If car dealers thought they needed to worry about getting negative reviews before, now there’s something else to fear - the paid review. This screenshot was taken from Mechanical Turk, a site that specializes in letting businesses “outsource” mundane activities for pennies. Worried now? You should be. Here is a respected site that is PAYING people to review your dealership. What are the people going to write? It doesn’t matter. The idea is to get enough unique content ... Read Full Story

Listen to 10 important minutes of Jared Hamilton’s keynote speech at Driving Sales Executive Summit in Las Vegas on October 14, 2009.  Jared discusses the evolution of automotive marketing over the last 25 years and how social media and other online marketing tactics are replacing the old ways of marketing more and more every day. Read Full Story

On thing was definitely made clear at the Driving Sales Executive Summit in Las Vegas: even the fiercest competitors can agree when it comes to how to do proper Internet Marketing. Paul Rushing, Brian Pasch, and I went on stage in preparation for a fire storm. There was little doubt that in the highly competitive field of Automotive SEO, putting 3 of the industry leaders was certainly going to bring about clashes, debates, arguments, and perhaps even a little bloodshed. It didn’t happen... Read Full Story

YouTube has been a valid social media marketing tool for a long time. Many companies are now starting to realize this. Others are starting to re-realize this. Here is an example by Bacardi. The video itself is from 2007, but they are re-introducing it and its Halloween theme this month. It works on so many levels and fails on one level. First, the video: First, the successes… It Tells a Story The last thing you want to do as a business trying to advertise a brand or a product is talk ... Read Full Story

On the heels of the Driving Sales Executive Summit and the JD Powers convention, two thing is still clear in the automotive industry – SEO is at the top of the priorities lists and information about proper SEO is still being debated. This post by Richard Valenta couldn’t have come at a more opportune time: Offsite SEO vs. Onsite SEO – It’s All in the Follow-Through Search engine optimization (SEO) has found steady footing within the automotive industry as dealers adopt cost... Read Full Story

The 1st Driving Sales Executive Summit in Las Vegas, NV, is being held 10/13-10/14 in the Hard Rock Casino. Here is Jared Hamilton opening the event: * * * For more information about Automotive Social Media, read more of this blog. Read Full Story

Through Twitter and a couple of different blogs, we will be covering the Driving Sales Executive Summit in Las Vegas. Follow it here or on the homepage to see what’s happening, when it happens.  Most of it will be brought via Twitter feed. If you have something to say about it, whether you’re here or not, join us by using the hashtag #DSES on Twitter. More information about Driving Sales Executive Summit is available here. Update 1: Skip Streets from Compete.com discusses behavior... Read Full Story

The doom and gloom crowd has been predicting Twitter’s demise for years. “Where is their revenue model?” “It goes down too much.” “Spam is taking over.” “WHERE IS THEIR REVENUE MODEL?” After 2 years of defending Twitter, I’m starting to question whether or not I was wrong and they were all right. Marketers, Spammers, and Bots, OH MY! When Twitter first started making it’s mainstream push around a year ago, the percentage of... Read Full Story

No more looking for spades, street signs, or red faces. Digg has gone to text links rather than thumbnails of the avatars on submissions.  A few days ago, they raised the limit from 200 to approximately300, then apparently back up to “unlimited” (even though there is one report of a user banned because of Digging too much). Server performance aside, is this an effort to reduce the rate of “blind digging” while not hurting their page views? Blind digging has always bee... Read Full Story

Digg is known for definitively dropping the “ban hammer” on those who post content that includes nipples. Apparently, the rules have changed. This screenshot from a video has been modified to a PG-13 level, but the original video does include visible nipples that are not-so-hidden. While I have nothing against the submitter (nor anything against the video) I feel the double standard here. The content was pretty darn funny, as the nearly-4000 Diggs clearly says, but it just doesn&... Read Full Story