In a stunning address to the Innovative Dealer Conference in Denver recently, Automotive SEO expert Brian Pasch called for auto dealers to get serious about training their management teams! Themselves too.

This something Pasch has been championing in the automotive marketing community. It’s a noble cause, but one I personally approach with caution.

Brian’s comments before several hundred dealers called for them to stop using “your budget” as an excuse for not getting yourself and your key managers up to speed in all areas of today’s car business. He said that you need a “strategy” not a “budget!”

Couldn’t agree more. We all know that dealers will spend thousands upon thousands of dollars in advertising on things that don’t work, but only because they are familiar with certain things. It is what they know.

On the contrary, dealers can be reluctant to spend even a fraction of that on new media, which has proven affect. Dealers can also be reluctant to invest into training and educating themselves in new media, which is what is at the root of this issue.

Brian’s company, as many of you already know, advises dealers on digital marketing implementation in the dealership setting. During his speech, he related how a dealer recently told him how he would avoid calls from Brian’s company and other digital marketing advisors; he simply would not take their calls. When asked why that is, the dealer said, “Because I don’t know what the hell you are talking about!”

Brian then suggested that this dealer is simply fooling himself into believing that educating himself and his managers is not necessary. Possibly he is just hoping that the new marketing landscape that is being defined by the Internet and its major players, (like Google), will either simply go away, or that in some way he and his team will learn everything they need to know by some mysterious type of osmosis.

This is where the rubber meets the road. Dealers have been selling cars the same way for nearly a hundred years. The past decade has seen more change than the all the previous years of marketing and advertising. You can not expect things to change so quickly.

Four years ago, I anticipated that blogging and social media would be more mainstream for car dealers in about 2-3 years. This has turned out to be the case and there is plenty of product out there for car dealers now, but the rate of change is so rapid that most of us don’t know which way is up or down any more, and a few short years is not enough time for a majority of people accustomed to doing business a certain way for so many years, to simply adapt as many of us would like to see.

Pasch is right. The “budget” excuse is a cop-out for those that want more than is realistically feasible and do not know how to monetize Internet marketing.

If you and your management team are not doing what is necessary to educate yourselves in a fast changing world; then you will be left behind. If you are not encouraging training and re-training for your key managers, they will quickly become ineffective. How will they be equipped to meet the challenges of a new and changing retail landscape?

Mandatory continuing education is a staple in many fields. Lawyers, doctors, accountants, engineers and even nurses and school teachers must…get that – MUST… demonstrate that they are keeping up with the changes in their professions. They can lose their licenses and certifications if they do not.

While this is true, we must remember to keep an apples-to-apples comparison. Doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers must continue their training and education, but not to become marketing experts in their fields. Rather to become thought-leaders in their fields in the context of their work.

I do not believe that dealers should be reprimanded for not improving their skills in blogging and social media. They should however be held accountable for being ignorant to the importance of certain types of marketing such as blogging and social media. When the decision makers at car dealerships make bad decisions based on lack of understanding, it’s the dealership that suffers from it and their customers pay the price for it. In this light, ignorance is irresponsible.

While car dealers and their managers may not have a professional organization to force them to do so, investing in your own continuing education and that of your managers should be priority. Or…as Brian so vividly commented…”If you don’t, then you are perpetuating mediocrity!”

The dealer business unfortunately is steeped in mediocrity. Staff turnover is completely unacceptable. It’s a cancer. And it exists because of the issues that Pasch is emphasizing.

A few years ago, I believed this would change in the coming decade. It is changing for some, but we have a ways to go. In a lot of ways we are only getting started.

Paper.li can be described as a tool that gives individuals the ability to almost effortlessly create an online magazine. Paper.li organizes links shared on Twitter into an easy to read newspaper-style format. Newspapers can be created for any Twitter user, list or #tag. For details about this process read their FAQ.

Before blogging as we know it came about, which was sometime in 1999, we had newspapers and magazines that gave us editorialized content in a journalistic fashion, printed daily or weekly usually. As blogging became mainstream, these publications were forced to change. Some fell to the wayside. Others adapted to the times. New sites also came about such as digg, Mashable, and Huffington Post.

