LANDED ON THE WRONG Car! Meaning that they were NOT "qualified" properly.
Automotive Internet Sales - What To Do If Someone Asks "Is That Vehicle Available" or "Do You Have..." from Dealer Synergy on Vimeo.
http://www.internetsales20group.com
This is a VINTAGE Sean V. Bradley / Dealer Synergy video. It might be an "oldie" but it still is a GOODIE!
Sean talks about What To Do If Someone Asks "Is That Vehicle Available" or "Do You Have..."
If you want to find out more about Sean V. Bradley or Dealer Synergy training, please go to:
If you ever want a crash course on the latest social media studies but don’t want to spend the money to do them yourself, just watch the Super Bowl. You have to assume that if companies are spending millions to produce and distribute 30 second spots for the big game, they’re going to research what’s working today.
This year’s big takeaway was a shift in the way that companies were presenting their social media. As described here, there’s even a debate about the winners and losers. The results of the research were easy to spot. Many advertisers decided that hashtags were the way to go social this year.
If you think about it, nothing could be simpler to understand. Hashtags are social network agnostic with the glaring exception of Facebook. Twitter, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, and countless other social networks apply hashtags to their streams to allow for tagging and easier searching. Popular hashtags often get featured on these sites. It’s a way to win bigger than simply posting a Twitter handle or Facebook page URL.
You should apply the same concept to your campaigns, particularly when interaction is a part of it (and it should be). It’s no longer about sending people to your profiles through your advertising. They won’t go. If they want to interact with you on social media, they’ll find you (at least they should be able to if you’re doing it right in search and on your website). They will, however, be willing to take part in a conversation. The best way to group conversations on every venue other than Facebook is through hashtags.
For Facebook, things are different and that deserves a blog post of its own, but for now if you focus on hashtags to spread your campaign messages in your advertising (print, television, and just about everywhere else), you’ll find that your social media interactions can improve. If you’re still posting your profile handle next to a blue bird, you’re probably not getting anything out of it and simply wasting space.
When putting together strategies and making adjustments (and the occasional complete overhaul) of social media pages, processes, and content, there’s nothing better than to get a client truly “plugged in” to the social media world. There’s an excitement that surrounds it, particularly after a couple of weeks when the results start improving and the processes start moving like clockwork.
As John “Hannibal” Smith used to say in every episode of the A-Team, “I love it when a plan comes together.”
There’s a challenge, though. Every now and then, the system starts to work too well. The plans can be so effective that it’s good to take a quick break from the routine and step into a realm that I like to call Acoustic Social Media. It’s a time when you stop the planned posts, turn off the automation tools, and actually spend a day or two (or five) getting your hands involved and actually play directly with the social media profiles.
The Machine: Playing Songs While Plugged In
You should be using tools. If you’re not, you’re either small enough to stay nimble and effective working everything directly or you’re not being successful with it at all. Management and monitoring tools can allow strong business pages and profiles to maintain a consistently improving social media presence, run timely campaigns when they’re supposed to run, and put together an overarching strategy that goes unnoticed by the casual observer but that is a work of art from the birdseye view.
I’ll use my Twitter account as an example. I check for Twitter replies every hour or two when I’m at the computer. It’s important to me to maintain a strong Twitter presence, so the majority of my direct time on Twitter is seeing the Tweets of the people I follow and responding to direct communications. I could do that all day. Unfortunately, that leaves very little time for actually Tweeting from a business perspective; my account is a combination of business and personal.
To make sure I remain robust but engaging, the majority of my Tweets that aren’t directed at people are done through tools:
- I use Buffer for a good chunk of them. My formula is relatively simple – image, link, quote or thought, link, quote or though, link, image. Rinse. Repeat. The majority of these Tweets are personal, though I include some business Tweets from time to time if it’s important.
- I use Triberr to find and auto-schedule interesting marketing content. Like Buffer, Triberr does the scheduling for you based upon your settings which determine how often you’re posting. I scan the content on Triberr, open the links that I like, then approve the good ones to be posted into the queue.
- Content that I post on Pinterest, Tumblr, Scoop.it, and my personal WordPress blog go live the moment that I publish on those platforms.
