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in 2010, world class speaker Grant Cardone was speaking at the Innovative Dealer Summit hosted by Tim Jackson and the CADA.  Grant stated that the most successful  CEO’s in the USA read over 70 books a year.

At first I was taken back at the sheer volumes of information that these business leaders were absorbing each year.  What struck me were the words that Grant used: “the most successful” He was not referring to owners and CEO’s that were collecting a paycheck under with a title.

In January, I made a commitment to read a book a week (52 a year) and I have been able to keep that pace going.

Candidly, I kick myself for not investing in reading earlier. Each week I am tapping into the wealth of information shared by top leaders, executives, and creative thinkers.

Books like “Linchpin“  by Seth Godin, “The Go-Giver” by Bob Burg, “Getting Naked” by Patrick Lencioni, and my current book “The Mirror Test” by Jeffrey W Hayzlett have truly changed the way I lead and conduct my business affairs.

Unlimited Opportunities

I feel like a kid in the candy shop!  There is a wealth of information available to business leaders; CEO’s, General Managers, Sales Managers, Service Managers,  and any employee that wants to find success in their chosen career path.

When you start reading this many business books, you start to see a recurring theme.  I saw it in Grant Cardone’s books and today in Jeffrey Hayzlett’s book.

What is this theme?  The author candidly states that a small portion of their readers will actually carry out the winning strategies they share in their books.

The author’s experience is that resistance to change is a greater force than any million dollar upside move.  Sounds crazy, but in reality, many business executives are restricted by their “lizard brain“; a phrase coined by Seth Godin in his book Linchpin.

I could tell a dealer that by attending one of our PCG Pit Stop conferences that they could save tens of thousands of dollars a year and they yawn.  I could tell them that they could ruin their brand by ignoring their online reputation and they smile and say that they will get to it soon.

Where Do You Stand?

How about you?  Are you engaged in education? Are you reading weekly?   Is your path heading for greatness or are you content on just being good?  Are you too worried about this month’s sales goals that you can’t plan for a more effective full year of results?

My coach Rick Ivone often repeats this simple reminder:  Good is the killer of GREAT!

I ask my readers this question because over the past few months me and my team have been talking to dealer principals, general manager, and Internet sales manager about participating in various workshops and automotive conferences designed to energize, educate, and improve the bottom line for their dealership.

To be candid, the responses have shown their indifference to the topic.  Investing is education and testing new strategies is not a priority.  Every excuse in the book is used to avoid change.  Their “lizard brain” takes control and rejoices.

It seems like taking a day out for learning is tantamount to asking the dealer to cut off their arm.

Ironically, my reading has demonstrated to me that investments in education will have the highest ROI for leaders because they can apply their new knowledge across an entire organization.

The Bigger Picture Is Ugly

Dealers spend tens of thousands of dollars every month on automotive advertising and marketing, yet will not take a day out of the office to learn how to save THOUSANDS of dollars a month.

Dealers spend millions of dollars to develop their brand yet will not invest a day out of the office the learn how to protect their multi million dollar asset from being hurt online.

Dealers take pride in their business “strategy” but few understand that with changes in Google search engine, over 60% of dealers are doing more to help their direct competitors than themselves.

Marketing and advertising in a digitally socialized world is constantly changing.  Change brings opportunities.  Opportunities bring more sales and profits to a well run business.  Who is keeping you abreast of all these opportunities?

Automotive Leaders Need Balance

Until automotive business leaders demonstrate balance in their professional lives, they will be destined to stay mediocre.  Our lives must be balanced with emotional, physical, spiritual and intellectual investments.

Leadership starts at the top. If the dealer principal and General Manager place little value outside workshops, conferences or monthly reading then you can’t expect the entire organization to flourish and reach its full potential.

I am committed to educate, energize, and lead those who want to grow in their professional lives.  If you want to join me on that path, the door is open to significantly change your business outlook and profits.

You just have to take that first step.  Join the team.

One observation from the NADA Convention was the number of website vendors that were integrating social media monitoring and reputation management tracking tools into their client dashboard.  Two such companies I had a demo with were @utoRevenue and Dealer.com.

The shift  to integrate social media tracking and reputation management alerts will eventually limit the business upside of stand alone reputation management software companies and social media syndication tools.  I predict that these stand alone tools will be seen as a silo applications in the near future.  These companies will be either purchased by larger website providers or they will fade away.

Dealer.com Social Relationship Manager

The Dealer.com Social Relationship Manager which was unveiled at the  2011 NADA Convention was impressive. Customers of Dealer.com that are engaging in social media and use third party reputation management tools should get a demonstration.  This is one slick application!

After seeing the integration of social media signals as well as content aggregation, dealers on the Dealer.com platform will be pleased with this timely feature set.  I would say that car dealers are finally waking up to the fact that consumers are influenced by the reviews that they find online.

@utoRevenue Reputation Management Tools

@utoRevenue which focuses on client retention processes for the automotive industry has added an IRM dashboard into their product line.

According to their press release: “The 360-degree reputation management solution provides dealers with an innovative approach to tracking, managing, and influencing their online reputation. Going beyond the traditional solicitation techniques employed by most in the industry, customers engage at key points in the retention cycle, when positive experiences are most likely to be captured and negative experiences can be quickly addressed.”

