Car dealerships and their services departments, are now realizing the benefits of using mobile phone messages, to not only help sell automobiles, but to provide customers with better service when their car is in for regular maintenance.

Car Service Departments Go Mobile

The mobile phone market has exploded, and will continue to do so for years to come, as well as adding mobile tablets of all sizes. This presents a great opportunity for automobile dealers, who are trying to reach out to customers, in a cost effective way, which allows them to reduce overall marking costs. An added benefit is the ability to build a large customer database, for salespeople and the service department. This allows the two departments to work together to increase their outreach to customers, and bring in more business for both areas.

The car service department can reap great benefits, by reaching out to customers to update them, on when their car is due for service, communicate with customers during the day, as to the progress of any repairs, and let them know their vehicle is ready for pickup. It can also benefit the sales department, when the service department detects that a car may be reaching a point, where it’s more viable for the customer to purchase another vehicle, rather than continue with expensive repairs.

Allowing both the service and sales departments to build a large list of customers, allows both of them to reach out to customers quickly and easily, with any type of promotion related to the automotive business.

These short text messages are opened more often than emails, which tend to be far less effective, than receiving a short message on a mobile device. Today’s modern car dealership is beginning to realize, that a whopping 95% of these messages are opened, usually within minutes of receiving them. They’re also beginning to realize the potential there is to increase their business, in a number of different ways.

Using mobile coupons campaigns often generate a response rate as high as 35%, and that’s a conservative estimate. Automobile dealerships, who offer these benefits to their customers, are retaining old customers, while attracting new ones at the same time. Word travels quickly, when a car dealership is offering superior service to their customers, by using the high tech tools available today.

Different Ways to Attract Old and New Customers with SMS Marketing

Compared to old fashioned newspaper or other coupons, coupons sent by mobile phone marketing, often see a ten-fold increase in redemption rates. Special coupons can be sent out on days when you know the service department is going to be slow, thereby allowing you to instantly bring in more business for that day. Monthly reminders to customers for scheduled maintenance or oil changes are an added convenience that customers appreciate.

To get new customers many automobile service departments are using mobile messages for raffles, contests, and text-to-win games. Once your customers start forwarding the offers they receive, the increase in regular and new business will be rapid.

The service department can use this system to remind customers of an appointment, thereby lowering their “no-shows,” and customers of the automobile dealership find these messages to be helpful, and less intrusive than emails and telephone calls. Better yet, there’s a small learning curve, and as your workers become more tech savvy, there’s the potential for savings, as well as innovative suggestions from them on how SMS messaging will benefit the company.

It cannot be understated the power that SMS messaging offers car dealerships, and when combined with a mobile website, Facebook, Twitter and Google+, the possibilities for saving, and more customers is endless. The car dealerships that get in before the rest will be the one, which will see the most benefits, while increasing their bottom line.

The Power of Social Media for Reputation Management

Car dealerships and their salespeople are one of the most maligned industries in the marketplace, next to lawyers, and its one reason why, if you’re a car salesperson, you need to actively participate in managing your online reputation.

If you have a great reputation selling automobiles, then it’s even more important to manage and build your reputation. Don’t wait until a bad review happens, and then try to recover from the disaster it can possibly create. If you are proactive, you’ll be better off, should something does happen in the future.

Reputation Management - Before the Disaster

The advent of Twitter, Google+, and Facebook, gave car salespeople a way to effectively communicate with their customers in a positive way, maintain relationships with them, while using these platforms to attract new consumers to their product. Today, when people are trying to decide who to choose to sell them something, they’ll go online to see what that person’s reputation looks like with other customers. By actively engaging your customers, they have to ability to leave you great feedback about your selling techniques, helpfulness, and continued follow-up with them. These people are your most effective sales tool, and nurturing them is an important part of your business success.

The consumer of the digital age requires salespeople be available in an online environment. This allows them to feel more comfortable with you, before even choosing you to sell them an automobile. Through Facebook, Twitter and Google+ they can get to know you, which makes managing your online reputation more important than ever. The online environment is not just about letting people know about you, it’s also about providing them with up-to-date and relevant information as part of your overall customer service.