Then along came Twitter and Facebook, which forever defined the term micro-blogging, the ability to broadcast smaller doses of information in a more sporadic fashion, still living up to the attraction to blogging for its SEO benefits and networking possibilities. The nice thing about micro-blogging is that you don’t always have to produce original content. You can link people to existing content, essentially spread the word.

Now, with paper.li, instead of doing either you can effortlessly filter tweets you like to create your own daily magazine soup. It’s like you don’t even have to think about it anymore. Just set it and leave, maybe make a few adjustments here and there.

If you start following these, you will likely see some of the same information you see when you log on to TweetDeck or HootSuite. If you do not use a micro-blogging application like this then following these magazines, or “dailies”, should provide an efficient way to keep a bigger eye on a lot of the same information, or even more.

Click here to view the embedded video.

First you log in to your WordPress site. BlogPro Automotive runs on WordPress so if you are in the auto industry and would like a free account on our system please sign up to receive your free account. If you are not in the auto industry you can visit our other WordPress system at www.autoburstwebs.com to to do the same.

Once you are logged in you will be at what is called the Dashboard. From there, select the blog you wish to work in by choosing the “My Blogs” link in the Dashboard menu section at the top left of your screen. Now you should see a list of all blogs to which you have access. On BlogPro, you can run as many blogs or sites that you wish with your same user account.

Now that you have select the blog on which you wish to work, look for the Pages menu section on the left side of your screen. Here you have two options – Edit or Add New.

To create a new page simply click Add New and to modify an existing one click Edit.

By clicking Edit you will see a list of all your pages on that blog. From here choose the page on which you wish to work and it will open up permitting you to make modifications.

If you want to create a new page then click the Add New link and you will load a blank page where you can insert a title and the contents of the page along with other parameters and settings related to pages. For an explanation of these things please reference the video.

Once you have completed your changes then click on the Publish or Update button to the right of your screen. You will see Publish if the page is new or saved as a draft. You will see Update if it is already published.

This pretty much covers it. Creating and modifying pages is literally that simple. For assistance with this please contact us on AC Assist. We are happy to help.

This technique is not limited to the use of iFrames as you can and probably should use Hana Code Insert to display any large amount of HTML, but this is a good use for Hana Code Insert. You will probably need to watch the video in addition to reading the instructions below so you have a visual reference.

Click here to view the embedded video.

To begin, look for the Hana Code Insert plug-in which is accessible from the Settings tab in your WP Dashboard. There you will see space for a “New Entry” where you can copy/paste your HTML code and label the insert. Then press SAVE or UPDATE which will create the instance of this Hana Code Insert and displays it at the bottom of all other Hana Code Inserts you have created. Now grab (copy to clipboard) the Hana Code Insert from bracket to bracket which should include the words “hana-code-insert” plus your label and looks like this:

[ hana-code-insert name='YOUR LABEL' / ]

Next you go to the Page or Post you wish to create or edit and paste the code from bracket to bracket into your entry. You can paste this code in the Visual editor or the HTML editor. Doesn’t matter. You can also insert text, images, and other copy as necessary above or below your insert.

Now press PUBLISH or UPDATE or SAVE DRAFT to finalize this entry and when you preview it you should see your code appear just like normal. It’s that simple.

1. The first step is to obtain the URL to your RSS feed. In this case, we went to a Nissan dealer on web2carz.com and obtained their URL.
2. The next step is to log in to your WordPress site and go to the Widgets section under the Appearance tab.
3. Then, while in Widgets, add the widget for RSS feeds and click on the “Edit” link. Be sure to add the widget to the desired sidebar if you have more than one sidebar.
4. Now paste the URL feed in the appropriate field, give your widget a title if desired, and set any of the optional parameters. Most importantly set the number of items you wish to display.
5. Finally, press “Save” and your new widget is live.

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you have any questions regarding this you may leave your comments below. Alternatively if you require assistance or wish to schedule one-on-one training then please contact us.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.