Mid-August we should be back in business. Don't forget us!
When you’ve worked hard to set up your dealership blog -- or paid good money to have someone set it up for you -- itcan be frustrating when you think that nobody’s reading.
Even though it’s a relatively new technology, automotive marketing shares the same traits with all other forms of copywriting. You have to give people a good reason to read what you’re writing. The best way to get people to read is to give them a great headline.
Headlines are important for two reasons. You wan t to entice real people to read your posts, but you also want your posts to show up well in search engines so that they can find you in the first place. Here’s what you need to know about headlining for your automotive blog marketing campaign.
Search engines require relevance.
Search engines like Google display entries in their results in order of relevance to the original search term. When someone types in a specific make and model of vehicle, the search engine provides the best matches for their search terms, and the words in your headline some of the most important ones they analyze.
Make sure you’re incorporating what people might be searching for. Think about what information your blog post is providing, and title your articles using words that people would type if they were looking for that information. If they’re looking for ‘used car deals in Denver’, don’t title your post with ‘New Pricing’ because that won’t tell the search engines what they need to know.
Human beings require human interest.
Knowing that search engines rank certain pages well because they contain highly relevant keywords, many first time webmasters try to stuff those words in their headlines just to get high placement. What gets forgotten is that high placement does not guarantee a click. If your title is boring people won’t click on it no matter how high on the page you are.
The way to capture reader attention is to highlight what they will benefit from reading the article. Be as interesting as you can without being boring. To use the previous example, ‘used car deals in Denver’ might get you high search engine placement but it’s not particularly enticing to real people. ‘Used Car Deals in Denver: Best prices in the state’ or ‘How to Find Used Car Deals in Denver’ show readers what they’ll get out of reading your article. Telling them how they’ll be helped almost guarantees a click.
You’ve been hearing it everywhere -- automotive blog marketing is one of the best and simplest ways to improve your search engine rankings without paying a fortune for the privilege. Once you’ve decided to go ahead with it, though, the big question still remains. Who’s going to write this stuff?
There are two main ways to get content onto your automotive dealership blog. You can have someone do it in-house -- either you or someone else who works for you -- or you can hire it out to someone else. There are pros and cons to each option. Here are some things to think about to help you make your decision.
Do you have enough to say?
If you’re doing the writing yourself, you’re going to need to find a lot of stuff to write about. A blog isn’t much of a blog if it’s only updated every couple of months, and you won’t reap many blog benefits if you don’t post often. If you or someone in your dealership can be counted on to consistently have something to say on relevant topics, you might want to write the blogs in-house and give it a really personal touch.
Can you write well?
If the only time you pick up a pen is to sign pay checks, writing a blog might not be for you. If you have good spelling and grammar skills, you’ll probably find blogging easy.
There are two things to think about on this issue. If you don’t write well, you can either hire an editor or you can publish as is and take the risk. Editors often cost more than writers, so you might end up spending more money and time to have someone else fix your writing. If you publish as is, you risk looking unprofessional. But if you’re confident in your ability to get good words on the screen, doing it yourself is a great way to go.
Do you have the time to write a blog?
Perhaps the most important consideration when it comes to automotive internet marketing is time. Marketing initiatives are resource intensive -- sometimes the resource is money and sometimes the resource is time. There aren’t many ways to market your car dealership that are free and fast.
If you have the time to devote to this project or you can delegate it to someone else who does, writing your blog yourself can be a great idea. If you know that this will be just one more project on your ever-expanding to do list, you might be better off paying for the content.
It’s estimated that there are over 200 million blogs floating around on the internet. Do you ever wonder how yours stands up to the rest?
There’s a lot involved in automotive blog marketing. Just getting content up and making sure it’s optimized for search engine traffic is hard enough. But how your blog looks and feels is just as important in making sure your readers come back after their first visit.
Do you allow for comments?
One of the key differences between a blog and a static website is that blogs allow your readers the chance to contribute to the conversation. Many people love reading blogs because they’re not an authoritarian media -- it’s not just you writing and them reading. But many blog owners turn off the comment capacity on their blogs, often fearing spam.
Always allow for comments, even when nobody’s reading your blog yet. Give people the chance to contribute. They may join in and they may not, but they certainly won’t if you don’t let them.
Do you have a contact form?
Even if users can comment, some will prefer to get in touch with you privately. Is your contact form or email information easy to find and use? Do you require too much information from users when they’re filling out the form or can they simply leave their email address? Making yourself easy to find is crucial in this interconnected world.
Can your readers navigate by category and by date?
