Squidoo is a simple way to enhance your social marketing efforts. How simple?

Each Lens is built up of pre-designed and pre-formatted components called Modules. Each module provides you with a specific function or capability. Your Lens is built by combining the modules you choose.

The best way to understand modules is to log in to your Squidoo account, create a Lens, and then explore the different modules available.

We typically use the following modules for car dealers, and then customize each Lens with fewer or additional modules, depending on the needs and objectives of our clients.

Text Modules
Text modules make up the bulk of your content on your Lens. You will want to include several text modules to display a variety of information as featured vehicles, signup pages, blogs, etc.

Link List
Link lists are a great way to help your visitors navigate to various parts of your website or blog. Use more than one link list if you need to.

Google Map
You should always include a Google Map on your Lens with the dealership name and address. You can add a simple map for one location, or an advanced map for several locations or a dealership group.

Flickr Photos
Adding photos is a great way to get visitors to your Lens. You can let Flickr choose photos for you based on keywords and search terms that you choose, or you can point to your own Flickr photo album. Here is a great example of how to use Flickr Photos effectively on your Lens.

Blackbox
The Blackbox is a dark background-white copy graphic that you can use to display important information. It is eye-catching and really stands out on your Lens. It’s a great module for representing special offers or savings that you may offer. See an example here of how the Blackbox is displayed. Note also that the box can be changed to a range of colors … you’re not limited to just black!

The Most Important Thing
An excellent alternate option for the Blackbox is to use The Most Important Thing module. Use one of these modules or the other, not both. The Most Important Thing doesn’t use the dark background, so you may prefer it for design purposes.

RSS Module
You should almost always hook up an RSS feed from the blog. In most cases you want to do an RSS feed of the inventory as well. Use the Feedburner URLs for your RSS feeds and display somewhere between 10 and 15 vehicles, unless fewer or more is appropriate.

Putting together your Squidoo Lens couldn’t be easier. Choose your subject, select your modules, and edit the content (don’t forget to optimize with keywords!). With just a few clicks, you can build your Lens and boost your social marketing efforts.

Ad spending by dealers has increased dramatically over the last two years, and the increase has resulted in bidding wars on third party sites like Edmunds.com and Cars.com. Online ad spending by car dealerships was up to $32 million in 2007, and that number has more than doubled each year since 2005.

It’s a new plan of attack for car dealers to be involved in online advertising, but it’s on the upswing. “Buying space on the Web was never part of the strategy until recently, but now it’s 50% of the conversation,” said Pat Primm, a Cleveland area auto dealer.

Online ad pricing is measured in cost per thousand impressions — or CPM — and an ad spot that came with a $4 CPM price tag two years ago now costs $34. Advertising profits for Edmunds.com went up 64 percent in 2006 and another 93 percent in 2007. CEO Jeremy Anwyl says that “dealers and dealer associations are coming in after years of spending 90% of their ad budgets on TV. They are just now realizing that’s too much.”

While the third party websites are clearly the winners in this equation, the loser is the brand identity. With so many voices trying to tell the same story and sell the same product, the message being portrayed by the original equipment manufacturers can easily become diluted and confused. David Harris, the manager of ebusiness and CRM for Suzuki, Brea, California says,

“Our goal is to make sure we are communicating a consistent message. All of a sudden . . . you have a wide variety of messages.”

This is all the more reason for dealers to make sure they have effective online brand marketing strategies in place. Manufacturers have huge budgets to spend on researching the most effective ways to get the car’s message across. It’s vital to the dealership’s success that dealer marketing not only doesn’t conflict with that, but leverages it to their advantage.

Online advertising has become the new normal for car dealerships across the country. Twenty years ago, local TV advertising was the most effective and prominent method of marketing for automotive dealers, and the game has changed. This report is just the newest data that shows that a focused online brand marketing strategy will be the ticket to surviving and thriving in this new world of car sales.