What if You Were a Customer?

Think of it this way; you’ve got a really old television and you want to buy a brand new one. You have no idea of what the different types of TV’s offer, let alone what LED, LCD and Plasma mean to you as a buyer. The first place you may turn to are friends, to see if they can give you information, but many of them don’t really understand the dynamics of new televisions. One of them tells you about a salesperson who is active online, helps people make decisions, informs them of what the different types are about, and is always available on Facebook to answer inquiries. It doesn’t take long for you to discover, that this is a person who cares about your knowledge, and wants you to make an informed decision. Chances are this person is who you’ll pick to help you make your choice. The same can be said with automobiles.

How often do find that your customers have little understanding of what new options are available on today’s car, and how to use these new gadgets. When you become the person who is using the internet to broaden your customer’s knowledge, your reputation as an expert in your field and your reputation as someone who cares about their customer will soon become known to a wide range of people. This is part of managing and creating a great online reputation.

Then one day along comes a bad review, about you and or your dealership. You may be devastated by this, but this can be turned into an opportunity to strengthen your reputation. This allows you, in public, to address the person’s concerns, and actively work to rectify the situation. While you’re doing this, all your followers are watching how you handle the criticism. If you do it correctly, you’ll gain more respect, but more importantly with so many followers that offer positive feedback, one disgruntled person is not going to stand out. You may even find that your followers and customers will actually stick up for you. The overall outcome becomes a positive one, because you’ve built an online reputation ahead of time, and your reputation will always speak for itself.

Build your online reputation ahead of time, and you’ll never have to worry about one bad review. Take the time to get involved in social media and learn how it can help you professionally, and increase your bottom line.

All in One SEO Pack

With this plugin there is a free version and a pro version. The pro version is currently being offered for $39.00, but the free version is a good place to start. If you want to optimize your blog or website, this plugin will automate the entire process for you. It will give you the Meta tags you need, for your post to be optimized, and helps with titles for your page. If you’re an advanced user, you’ll be able to customize any of your post titles, URL structures, descriptions, and all tags for any of your posts.

Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin

Free, and ranked as one of the best SEO plugins, is Yoast. It offers users the best opportunity for a complete all-in-one SEO tool. You’ll have the ability to use the page analysis to snippet preview. Both of these help users to, optimize their website content, Meta descriptions, page content, image titles, and create XML sitemaps. Best of all, they are constantly updating this plugin, and adding additional features, that will keep up with all the search engine algorithm changes that occur frequently.

SEO Rank Reporter

This is an interesting plugin, which will let you track keywords on your website, so you can see how well they are performing. It will give you a graphic report, every few days, and it will send you a notification by email if particular keywords suddenly show a major change in their ranking on search engines. Then you can make adjustments to your page, depending on the information you receive in the report.

SEO Content Control

This is a great plugin which will help you to identify content on your website that’s considered weak. For instance, if you forget to write descriptions for any of your categories, this program allows you to see this as a spot where you can improve your SEO. The program allows you to identify areas that are weak, and could be improved. Many of these areas can be troublesome when it comes to SEO rankings. Using this will ensure that your pages are as fully optimized for search engines.

SEO Smart Links

This nifty plugin will automatically link your keywords or phrases from other blog posts, directly in the post you’re creating. This allows you to choose your own keywords, which you want to highlight, and match them up with URLs to other pages within your website. If you want to have a “nofollow” attribute, or open links in a different browser page or tab, this program will take care of that for you. This program is a great time saver and allows you to understand more about SEO “best practices” while linking to internal posts.

All of the above plugins help to give your entire website an overall and complete SEO tune-up. Take your time to know and understand what each plugin can do for you, and how it will benefit your website. Your website content will be more noticeable, and should attract more traffic, that consists of your immediate target audience goals.