- Important Tweets – those I post directly through Twitter whenever they occur.
By doing it like this, I have a machine of content generation that works very much like a band. Each tool has its purpose and unique sound just as the guitarist, drummer, bass player, and vocalist all have their roles when playing their songs. When looking at my feed, it looks pretty darn random. It’s hard to see the rhyme or reason. In essence, it looks as if I’m just an extremely active Twitter user who posts whenever I see something that strikes my fancy. It also looks like I’m awake 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That’s not far from the truth, but I do sleep on occasion.
Staying “plugged in” to the machine allows for a consistent flow of content that goes out at the right times. It’s enough to be ever present but not so much that it gets annoying.
Unplugging – Acoustic Social Media
There are some tremendous advantages when popular singers leave the big stage and run some shows in a cozy atmosphere without the assistance of amplifiers. First and foremost, the sound is more pure. Regardless of how amazing the sound is at a large concert, it really doesn’t compare to listening to artists playing an acoustic guitar and a singing into a microphone connected to a couple of small speakers.
The intimacy is palpable. You can see the sweat on their temples, the movement of the fingers over the strings, the emotion in the faces during the tough notes. It’s real. They’re not looking at the crowd as “Cleveland” or “Sydney”. They see the crowd as a group of people who came to hear them bare their souls.
The music isn’t just heard by the audience. It’s felt. It’s raw. This is where artists and audiences can really make a connection.
Social media works in much the same way, only without the sweat. Turning off the automation for a little while allows users to reach out with their business pages. They can respond more quickly to what’s happening in real time. They can have conversations that happen back and forth at a rapid pace rather than replies that are hours apart.
I will likely never be convinced that a “set it and forget it” approach to social media works, but “set it and monitor closely” is the most scalable and effective way to truly use social media for business. If you have the time to skip the “set it” part and work social media in an acoustic manner from time to time, you won’t just be mixing it up with proper engagement and a personal touch. You’ll have an opportunity to roam around in the virtual world and see what’s going on outside of your campaigns and strategies. Just as few artists are able to be successful without the big concerts, few companies can sustain a purely organic social media presence without full time employees dedicated to the process.
If you can unplug from time to time, you’ll find the value within the intimacy.
“Journalist” according to Wikipedia: “A journalist collects, writes and distributes news and other information. A journalist’s work is referred to as journalism.”
It’s important to understand what I mean when I use the word. Many people hear the word and think of a “reporter” since most people who call themselves journalists today follow the news reporting line of the art. With that understood, let’s get right into it…
Every company who wants to reach the highest level of success in online marketing going forward needs to have someone acting as a journalist for the company. They needs someone who collects, writers, and distributes news and other information about the company, the industry, the customers, the local area – anything that has relevance from a marketing perspective. This hasn’t always been the case. Until very recently, a good SEO content writer would suffice as long as they had some skills to put together a nice press release every now and then. SEO content was all that you really needed to succeed.
Today and going forward, that’s no longer the case. That’s not to say that you don’t need SEO content. In most cases, you do, at least when getting your site put together. If you’re in a competitive industry like automotive, you’ll want additional SEO content pages to be built regularly just to stay ahead of the competition. To truly push forward and start dominating on both the search engines and social media, you’ll want to apply some journalistic art to your website and blog.
You need a journalist.
It doesn’t have to be a full-time job. It could be someone at the company who can do it occasionally. It can be you. If you’re involved with marketing at the company, it’s a great skill to have. It doesn’t take a degree from OU’s School of Journalism to get the job done. It just takes understanding your industry, a touch of creativity and brainstorming abilities, an eye for good content, and a willingness to stick to it.
No, a Content Writing Service Won’t Work
There are plenty of very strong and useful content writing services out there. Some of them put out great work. Most are mediocre, but even that’s okay as long as you can edit it a bit before publishing. The problem with these services is that they’re designed specifically to build SEO content. They rarely put out content that is worth reading and sharing which is the goal of your company journalist.
More importantly, they aren’t at your store. They aren’t there meeting and talking to customers. They aren’t shooting the breeze with the guy in accounting or participating in the March of Dimes walk like the girl in the service department. This is where the journalist comes in and it is hard (impossible?) to outsource.
