Blogs

[Juls]

Ok everyone!! I have been told that I need to think about starting a blog for the dealership! Any suggestions?!

 

[jimbell]

When you set up a blog, you have to have a whole plan in place. What are you going to blog about, how often, etc. We blog 3 times a week. Most Fridays, we will do an employee profile or a recipe from an employee here that is a phenomenal cook/baker. You can get some ideas from our blog and what we are doing with it. The site is www.donayreshondablog.com. We started on blogspot and it was alright. We switched everything over to a wordpress site because it is more user friendly in the backend and easier to navigate. Feel free to reachout if you have any quesitons. [email protected]

 

[ibdefaria]

I was actually curious to know, how many people read dealership blogs? And how much time do the visitors spend on a dealer blog? I find that a lot of dealership blogs are copy and paste using it only to promote the dealer's inventory and get some nice keywords and search terms on google.

 

[Chris Cachor]

I would blog often and consistently. Some helpful topics would be:

1. Current OEM Promotions
2. Current Dealership Promotions
3. Service (tips, maintenance schedules, promotions, etc.)
4. Dealership Events
5. Dealership Life/Happenings (people love an inside perspective into your everyday dealings)
6. Your happy customers! Include pictures!
7. Ratings and reviews about your OEM lineup.

The blogs I follow most are interesting, insightful, and consistently updated. Those ones stick out and have me returning each day.

Also, I see a lot of dealer sites using Wordpress as their blogging platform and I think it's excellent. One bit of advice, it's technical, is to put the blog on a subdomain (blog.yourdealersite.com) and just point the subdomain to whoever is hosting the blog. I see far too many dealers purchase standalone URL's for blogs, but it can be done on your main domain too. I assume the reason is that some dealer website vendors don't have blogging capabilities built in so the only method they thought was to buy a new domain. If you need help with that technical part you can PM me and I'd be happy to help.

 

[Alex Snyder]

The 3 steps to Dealership Blogging | DealerRefresh

 

[Mitch Gallant]

Juls - this is so wide open and you'll want to do some setup that will dictate what to blog about... like integrating it into your dealership marketing strategy and figuring out how it fits. Find out what your dealer or peers in the store are passionate about. Have a solid vision for what it should be...

Tactically, if it's a blog you want people to actually read I would go after your people, customers, yourself, philanthropy, warm stories your involved with etc.

I don't disagree with Chris on his OEM points, (and really like the other ones) they're great topics to blog on but no one wants to read about that stuff if they're not in the market for a car. The reason I think we do it is because it's what we know and feel like it's what people want... it ain't.

I wish I practiced more of what I preach... (we're working on it I promise)

P.S. Don't leave the red headed step child out in the cold... aka fixed ops

 

[Jeff Kershner]

Juls, are you looking for the set up process, who to go with or what to blog about?

You already have some great advise and links here to go on.