The Value of Pinterest for SEO

Pinterest is one social media site that is now outperforming the rest. A study, done earlier this year, which focused on social media, showed that Pinterest is growing the fastest, providing websites with more clicks from search engines, and websites are seeing an upward trend in unique visitors. With over 25 million people visiting daily, Pinterest users are purchasing items, and spending more than they normally would on other websites. Now that Pinterest is recognized as being in the top 50 websites, no one with a website can afford to not be using this valuable tool.

Pinterest is a community that allows you to virtually pin and organize your articles, images, and videos that you discover, when browsing the internet. You can organize your boards into different categories, and automatically tag things as you’re searching the internet. Best of all, you can share your boards with any number of friends, that you’ve added as Pinterest friends. Simply install their “Pin It” icon to your browser and then use it while surfing.

But, it’s also important to recognize the value of Pinterest for social media. It has valuable search implications, for anyone who wants to promote their website. Until recently, when I started gardening, I never really “got” what Pinterest was about. I searched the internet for different gardening ideas, and often the results I got back took me to Pinterest pages. That’s when I woke up and realized how important sharing pictures through Pinterest could be for my websites.

Pinterest – Company Accounts

Pinterest recently announced that they will now allow business accounts to use their site, and added new resources that have been built around their needs. Now a company will be allowed to create a:

•    Business name,
•    Verify their site with the use of html code.
•    When validated they can display a “Verification Badge.”

If you already have a company account you’ll be allowed to change over to a business account. You’ll also be allowed to add the “Pin-It” and “Follow” buttons to your website.

SERP’s

SERP’s (Search Engine Results Page), show that Pinterest is being crawled by all the major search engines, with results often being shown near the top in search results. If you’re a Pinterest user, you can use your Pinterest board, and add pictures that include high value keywords, that are relevant to people searching for your product. The search engines are indexing the pins as well as the comments that are below the picture, and any links that have been added. All of this is starting to show up in search engine results, which is what all of us strive for.

More Links to Your Website

If you’re looking for ways to receive more links to your website, Pinterest offers a tremendous opportunity. Pinterest is a social site, and users often will share their links with their followers and other users. When you post a picture or video to Pinterest, the link to your website or the site where the pictures was taken from, anyone who re-pins your picture will be sharing your link along with the picture.

As you can imagine, it can then spread to thousands of people very quickly when it’s a popular picture or video. The more it’s re-pinned, the more opportunity you have to bring people to your website, and gain higher search rankings at the same time.

Tips for Benefits and Website Optimization

First, it’s going to make people more aware of your website and what you offer there. It’s creating brand awareness for you and your site, with very little effort on your part. The more your offerings get shared, the more traffic you’ll see to your website.

It’s important to remember that Bing and Google are indexing these offerings, and putting them in their search engine results, in order to give their users a better overall experience. Many people have started to use “Google Images” to look for things they’re interested in, and Pinterest pictures rank high in the results. The minute someone clicks on the picture, they’re directed to your website, which is exactly what you want to have happen.

So, how do you optimize your images on Pinterest? The site allows you to add a description of your photos or videos. They give you 500 characters in which to do this. This is where you can add in your relevant keywords and long-tail keywords that will attract the search engine crawlers. They then get picked up by search engines and displayed in search results.

Make sure that you add a “Pin-It” icon to every page on your website, where you are promoting something. This gives every visitor a chance to pin anything that’s on your page, and then share it with all their followers. The more you engage with your customers by offering great images, the more likely they’ll be inclined to offer it to their followers.

This is just one part of a strategy for social media engagement, but there is no doubt, that engaging with people through your Pinterest account, will add amazing value to your SEO efforts.

Curated Content

First, let’s talk about what content curation is and what it’s not. Curating content for your blog is taking allowed content, from other sites, and placing it in your blog. For instance, videos on YouTube can be taken from their site, inserted into a blog post on your site, as long as you’ve checked the permissions, and used for your viewers to enjoy. Curating is often done on Facebook, where you can use a story that is allowed to be posted to Facebook, and by inserting the websites link, you can make it available to all your subscribers.

