Blogging 101 for Car Dealers

Two years ago when I first got in to blogging, it wasn’t even a buzz word in automotive. There were a few people doing it, such as Jake Jacobson from Higher Turnover, Jeff Kershner from DealerRefresh, Umer Farooq from AutoJini, and Brian Hoecht from Ai-Dealer. We all got to know one another a bit from our blogging and we still do today. In fact, as many have witnessed, Kersh’s blog has elevated his own career and even inspired many others to take a crack at it.

But there are numerous applications of automotive blogging which pose a choice for car dealers today. You have guys like Alex Snyder effectively blogging for dealership awareness with his Checkered Flag blog. You also have guys like Paul Rushing of ISM in Training who blog for what I would call personal branding, which is the idea of branding yourself in alliance with a dealership, but ultimately building brand equity in yourself more so than for the dealership.

I see this as the future of a dealership sales professional, much like is done in the real estate industry where the Realtor builds a clientele that can be carried along from agency to agency. The Internet gives automotive sales professionals the possibility to do this. I don’t see the purpose of blogs to sell cars. That’s what your website is for.

I think it’s important to know and respect the basics of blogging. For one, blogging is about conversation. It’s not about shouting and yelling, or selling and soliciting. It’s an easy pit to fall into because it’s so effortless and enticing to do so.

But this doesn’t mean you can’t promote yourself with a blog. Quite the contrary because that’s really the purpose of a blog – to promote yourself. The key is you have to go about it differently from what you might be accustomed to.

Blogging requires a balanced blend of research, listening, testing or experimenting, and then in the end some execution. The nature of blogging does not stipulate the need for a business model, but if you set out to blog for your business then you need to identify the role your blog, or blogs, will play in enhancing your product.