When a new visitor likes what they see, the odds are pretty good that they’ll want to see more. Depending on what they’re looking for they’ll want to navigate in different ways. If you’re discussing local events or issues that are time sensitive, it makes sense to navigate by date and you’ll want to have your archives searchable by month of publication. If they’re particularly interested in a certain topic -- trucks, for example, or maintenance issues -- they don’t want to have to search through every post you’ve ever written to find relevant posts. It makes sense in that case to allow them to search by category.
Is it easy on the eyes?
In many cases, blogs that look great the first time you look at them on the designer’s mockup don’t look great with lines and lines of text. The human eye can only handle so much information at once, so make sure your text is broken up with lots of white space. And speaking of white space -- it’s supposed to be white, or at least very white. Light text on a dark backround is hard to read for an extended period, and readers will click away instead of squinting.
Luckily, most of these issues require only a few clicks to change so if you need to make some fixes, it shouldn’t take too long. With a few simple tweaks to your automotive brand marketing strategy you can end up with readers staying longer -- and coming back for more.
Remember five years ago, way back in the Internet dark ages, when the first question anybody asked you about your online brand marketing strategy was, “Do you have a website?”
This time last year, the question was “Do you have a blog?” This year, the question is different once again. Now the question on everybody’s lips is, “What’s your blog address?”
It’s no longer nice to have a blog, it’s assumed. You could almost go so far as to say it’s mandatory. Everybody has one, and web designers are rushing to keep up with the demand from people in every business wanting a shiny new blog for their not so new website. Auto dealers are no exception.
If your auto dealership isn’t already blogging, you’re probably wondering what all of the fuss is about. Why do you need a blog? Aren’t they just online diaries? Not anymore.
1. Blogs increase your auto dealership’s search engine standings.
When you create a static website, search engines crawl through the internet and find your blog once. They investigate the content, find out what your website’s all about, and they leave. If you don’t change anything, they don’t come back and update their information -- there’s nothing to update.
With a blog, your content is dynamic and changing. You’re adding new information constantly, creating a growing inventory of searchable terms, and giving search engine crawlers to come back for. Weekly or even daily you’re filling your website with rich information and increasing the value of the site, making it more and more likely that search engines will list you favorably among their top results.
2. Blogs help your auto dealership build a thriving community.
Imagine having an entire community of people lined up to hear your message. They come to you and answer your questions or help other readers with theirs. They take time out of their day to come and hang out on your website.
That’s what blogging can give you. With syndication services and email signups, a limitless number of potential customers will hear everything you want them to hear -- voluntarily. Your comment section will enable them to communicate directly with you and with other readers and buyers. You don’t just get customers -- you get loyal fans.
3. Blogs can give your auto dealership trusted expert status.
Traditionally, people considered blogs to be glorified diaries. While some people still use them for this purpose, the majority of blogs are topical and often business related. Your blog can be your forum for dispensing valuable advice on the car buying or car ownership experience. You can give advice on how to maintain the resale value of your vehicle, how to keep the new car smell, even how often someone should go between oil changes.
Imagine your potential customers having a question and instead of asking their neighbor, they come to your website. That’s what blogging can give you.
From this post until August.
More often than ever before, shoppers are using the internet to do their research and make purchasing decisions. Your potential customers are sitting at their computers and typing search terms into their search engine of choice, waiting to see what the internet sends their way. Don’t you want yours to be the website that they see?
Why Your Auto Dealership Cares About How Search Engines Work
All of the major search engines function in the same way. They send robot “crawlers” out over the internet, thousands of times a day. When they find updated content, they add it to their electronic inventory and remember exactly what every website in the world is saying.
With a static website, the crawlers see your website when it first goes up and they make note of what it says. When the crawlers go back out and find the same thing, the same information is retained and what was on your website months or ago is all it has on file.
If the search engines know that your site has new information all the time, they check all the time and make note of all the new content on your site. As your site becomes a trusted resource of information, your rankings go up and your site is more and more likely to be displayed in the top results.
How Blogs Help Your Auto Dealership’s Search Engine Rankings
Search Engine rankings are vital for your success on the internet, and many dealers are in search of automotive internet marketing solutions. Search engines display results based on relevancy. Their view of relevancy is not just about the relevance of a specific term or page, but based on the content of your website as a whole. If your site is chock full of relevant information, search engines consider your site to be more valuable than one with only a page or two of semi-relevant results.
It’s hard to fill a five-page site with very much content -- there’s only so much you can say in that amount of space. Blogs have a different page for every entry you create. If you create a blog post every week, your site will have 52 pages of relevant results at the end of the year. Imagine if you posted twice or three times a week. Every post creates more value and increases the virtual trust the engines place in your site.