The Journalist’s Role
The goal is to put out content that helps in four major areas:
- Search Rankings – Google and Bing need SEO content on the site to let them know the proper purpose of each individual page, but they love real content that people are willing to read and share. They can tell the difference between content that is meant for them and content that is truly meant to entertain or inform your visitors. This type of journalistic content can propel your other content to the top in ways that SEO content alone simply cannot do.
- Social Sharing – Nobody is going to share your specials page. They’re not going to share a piece of content written by an SEO content writer titled “Chevrolet Dealer Serving Madison Proud of Award Winning Models”. This content has its place, but it’s not going to find its way on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or Google+ without some artificial inflation (which Google and Bing can smell from a mile away). What people will share is a piece of content at the same dealership titled “Everything We Know About the 2014 Corvette is Mind Blowing”. An outsourced content writer might be able to put out something decent, but then it won’t have the flair that your business demands. Make it special. Use a journalist. Be a journalist. If you know you’re industry, you can do it.
- Public Relations – Again, it takes someone at the store to take pictures and videos when you sponsor the local Social Media Saturday meetup. Yes, there are plenty of press release services out there that do a nice job, but they can’t put out the real content that is replacing the canned content that goes into press releases. Real people don’t read PRWeb. Real people won’t find the content that gets syndicated to Yahoo News except for the few weeks that it ranks well in Google. Blog and website content that sticks, that’s already associated with the company, and that you’ll have some measure of control over forever – that’s the place where real public relations starts in 2013? Why? See reason #2. Social media is the new public relations driving force, not press releases.
- Humanized Businesses – Today more than ever, people want to deal with other people. The business atmosphere is loaded with automated telephone service, autoresponder emails, and vanilla content that nobody reads. By adding the human flair of a journalist at the store posting pictures, videos, and stories at the store, on the blog, and across social media, you’ll be able to highlight the human factor that people consciously or unconsciously crave. They may not know why they prefer to do business with you, but after the transaction is complete it won’t matter. Now it’s time to keep them happy through ongoing service – a different topic altogether. You have to get them in the door, first. Humanizing your business is a step in the right direction for both you and your customers.
One of the most important parts of good journalism is to keep it as short as possible. On a topic like this, 1000 words simply won’t be enough, so proper journalist standards says that I need to break this up into parts. Part II of The Company Journalist Series will cover how to pick the right topics and give examples of what you should be posting on your site and blog to start building your content marketing goldmine.
It's one of the most overlooked components of a modern automotive internet marketing strategy. Some do it naturally, expressing the way they want the dealership to be perceived by customers and potential customers by instilling a unified sense of direction amongst employees, on their website, and throughout their online interactions such as on social media or when replying to reviews. Most have not set up a personality in the traditional sense and are just trying to get by day-to-day facing whatever obstacles come at them.
Your dealership's personality shines through regardless of whether you've established one or not. For most, it's one that is friendly, inviting, and competitive. This works. It just doesn't work as well as it could if the dealership took a more holistic approach to all customer-facing activities online and offline.
So, what exactly is a personality as it pertains to a dealership (or any business for that matter)? Let's start there...
Understanding Your Business Personality
It's not the easiest concept to understand. Sure, we all have a personality that shines through from the top, permeates to our employees, and (hopefully) manifests properly to our customers. It could be as simple as a "whatever it takes" personality, one that tries to communicate to customers (and employees) that we're here to earn your business and we're not going to let price get in the way. For others, it could be a community-effort personality, one that focuses on the family-owned-and-operated component that builds trust and lets customers (and employees) know that they can count on your dealership to be there for them.
Some go a more direct route. This is where the old television commercials come in with men screaming about amazing deals. This type of personality is often frowned upon, but it has been effective in the past and is, to some extent, still effective today. How long that will last, nobody knows. I would anticipate that the effectiveness is waning.
What is your focus point? That's the start of establishing your personality. Do you focus on being the volume dealer that can has the right vehicles and that can deliver the best prices possible? Do you focus on being honest and personable, making low pressure and pleasant experience the trademark of your company? Is your dealership fun with the owner wearing crazy hats and blow-up giant monkeys gracing your roof from time to time?
