In business, there is no such thing as writer’s block. It doesn’t exist. Erase the phrase from your mind. You see, in any business, there are so many potential stories to be told that one should never run out of them even if they’re blogging daily. More importantly, this isn’t like writing a novel. It’s not professional journalism. You’re not writing a column. On a…

There are still many in the search engine optimization industry that are fighting the concept that Google (and Bing) is taking social signals into account at a high level when determining search rankings.

These people fall into three categories:

1. Those who haven’t…

The image above shows the last four Facebook activities by a major car dealership in a metro area. Over three months ago, they abandoned their page. This could easily be a very long post where I go into details about how this is wrong on so many levels, but I'll keep it short because if you're reading this, chances are very strong that you're a savvy dealership…

The idea of the NoFollow attribute on links was to help prevent spam from appearing on user generated content sites, particularly Wikipedia. It was intended as a way to tell Google (and eventually all major search engines) that a link was not supposed to transfer any “link juice” to the recipient of the link. In essence, it was designed to…

This is part 5 in a series about building brand ambassadors at the dealership.

You've gone through all the steps. You knew that we were going to be talking about brand…

This is part 4 in a series about building brand ambassadors at the dealership.

You’ve made a customer extremely happy with their purchase and exceeded their expectations. They’re smiling, shaking your hand, and thankful that you earned their business. They show all of the…

This is part 3 in a series about building brand ambassadors at the dealership.

Let’s assume, for a moment, that you have step one on the path to building your Brand Ambassador…

This is part 2 in a series about building brand ambassadors at the dealership.

We’ve all heard the cliches.

• “Build raving fans!”
• “Word of mouth is the best form of advertising!”
• “Delight your customers!”

These sayings would start to get really annoying if they weren’t 100% correct.…

This is part 1 in a series about building brand ambassadors at the dealership.

It isn’t what you’re saying on social media that has the biggest effect on your business. It’s what others are saying about you that makes the true impact.

I’ve used those words in various forms since 2008. It’s…

In one sentence, the advice that business owners and marketers need to hear is this: “Everything on your Facebook page should be centered around the real world.”

No, I don’t mean the reality TV show that launched it all in 1992. When The Real World launched on MTV 27 seasons ago (yes, it’s still going strong in case you weren’t aware), it set in motion a genre of television that many people claim to hate but…

Facebook has been trying to crack down on text within images for some time. They made a big deal out of it when they first rolled out Timeline but it was still possible to get by without getting noticed. Today, it's a lot harder.

While I've never been able to fully make sense of the rule, it's their site so we have…

Social media icons and signs that say “Like us on Facebook” or “Follow us on Twitter” aren’t nearly as common in brick and mortar stores today as they were a couple of years ago. Many companies who tried to make it work (or are still trying) found that the presence of signs didn’t do much to improve their following.…

Call it human nature to mislead in order to promote a product. Call it deceitful selling. Call it ignorance. Call it whatever you want to call it, but the concept that has been being spread around the automotive industry that you don’t need content on your homepage is absolutely incorrect. In fact, the homepage is the most important page on your website from an…

Do you remember the person who consulted with you about social media and told you that brands are having tremendous success on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest? That's the type of person that you're reaching the most according to a report by NBCUniversal Integrated…

I've shared this story before but it's worth mentioned again. I was speaking to a client about their social media presence. Well, it was actually their lack of a social media presence. They didn't have a Facebook page, they didn't realize that they had a Twitter account that had been set to Tweet…

NADA 2013 was a whirlwind. There was more activity, more excitement, and most importantly more hope than I’ve seen since 2008. Dealers were excited to see more, to learn how to go beyond the survival mode that has been fading in recent years and to concentrate on thriving mode. It was the most encouraged I’ve been about the industry in decade, but…

From a marketing and advertising perspective, Facebook is a game. It may not be very fun for businesses, but just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean that you don’t have to play along to be successful. On the other hand, some businesses have plenty of fun on Facebook. Whether you do or not makes absolutely no difference, though some will say that if…

Every strategy needs a goal or else it’s just an aimless plan. We’ve covered the need to set Facebook marketing goals and described both the…

We’ve taken a look at the safe approach to setting Facebook goals. Now,…