Keywords And Your Auto Dealership’s Site
Many business owners are overwhelmed by the topic of search engine optimization, and for good reason. On a site with limited content, the specificity of the content is paramount. With a blog, though, the importance of this decreases as the quality and quantity of your content increases.
The more topical blog entries you create, the more likely it is that important keywords come up frequently. Just by blogging you can obtain high search engine rankings and save a fortune on consultants who just want to stuff your site full of keywords. You get a quality website that people want to visit, not just one that the search engines send their way.
It's nearing the end of the semester, so we might put this thing on hiatus. We're having a meeting this week at the SAC at Temple if any reader is interested in coming. We'll have a fun photo update soon!
Blogging is meeting the needs of these customers and the auto dealerships that want their business. The bloggingplatform has created a unique way for customers and businesses to communicate in a non-threatening way and allow customers to be a part of the car buying experience long before they ever think of buying a car. So how do you turn your website into a thriving community?
Be there to help.
One of the most important features of a popular blog is that they provide useful information and a unique opportunity for Brand Marketing. This isn’t just what you as the site owner think is useful -- you need to find out what your potential customers think is useful. If you’re not sure, look around at comparable sites on the internet and investigate which ones are popular.
The list of things you can help with is virtually limitless -- you can talk about how to entertain children on long car rides, about the latest safety ratings on certain cars, even the best way to clean a dash board. If it’s related to cars or buying cars, it’s fair game.
Ask for feedback.
Blogging is not a soap box, it’s a discussion. Make sure to have a comments field and a feedback form readily available for reader interaction. You can use this as a method to just hear what your readers and customers are saying, or you can make it more interactive by asking for feedback or answers on specific issues. Want to know what color looks best on the new model or whether readers like the new site layout? Now’s the time to ask.
Participate in the discussion.
People don’t buy from businesses -- they buy from people. More specifically, they buy from people they know. Designate someone from your team to be responsible for handling reader questions and responding to their comments on your blog. Let them be personal, and make sure they understand that blogging is not a sales medium. Allow and encourage them to be themselves and watch your loyalty ratings go up.
Once businesses understand that blogging is about community building and not about selling products, the quality of their blogs goes up and their visitor statistics follow suit. So what are you blogging about?
April Barack Obama Rally
A Less Objective and More Biased Article
So this may be completely off topic for the general idea of this blog, but I consulted a fellow member and we decided it’d be pretty cool to cover this really awesome event that happened in Philadelphia, which is not quite artistically related. (I mean, I definitely could make this really elaborate explanation to how this relates to art, but I mean, politics is as pretty dry as it gets. However, in a cultural aspect, I think this is pretty cool)
So on a whim, I was invited by some friends to go check out the Barack Obama rally that went down at the Constitution Center. I’m sure you all saw it covered on the news, heard people talking about it, and might have seen the mass amounts of people in support of Obama swarming the streets of Center City. I have a story of my own (and some awfully written opinions) that are pretty epic that I wanted to share with the fans of this blog.
This was my first rally I’ve ever been to - I think it’s like some weird right of passage for politically sound college students to attend something remotely politically activating if it’s around, so doing my duty as a good college freshman, I went.
Coming from a long heritage of Democrats, I decdided to support my party by seeing what Obama had to say. Now, not to confuse you, in the beginning of this whole campaigning thing I was a strong supporter of Obama. And like most intuitive Democrats, I began to get bored with the primaries and let my views coerce me into thinking that any Democratic candidate would suffice, as long as I wasn’t faced with another Republican party member. Basically, my interests in politics began to shift into a less passionate outlook. In any case, I had nothing to do anyway, so I went, hopping off the Market line downtown just to see what was up.
Now, apparently, when they promote these rallies they make it seem like they’re completely free and void of any loop holes, except for RSVPing to the rally on the respective candidates websites. My naivity was corrected. I was under the impression that since this was a free event, the order in which you came would determine how close you would get to see Obama, first come first served. We (myself and friends) were strongly mistaken.
They set up the rally in three distinct parts:
The “free” section: Across from the Constitution center they set up speakers and gated the area from the road so any passer-by could come and listen to Obama speak, but definitely not be in the ballpark to see him. That’s where the most of the mass of people were.
The “red” section: Across the street from the “free” section they have a gated area where people who obtained red tickets could get a little closer to see Obama. They had volunteers guarding the entrance and literally every police force in the city guarding it. I swear to God, even the National Park Service was there. I’m not quite sure why they would be there, unless someone there might’ve been harboring ill will towards plant life.