Whatever your focus is, you can build your personality around it. Now, let's look at the importance of establishing your personality from the dealership level straight through to websites and social media.
Why a Personality is Important
You can't be everything to everyone. You can't tell them on one hand that you're a volume dealership that does anything and everything to put them in a car, then try to be the low-pressure, awesome customer service and experience dealership that relies on repeat and referral business. You can try, but it doesn't work.
The only way to control the public perception of your dealership is to craft your personality around a single focus.That's not to say that you can't be a volume dealer that uses a low-pressure style and has a monkey on your roof. It means that you shouldn't try to communicate all of those things to your potential customers in your advertising and marketing. Different things appeal to different people, but more importantly different things turn people off. They may not care whether a dealership claims to offer the lowest price because they think that all dealers will negotiate down to the same price, particularly on new cars. They might have had a bad experience in the past with a dealership that claimed to be low-pressure, only to feel like they were getting ripped off.
The more personality types you try to maintain, the more opportunities you have to turn someone off about the dealership. Consolidate. Pick the single component of your potential personality that you feel will resonate best at the dealership and through your marketing.
Make sure it's real. If you're a dealership that questions the salespeople any time they take an up that doesn't make it into the showroom, you can't take on a low-pressure personality because your salespeople will not give that impression to the customers. If you hold gross and refuse to cater to the undercuts when your competitor down the block keeps giving away cars, don't try to take on a price-beater personality.
When you have a singular personality that resonates across all channels, you'll be able to attract customers who are seeking this particular type of dealership. That's not to say that you will be turning away the invoice minus half of holdback customers if you express a hometown, good-experience type of personality. It just means that you're targeting a particular type of customer specifically and avoiding having too many personalities that can turn more people away.
Once you've decided on a personality, it's time to make it a reality.
Building the Company Culture
Some of you have already established a true company culture and now need to make sure it's applied to your online marketing efforts. Those of you who fit this bill can skip to the next section.
For the rest, it's an absolute necessity to get the company culture built. Sounds hard. It's not. It really only takes an email or two and maybe a mention in the next company meeting.
You know who you are. Let your employees know. All of them. Here's a quick example of an email that can be sent out:
To The ABC Motors Family:
We wanted to thank you all for your commitment to our success and communicate with you some of the goals we have as a dealership. For starters, we are moving forward with a plan to adjust our marketing preference around the fact that we do business differently than our competitors.
As you know, we strive to give our customers the best experience possible. We want them to know when they buy a car or service their vehicle here, that we're going to go out of our way to make the experience an unexpected surprise. Car dealerships often have a bad reputation based upon the business model itself. At ABC Motors, our goal is to delight our customers. We need your help.
When you're communicating with customers, always be mindful that our company culture is centered around giving them an outstanding experience. We hold this with the highest regard and we will want you to as well. If you have any questions or suggestions, please email Ralph@ABCMotors.com.
When was the last time you sent out an email reaffirming to your employees what your company culture really was?
Translating the Company Culture into an Online Personality
This is the tricky part. How can you sculpt your message to accomplish everything that has been outlined here? You have the overview. Now it's time to make a plan. That's not something I can do directly in an article; it differs from dealership to dealership, personality type to personality type. What I can do is give you some things to keep in mind while you're formulating your holistic strategy:
- Make Your Website Match - There's nothing worse than a generic website. Despite what OEMs have been telling you (and thankfully some are finally starting to change their tune), a unified look and feel with your competitors is not a good thing. People are no longer "internet-challenged" the way they have been in the past. They know how to navigate any dealership's website very quickly regardless of how many they've visited. Make sure that the message that you're sending out through your website matches the dealership's personality.
- Focus on Certain Pages for Personality - You have a limited number of opportunities to communicate your personality to the dealership. It's not just a matter of putting a slogan in your header and calling it a day. Every important page of you website should reiterate the personality. The "important" page include About Us, Vehicle Details Pages, and the most overlooked but highly trafficked page on your website, Hours and Directions.
