We've all heard the phrase, "content is king." The question that you should ask about your content is whether or not it's worthy of being the king of something important or the king of crap. Unfortunately, much of what is pawned off as content turns out to be ruling over nothing important.

I've said it in different ways in multiple articles and videos in the…

When we first built our company in 2013, we had a big fear. It was a sense of urgency that drove us to make aggressive moves, hire talented people when we didn't have the revenue to support them, and drink lots of coffee to stay ahead of the competition. The fear came from the certainty that automotive social media vendors would catch wind about the true power of…

When you have two people who have combined for over two decades of working with automotive website providers, you would think that they the company they would build together would be another website provider. It wasn't. There's a reason for this.

Search and social are the marketing venues we chose to pursue for one big reason: minimal parody. Car dealers have…

Common advice in the automotive industry: "There are very strict rules that dealers should follow when posting to social media, especially as it pertains to timing."

Pop quiz: Who says things like this?

• Companies who post on schedules
• Gurus who want to demonstrate the need for their expertise
• Anyone who wants to automate their…

In the movie Field of Dreams, a ghostly voice tells Kevin Costner's Ray Kinsella character, "If you build it, he will come."

The first question you'll want answered is, "What is it?" In the movie, the 'it' was a baseball field, but it was actually so much more than that. In…

Once you get over the beauty of the 1970 Dodge Charger in the picture, you might ask yourself, "What does a 45-year-old muscle car have to do with automotive content?"

We've been asked the same type of question multiple times pertaining to content we publish on dealer websites. Sometimes, it's dealers asking. Other times, it's other vendors wondering what…

We've been very careful with how we approach inventory marketing on dealer websites. On one hand, we know that a dealer's inventory is the primary lead and sales driver for dealers. On the other hand, the concept of driving everyone directly to inventory is a flawed one. Sometimes, it's better to put people on an appropriate landing page rather than push them directly…

I get it. I understand the need for more content to serve to an ever-growing flow of content consumers. The art of recycling content is important, particularly on sites like Twitter where a piece of content can and should be used multiple times in order to get the message out to everyone. It's a chronological feed, after all, and posting it once will only get it seen…

Over the last couple of months, I've been researching reputation management companies in and out of the automotive industry. On one hand, I found a couple of shining stars that stood out from the competition. On the other hand, they were only the best but were still missing the boat when it comes to the true potential of what reputation "management" should…

Online reputation has been a hot topic for a couple of years now. As solutions continue to emerge and the business of reputation management as a service expands, there's a dangerous trend that should be addressed.

Reputation management isn't about sending an email. It's not about filtering results by checking their sentiment first before directing them to the…

There's a rule when it comes to handling complaints and bad reviews on social media. The same rule applies for compliments and good reviews, but those are easy. Handling the complaints can be challenging and you may not want to do it, but as a rule you must reply to everyone who is talking to you publicly whether it's good or bad.

This is an…

There have been and always will be right and wrong ways to go about marketing on Facebook. The only things that change are the ways to go about doing the "right" things. While some would say there are no rules on social media, there are definitely best practices to do and poor practices to avoid.

In this infographic by…

If you're reading this, you're probably failing at social media image marketing. That's not me being cynical. By examining dozens of business social media presences every week, I get to see what so many are doing and the unfortunate fact is that 9 out of 10 are doing it wrong or not doing it at all. I'm being conservative with that estimate.

The "unfortunate"…

"ROI" and "KPI" are the longest sustained buzzwords in the world of marketing. They've been around forever and while they might fade for a short period of time from the talking points in sales presentations and blog posts, they always bounce back up with a vengeance. We're on the high-buzz portion of the cycle right now and more people are asking again, "How can I…

Let's state this for the record. I am not convinced that using the new image features on Twitter is the best way to go when it comes to marketing your business. It still smells too much like spam and if it's not handled properly it could do more harm than good.

With that said, there are definitely instances when it could do VERY well,…

Many of us who have been doing the hybrid search/social game for long enough remember what it was like to discover Tumblr. I got in pretty early and was able to get Social News as one of my Tumblogs, a pretty decent subdomain that is…

I know the feeling. Despite having worked every weekend for the last two years, I know the desire to let it all go and just focus on the important things in life like faith and family. I'll get there, someday, but you can get there now and still be strong at social media management.

See, the challenge is that social media for business is ever-so important.…

Presence is 50% of the game when it comes to social media. You have to be in front of people, accessible, and able to bring to them the other half of the social media equation: message.

A message without a presence brings to mind the old saying about a tree falling in an empty forest. If a Facebook post goes out and nobody saw it in their news feed, did it really get posted at all?…

In an ideal world, you're the social media and content manager for your company. You spend eight hours a day harnessing the power of sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ while developing content for your blog and YouTube channels. It's tough, but you're making it happen.

In the real world, you're probably responsible for a ton of different…