The “blue” section: They had yet another separate gated section where you could actually be as close as you could get to Obama. It was basically the ‘VIP’ section. (Mostly filled with volunteers and not the general public.)
The funny thing is, they had tickets available at various places before the actual rally, but the majority of the public had no idea tickets were even necessary to get a glimpse of the man himself, or even being given out at all. Another loop hole was people who volunteer for the Obama campaign also received tickets and to my knowledge didn't have to go through the fiasco. Now, let me discuss how hepful these volunteers are:
Most of the volunteers were trying to cattle herd ticket holders and non ticket holders to their respective areas. No one really knew what was going on for the first two hours of trying to put this rally together. I remember watching an older woman flip her lid because the pamphlets and flyers she received for the rally specifically said it was a free event and that basically no ticket was necessary. The "coordinator" (as he claimed to be) was trying to persuade her into shutting up. I saw a few Drexel students standing around like tools wearing pro-Obama shirts and literally just jumping in herding people. I'm not quite sure why that irritated me as much as it did, but I'm guessing it was because these Jack Johnson-looking bros were pretending to be good volunteers when they were just showing up to receive entrance tickets. At any rate, it was annoying.
Needless to say, I was (/am) bitter and none of my friends nor I had one of these tickets. A friend of mine began asking people if they had extras. It was about two hours into the rally, (with no sign of Obama yet) and we were basically thinking we'd be stuck with staying miles away from the actual event. We recklessly begged people standing in line to somehow get us in. (In retrospect, it was pretty pathetic) and at that point I think we lost the reason why we were trying to get tickets, we basically were now trying to get our hands on them to prove that we could. At any rate, some woman who was in line happened to have two extra RED tickets (keep in mind, there's four of us together) and from there we plotted our valiant infiltration of the Obama rally.
Some dude had suggested we go to a copy place and make copies of the two tickets for the other two in our group. Well, we didn't think that far into it, and decided to be bad ass and use what we had. Volunteers were waiting inside of the gates to rip tickets and let people in. Other volunteers were yelling that we should rip the tickets beforehand so it made it a more efficient process (yeah, more efficient, like hundreds of confused people randomly walking around and being pissed off in budding summer heat? Efficiency? I suppose!) so, we prescribed to the latter idea, and ripped each ticket in half. We basically walked in, with random people cheering as we came in and tried to psych us up for the rally. No one said a thing about our tickets, so at that point we basically snuck two people into this rally.
So we felt pretty good at that point that we basically snuck around the rules a tad.. obtaining two tickets and making it work for four people. So, we sat down in the grass and hung out for a while, in anticipation of Obama speaking. There were actually a lot of families there, which I thought was interesting. I'm not sure I'd put my kids through a rally, anything could happen and I think that's a little brainwashing, but having people come together was pretty cool.
Anyway, so some guy started secretly handing out 'blue' tickets, which got you the closest you could get to Obama. Tons of people started grabbing them and I guess it looked kind of shady, so the guy randomly walks away. I'm not quite sure how he obtained that many blue tickets, but whatever. Then randomly they start letting more people into the blue section because I guess they didn't fill all of the room (yeah, because the fact that you have tickets available is ridiculous, and the fact that you made two separate TYPES of tickets is even more ridiculous)
We get checked by security, listen to the opening music, and ignore raging families pushing each other to get close to Obama. When he finally speaks, it's close to 8:30. Obama gave a pretty good speech, and it was really neat listening to him talk. He has a really good voice, that kind of reminds me of how powerful Hitler was. Not that I'm even coming close to relating the two, but you get the idea. He spoke about independence and freedom from politics, about the lost jobs in Pennsylvania. He only spoke for like fifteen minutes, but he drove his followers wild and there were easily at least a couple thousand people there. Obama's whole platform was pretty amazing, and there's something about the way he speaks that offers more than just regular political bull, he cares about the people. I mean, if he's actually some weird Machiavellian leader, he's doing a damn good job in letting us know he cares. His team still kind of sucks, but I don't think any Democrats have that well of organization skills.
When the rally let out, hundreds of people walked through Center City, parading the streets screaming "Yes we can!" and "Obama!" for at least a half hour. People were on tops of busses, traffic was insane, and lots of people were beeping their horns in approval. It reminded me of the sixties, when everyone was militant and passionate about politics. Except, I wasn't alive in the sixties.
Obama is the buzz
I'm not endorsing anyone, but I'm just sayin'...
If you didn't vote in the primaries, get out there and vote in November!
Article by Brittany
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