- Build Ads with Your Personality in Mind - Whether it's television, radio, online videos, or banner ads, you should set the tone properly. If you're loud and fun, don't use boring colors and boring voices. If you're down to earth and family-focused, put the kids or grand kids on the ads. Communicate your personality consistently with a slogan and, whenever appropriate, expand on that personality by making a longer commitment in every ad.
- Respond to Reviews with the Right Voice - There should be a consistency that flows in your response to all of your online reviews (you are replying to all of your reviews, good or bad, right?). That doesn't mean that you're saying the same thing over and over again. It means that the tone and personality flows through your responses and establishes a consistent voice. This is who you are. This is how you reply to customer complaints. This is how your reply to happy customers. Keep it unified.
- Center Your Social Profiles Around Building Your Personality - The vast majority of dealerships do not have an appropriate voice on social media. This is different from your review response voice. It's your way of interacting with past and potential customers that reinforces that personality. There is a ton of potential symbolism involved here as well as the need to build on your presence through your personality. I will go into further detail about this in the next post in this series.
Getting the right personality in place is one of the keys to success in 2013. Most dealers have been pushing forward and having successes and failures online with their advertising and marketing. For 2013, let's eliminate the failures and improve on the successes. It starts right here.
There is a reason we have people who sell cars. This video is for everyone in the business.
In 2013, there will continue to be a growing number of people who have their smartphones and tablets handy while watching television. People are multitasking more often now than ever before while enjoying their television time. They are Tweeting, posting to Facebook, and visiting websites all from the comfort of their living room.
Many of us have done it before. We’ll be watching the game or our favorite show and talk about what we’re watching through our mobile devices on social media. We will see something that catches our eye and do a search for it to get more information.
Television shows are taking advantage of this, but it’s rare to see advertisers do the same. This is perplexing as there has never been a time when a television ad asking people to “act now” can actually get them to do just that. Those who use television ads can get immediate responses and interactions by crafting it into their television ads.
It’s better than telling people to “call now” or “come on down” because they’re not in that mode. They’re passive. They’re safe. When they’re watching television, they don’t want to get on the phone with a salesperson or stop watching the game to head down to a store. What they will do is visit a website, a social media account, or otherwise contact a store that advertises properly.
Think about it. Many car dealers use television advertising to get their brands out there, to talk about their low prices, and to highlight a sale that’s going on right now. There are people in the market for a vehicle who are currently watching television. They may even be watching your television ad right now. Why don’t you ask them to engage while it’s at the top of their mind.
It could be as simple as setting up a campaign. You can post an event on Facebook and pin it to the top of your page. The event can be to highlight the big sale this weekend. You may be giving away a free gift such as sunglasses to anyone who clicks that they might attend the event.
Then, it’s a matter of putting it in the television ad. Talk about the sale. At the end, say something like this: “Go to our Facebook page and like our sales event. Everyone who does gets a free gift just for attending – no purchase required!”
When they click that they’ll attend, it will show as such to their friends and family. More importantly, you’ll have the ability to engage with them before and after the event. It’s a soft lead, but you have to assume that people who actually show up aren’t there just for the free sunglasses. They are there to test drive a vehicle. The rest is up to you.
It doesn’t have to be so blatant. It could be as simple as “Send us a Tweet or post a comment on Facebook about what you think the score will be this weekend. The closest guess gets a free oil change!”
You could always go for the direct approach. “Go to our website right now. We’ve posted our no-nonsense best price on all of our new and certified pre-owned Altimas, so if you’re in the market today, grab your tablet or smartphone and head to abcmotors.com.”
This is where creativity comes in. People have their smartphones close by and their tablets within reach when they’re watching your television ads. Take advantage of it. Adapting to the second screen will help your television advertising and mobile marketing work together to bring better results to both.
Dealer Synergy's Award Winning Automotive Internet & Phone Sales Process - "The 4 P's" - Internet Sales 20 Group from Dealer Synergy on Vimeo.
http://www.internetsales20group.com
http://www.automotiveinternetsales.com
Dealer Synergy's Award Winning Automotive Internet & Phone Sales Process - "The 4 P's" - Internet Sales 20 Group
Sean V. Bradley is LIVE at the Internet Sales 20 Group training and drilling the http://www.dealersynergy.com process for automotive sales, internet sales and phone sales-