Curating content can help to bring traffic to your website, and brand your site as an authority website for your viewers and search engines. Mixed in with your own content, this proves to be a powerful way to enhance your blog. Curated content is when your go out on the web, gather information that is pertinent to your blog’s subject, and then presenting it to your viewers.  With so much content on the internet, you help to cut the time searching, by bringing information into your website for your viewers, so they don’t need to search the internet for hours. It’s all in one spot and it’s your blog. Doing this, along with providing your own articles, makes you the “go to” place for information on that topic.

Another example of curated content is Facebook. Although most people use it for connecting with friends, a lot of people subscribe to different site’s pages that they’re interested in, and that content is then presented to them in one area on Facebook. No longer does someone have to visit all their favorite sites to see if anything is new. If there is new content, it will show up on Facebook. Consider your own website a “mini” Facebook, but for your topic only.

Use Trusted Websites

It’s important to remember that curated content must be from a very trusted site. In your blog, you’ll create an entry that will include:

•    An eye catching headline that will attract viewers by using keywords,
•    A few lines of text where you comment on what you’re presenting,
•    A great picture that helps to capture people’s attention.
•    A link to the actual article that you want people to see.

This is an endless opportunity for your website to attract visitors on a daily basis, and have them subscribe to your website or return every day. You may want to set up a newsletter that summarizes the week’s posts, and allows you to promote items that will help those who are following your site.

What It’s Not!

Curated content is not where you find great content, and then copy and paste the entire article into your blog. That’s plagiarism and often copyright infringement.

When done correctly, you’ll have the content on your blog, Facebook, Twitter and Google+ for a start. This takes a limited amount of time to do, and it cannot be understated the value it brings to your website and to your visitors.

How to Find Good Content

Depending on your subject, one way to curate content is through signing up for Google Alerts, using your keyword for your site. Another is to bookmark sites that are authority sites, or subscribe to their RSS feed. Emails are another way to getting authority information.

In the end, the one thing that curated content does do for your website, is give you information to share with your readers for free, involves a small amount of time, and can raise your visibility in search engines quickly.

Engaging People

Your content should be designed to engage your readers. Your blog, EBooks, and videos need to, not only bring in new people to your website, but also needs to entertain your current following. Today, many websites don’t offer content that is designed to sell, and more often it’s been poorly written.

Ever since Google declared that “content is king,” websites have worked hard to increase their content, but unfortunately, many have hired writers that don’t know how to write for the internet audience, and it’s noticeable that English in not their first language, as their grammar and spelling is atrocious. We’ve all seen sites like this and most of us can’t leave them fast enough.

Many website owners have gone online, and hired writers from other countries to write content for as little as $0.50 for 500 words. Now, can you imagine what kind of quality that paltry sum is going to produce? Google has tried to address this problem with their recent updates, but there are still far too many of them showing up on the first page of search results.

How to Write Good Content That Search Engines Will Love

It’s important to understand that your title or headline is often the first thing a visitor will see. If that doesn’t grab their attention, you’ve likely lost a reader. After the headline, people will scan paragraph headings. Do you know how to successfully write headlines and titles that grab people’s attention? It’s important to learn this skill.

Use Images to Engage Your Visitor

You can use images to grab people’s attention, and often these are seen before anything else on your website. One picture can be worth a thousand words, if it’s the right picture in the right place.

You want a picture that helps to tell your story, and not a picture that’s basically meaningless. Engage your visitor with images throughout your article and they’ll stay on your page longer.

Let’s Talk About Your Paragraphs

If you’re reading a book, long paragraphs are fine. When reading a webpage, long paragraphs can be overwhelming, especially today when many suffer from information overload. People will read paragraphs if they’re short, certain words are bolded, pictures are engaging, and the first line has relevant information. If your visitor starts to skim your site and becomes overwhelmed, they’ll likely leave you site and look elsewhere for information.

Have You Used Videos in Your Articles?

Videos are a great way to keep someone on your site. The video though must give them good information, teach them something new, and show them how it will benefit them.

Remember, the longer the video, the more likely they’ll lose interest in it. Ensure the video is short and relevant. Videos can play a key role in engaging your target audience.

When used correctly, and with links to other relevant videos they help your visitor stay entertained. If you want a free way to enhance your video, check out Mozilla’s Popcorn here, or play this video.