It makes sense to me that the service provider that is already responsible to email clients, produce newsletters, and keep client’s engaged with the dealership via coupons, offers, and education should leverage that same channel for reputation management.  I know that consumers do NOT want extra calls and email from car dealers.

If you are a current customer of @utoRevenue, I would call and get a demo of this new product offering.

Check With Your Platform Provider

Other major website vendors will be rolling out integrated reputation management alerts, escalation processes, and review progress monitoring in the upcoming months.  So before you go out an purchase a stand alone product, talk to your website vendor and see what they have in the pipeline.

Data integration will become increasing important in the years ahead, Integrating your IRM data and social engagement stream into your main CRM system will be a wise choice.  The opportunities for data mining will only increase when all contact data and outside content are combined in one data warehouse.

Every week it seems that a new social media website or micro-blogging platform comes to market and your circle of friends invite you to join.  I don’t know about you but how does the average person evaluate the benefits of using these new digital marketing tools? Are you overwhelmed?  Do you feel that you are dodging bullets?

In the past 60 days you may have been invited and joined:

• IMfaceplate.com
• CarDealerWiki.org
• Amplify.com
• Thoughts.com
• Quora.com
• Branchout.com

I thought I would share with you some of the processes I use to evaluate the many requests that come across my desk each month.  In my experience, some websites serve as useful Automotive SEO tools, others as Automotive Social Media tools, and some just fail to do anything.  The key is to know how to evaluate your investment in these websites.  You must have the tools to evaluate which websites are worthy of your continued investment of time and energy.

Your time is valuable so treat it that way!

Automotive Advertising Strategies

For car dealers, automotive advertising strategies have never been as diverse and confusing as they are today.  Dealers are faced with deciding how to find the correct balance of traditional marketing, social media, SEO, SEM, blogging, email marketing, re-marketing, and the list goes on.  All of the sites that I listed above may have been presented to dealers as “worthy” of their staff time and content.

Which new websites are really delivering on those claims?

All of the sites listed above may be suited for car dealers.  However, some may be better for personal branding.   In either case, the question comes down to your time investment.  Should you engage or not?

Sites You Think Are Good For SEO

If a website is introduced to you as a new Automotive SEO tool, there are some quick ways to measure that claim.  First, make sure you are using Google Alerts, Yahoo Site Explorer and Google Webmaster Tools.  Setup Google Alerts for your dealership name and your personal name.

I like to use Google Alerts to see how fast a blog post I created is picked up by Google. This is a measure of how often Google pulls and indexes content.

For example, I posted content on www.Quora.com, recommended by my friend Eric Miltsch, under my name this past week.  One question I posted was about Frank Herbert and Dune books. I received a Google Alert within an hour of posting and from the screen shot below, you can see that it is now in the Google index.  This site is definitely respected by Google.

In contrast, all the social media sign-ups that I have done on Branchout.com in the past two weeks have not triggered any Google Alerts.  In the first case, Quora.com is getting into the Google search stream and Branchout.com seems to be limited to inside of Facbeook.  Branchout.com fails on the SEO front and we will have to see how it does on the networking front.

Automotive Advertising on CarDealerWiki

As I stated in another blog post this week, www.CarDealerWiki.org is showing strong SEO visibility and links.  Take a look at this search query for a dealer who is leveraging the page publishing power of CarDealerWiki:

You Should Be Seeing Increased Links

Secondly, if your posts or articles on micro-blogging platforms are being respected by the search engines, any hyperlinks in your posts should be showing in Yahoo Site Explorer and Google Webmaster Tools to your main website.   If after 30-60 days your links are not showing, you can assume you are not getting SEO back-link benefits from these posts.

Sites You Think Are Good For Networking

Other websites that are not designed for Automotive SEO may claim to increase your networking potential.  In these cases, I recommend that you use a tracking phone number on all posts to these sites.  This can be in the form of a user profile or a signature block that you add to all articles.  In addition to tracking numbers, you can see how many people are commenting on your posts.

For example, IMFaceplate.com is a new micro-blogging platform.  I have posted about 12 articles on my profile so take a peek:  Brian Pasch.  The comments on my articles have not been very interactive or meaningful.  In addition to low engagement, I have not been seeing Google Alerts coming in for my efforts.  I will give this website another month or content and if I don’t see any positive confirmations form the search engines, I will stop.

As a side note, www.imfaceplate.com has slow website response times which I think is hampering their search engine credibility.

Prioritizing Your Time

With so many new websites in play each month, just be careful about how you invest your time.  Measure the search visibility, link counts, or contacts you get by engaging in any new community.

If you want some proven strategies for content publishing and link building, there are many articles that I have published in the past.  If you need an updated Top 10 List, just send me an email:  brian@pcgdigitalmarketing.com.  I’ll send you my Top 10 Content Publishing websites that can assist car dealers with search visibility, links, and traffic generation.

P.S.  Dealers who want to develop the strongest digital marketing strategies for 2011, are coming to the 2011 Digital Marketing Strategies Conference Feb 1-3rd in the Napa Valley prior to NADA.  You can be there as well, register at: http://www.digitalmarketingstrategies.org