Should dealers be blogging?

[Alex Snyder (blog)]

Thanks for the plug on the Checkered Blog Jeff. We started it, like you said, to build transparency. We wanted customers to know we pay attention to the community, in fact, we're one of its biggest givers! We also wanted to do these things in such a way that it did not come off as bragging. I judge its penetration on how many comments are being added to posts, and it is just starting to get off the ground. It has taken us about 6 months of daily article posting to get it to a point where we get 1 to 5 comments per day. I could not have done it without outside help though. Goldman & Associates Public Relations deserve most of the credit.

It does take some work to blog. It doesn't have to be about the dealership. Actually, I think having a blog totally about the dealership is boring. You can position things to be SEO and transparent. I've noticed the smart Car category ranks number 1 in a whole bunch of varied Google searches! Most of the traffic to our Hyundai site comes off the blog's SEO clicks. If you had asked me who was going to benefit the most of our brands from this blog, when we first started it, the last thing I would have said was "Hyundai"!

It has been a very rewarding piece of our eCommerce equation...BUT, not rewarding in the $$$-sense...rewarding in customer appreciation. It is a PR piece, and you can't put a price on it.

 

[TJ]

I don't know how others feel about this but one of the lamest things I've seen w/rising frequency is online ad vendors or third party inventory company blogs that they start to generate interest in their respective companies, etc. and nobody responds to any of the posts over a period of time and then they still leave the blog up and active one and a half or two years down the line and it still has zero responses to any if not all posts. It comes across as pathetic to me because it shows absolutely no interest in what they have to say. Maybe it's me but it seems tantamount to spending time to build a large public address system that nobody listens to.

 

[Joe Pistell]

Kudos to Alex and his team!

October 29, 2007
Checkered Blog Captures Int'l Web Honors

"...Other winners include Sony Electronics and Wells Fargo & Co. The competition received more than 900 entries in its various categories from across the United States and six other countries..."

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[Alex Snyder (blog)]

Thanks Joe

 

[Nick]

I am struggling with the decisions over what to include in my blog. I am an ISM for a large Honda dealership and want to be out there with the technology that is relevant right now. I do not have the luxury that some of my colleagues who aren't in the Internet department do, of a long list of customers and referrals because I am relatively new to the business. I want to be able to use my blog to connect and be relevant to my customers and their friends and family in a way that wouldn't otherwise be possible. Thoughts?

 

[imacsweb]

As was pointed out in last week's JD Power event and throughout publications over the last year, a blog is only one of the critical aspects of a dealer's presence online. Just as (or even more) important is reputation management and representation in forums, especially for dealers active in the accessory market.

Anything that drives an engaged, educated consumer to your virtual or actual dealership is a win for your store today. Many website providers used 'blogs' which were just long advertisements over the past couple years to just add content on buried pages for SEO purposes. This is one way that dealers were confused as to what a blog is and how it should be maintained.

If you're a high-line dealership, it should be an active part of your branding. Have a staff member that is web-savvy and can maintain the content? Try that for a while (make sure the content is triple-checked though) and see what happens.

At the end of the day, it is a hard sell convincing dealership management (or principals) that a blog or any other aspect of social or viral marketing can actually get them noticed. Explaining UGC and blogs usually gathers a timid response at best. If you start it, maintain it. Don't do it for two weeks, say it 'doesnt' work' and leave it to die on the information superhighway. That rule is followed so infrequently in the auto world.