How to Get Customer Feedback

Throughout your writing you should subtly encourage your visitor to let you know their opinions. Comments allow for interaction with your current audience, and work as content for future visitors.

Make sure that if someone leaves a comment, you reply to it as soon as possible and make sure that your comment section has a way to notify the original commenter, that a reply has been posted. That keeps them returning to your website and engages them further. Speaking of comments, we’d love to hear your thought and experiences that you’ve encountered on your website and others on the internet.

Social Media Management

When you finish this article, you’ll understand why, in today’s computer and mobile phone world, social media can plan a large part in the success of a small business. Think of how often you hear about Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms. Did you know that many users on the internet use these platforms, to provide them with more pertinent information than Google currently provides.

Imagine you’ve just arrived in a small town and plan to stay for a short period of time. You want to know where go to eat, stay, and sightsee. If you go to Facebook and type in the name “Brighton,” and click over to their page on Facebook, you find a wealth of information on restaurants, hotels, and places to see while visiting. So I click on Brighton Marina, and find a wealth of information is there, all in one place, without even going to Google. Imagine the possibilities this has for any local business that has chosen to use social media to their advantage!

Much of what people learn today is derived from social media sites such as Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook. People on these social sites are sharing business pages with their friends. This has the power to put any small business in front of an amazing number of people; also known as potential customers. Today, people are more likely to tell all their friends about a great experience they had, by putting it on social media. Not only that, they’ll include pictures which is another great way to get a lot of free advertising.

With the economic climate we live in today, the power of a good review for a local business, or their product cannot be underestimated. Customers are now taking the time to spread the word to others about a business that exceeds expectations, in part to help them stay in business, and also to spread their positive information to their friends.

People on Facebook will often “Like” a business page that they’re happy with, and more so if that business keeps their social media page updated with specials, interesting news, and upcoming sales. The business that interacts with their customers in these environments, will gain a loyal following. Think of the power of announcing on your Facebook or Twitter account, that you’re having a one day special and all of your followers get to see this “free” advertising.

On the flip side of this scenario, when a customer goes to your Facebook or Twitter page, and registers a complaint, all your followers will see this as well. This presents you with an opportunity to show everyone how good your customer service is at resolving a customer’s issue. If you address the issue directly, and work with that customer to resolve the issue, the whole community, that is following you, will be impressed that you cared enough to help turn an unhappy customer into a happy one.

It’s important that website owners remember that social media actually needs to be “managed.” If you don’t have the time to manage all your social media accounts, you’ll do more harm than good, and end up losing loyal followers. This is the time when you need to consider hiring a social media manager, who can increase your online exposure, reply to customer’s comments, and keep the site updated constantly. It may cost a bit more to do this, but the end result will be more sales for your company, and more customers for your product. Social media is a powerful tool, if you use it correctly. If doing it yourself, ensure you know what you’re doing and you’ll be amazed at the return on your investment.

SEO Tips for More Visitors

The top SEO tips seem to change each year, and for the most part, each one still holds a lot of relevance in today’s internet landscape. Today we’ll look at some SEO tips, with a view to helping you improve your website rankings, and ways to get and keep more visitors on your website.

What is SEO in Relation to Your Website?

Optimizing your website is not just for search engines, although it does help, but it’s also about making it an experience for your visitors. There are a number of things you can do to achieve top rankings, but if you page is not designed to capture the attention of your visitor then a top ranking is not going to mean much. Along with thinking in terms of SEO, you must also think in terms of what will please your visitor, keep them on your website longer, and with the idea of having visitors consider the product you offer. One of the best things you can do is to ask 3 friends with no design experience, to look at your website, and tell you their opinion of everything they see on your front page.

Jumping For Joy When You Rank on Page 1

Not so fast. You can rank on page one, or even at the top, but unless your audience engages in your website, or click on links in your website, it won’t mean much. In order to get people to click on your internal links, you’re going to need to engage them with a website that’s easy to navigate. Did you know that over 88% of people will not scroll down on your webpage? That means the real estate at the top of your page needs to capture their attention within seconds, and offer them relevant information, or they’ll leave your website within seconds. You can have the best website in the world, but if it doesn’t capture your visitor’s attention, it’s not going to achieve the results you want.

How Do You Value Your Content?

Most website owners believe their website offers visitors great value and information. Unfortunately, many website owners are not experts in their field, and don’t understand what their visitors are looking for when they arrive. Unless you offer visitors high quality content, that addresses their interests, you’ll lose customers. Your content needs to be well written and with information that your visitor want, and not for the search engines. If you provide them with the best content available they’ll spread the word for you, faster than any search engine will.

How to Use Social Media Properly

Social media play an important role in the number of visitors to your website, and ones that are actually looking for your information. Facebook is probably one of the most valuable search tools, and one of the best ways to get visitors. With over 250 million users, that are active on a daily basis, many of them will search Facebook for a topic they want to follow, that provides value to them.

Many will also find you through search, but when they arrive at your website and see that you offer quality information, they’re very likely to start following you on Facebook. This means that any new information that you post to Facebook will be seen by the number of followers you have. Often, your followers will share your information with their friends, which opens up the opportunity to gain more followers. This is one way to take your website viral, and gain more viewers of your content than ever before.

If the above confuses you, consider hiring a SEO company that will help to achieve both top ranking in search engines and top rankings with your visitors. Companies that specialize in SEO will cost you some money, but the return on your investment will more than pay for it over time.

Online Reputation Management

If you own a business and have employees and onsite customers, then you have the perfect recipe for a potential public relations disaster. No matter what the critical event is that arises, it’s important to understand, that what you do and say next will have long term implications on you, or your organizations reputation. In a world of Facebook and Twitter, one misstep can go viral in a matter of minutes.

Do You Have a Strategy Ready for Any Type of Crisis?

Once the incident occurs, you won’t have much time to activate a plan when the press starts calling. It’s critically important that you have in place different plans of action, for any number of scenarios. If you’re unprepared you can be guaranteed, that what you say and the actions you take, won’t be the correct ones.

You need to know what you will say in response to any crisis, especially when the press starts to call. You can’t ignore them as you need to control the story, and not be defined by rumors that will ultimately spread. You can’t simply respond to a reporter with “no comment.” That creates the perception, right or wrong, that you’re guilty or your company is responsible.

When you have a plan of action at the ready, you’ll be better equipped to respond to the crisis, and use strategic plans that you’ve already drawn up, to help guide you through what comes next. You’ll be able to provide a more thoughtful response, instead of being caught off-guard and blurting out whatever comes to mind. Those who are not prepared for crisis mode often look like an animal caught in the headlights of a car.

You and your management team need to be prepared to respond as quickly as possible. This will allow you to address the issue at hand, not look like an irresponsible company, and allow you to project a company image that cares about the people affected by the crisis.

If you’re a large corporation you may need to face shareholders, or if you’re just a small business locally, you’ll be facing your customers and neighbors. You can use email to respond, as long as you understand, that what is said in the email will be made public. This then gives you time to prepare for your next step, which is often a follow-up with the press. At this point you need to be prepared to speak to the situation, and realize that the emphasis needs to be on how you will make people feel. Your empathy will be remembered more than the words you use.

Hire a legal team and a public relations consultant and listen to their instructions. You need your communications to be consistent each time you speak about the incident. If you don’t, you and your company will have your credibility destroyed. If you don’t have all the answers, don’t be afraid to say so, with the idea that a statement will be made in the future, that will clarify all events. Make sure to choose your words carefully, be sympathetic to the situation, and yet still project a positive attitude.

If you haven’t already stated planning for a crisis situation, consider hiring a company that deals in reputation management. They’ll work with you and your employees to prepare for any situation. They’ll advise you on how to handle each aspect of any possible situation, enabling you to have an action play ready should something happen.  A reputation management company knows how to prepare you ahead of time, and also knows how to fix a damaged reputation after an event. With the speed of the internet world of Twitter and Facebook, you need to get out front and control the situation immediately.