We are seeing the "Facebookification" of Twitter happening before our eyes. No longer will we see a nice, minimized feed of Tweets presented to us on our smartphones or computers with several Tweets lining top to bottom on the screen. We'll see pictures, ads, and videos taking up more space by themselves than three Tweets presented the old…

Don’t worry. Women will still rule on Pinterest for the foreseeable future. That part’s not going to change. What will change is that Pinterest is edging its way into the hearts and marketing marketing toolboxes of businesses around the world, whether they’re run by men, women, or both.

As a result, the balance of power is shifting ever-so…

Understanding success or failure of marketing on Facebook can be broken down to the basic element: the post. Judging the effectiveness of your posts is clear and easy with Facebook Insights.

While the platform (finally) has a robust dashboard that allows users to dive deep into the effectiveness of their page, there are three numbers to…

Having tracked data for the last seven years in the automotive marketing arena, I can tell you a few things that I've learned that have brought us to where the content marketing world is today. It's all about process and answering the questions that consumers are asking and it's something that, as I've said time and time again in the past, needs to be viewed…

If you're like many who use Google+, you may not check your pages very often. With posting and monitoring tools out there, you might not log into your actual account very often. You should. Custom URLs are now available.

For individual users, you should be getting an email if you meet the minimum requirements. These "requirements" are very…

There’s a real beauty to Facebook for adults. It allows us to keep track of things that are happening in the lives of those important to us such as friends, coworkers, family, and those who are distant from us. It’s for this reason that the hoopla about Facebook losing too many teens is being misunderstood by many, including Facebook…

Don’t get me wrong. There’s an extremely complex and effective methodology behind utilizing Facebook as a true marketing and advertising tool that requires some specialized training, a strong sense of creativity, a willingness to experiment, and an unrelenting focus on keeping up with the latest and greatest from experts and Facebook itself.…

The worlds of automotive social media and automotive search marketing are converging. We've known this for a while and I've been preparing for the collision in order to help our clients make the most out of the changes. The only thing I wasn't expecting was how tremendously complex it all was going to be.

For the…

There's an exciting thing that can happen when you first start advertising on social media. The organic measures of exposure are quickly fading away, so when you get that first boost of exposure as a result of spending very little money, it can become addicting.

It's a trap. Overexposing at the wrong time to the wrong people can…

As Facebook continues its unofficial quest to make the platform pay to play and with Twitter quickly following in those footsteps, many are looking towards advertising as the most important component, but they would be wrong. Others who sell their products would say that strategy can overcome the need to play, but they would be incorrect as well. It’s the third…

There's a trend on Facebook that simply won't die. Many dealership pages continue to offer giveaways, contests, and even "exclusive" games on Facebook in order to get more fans. It has been proven over and over again to be ineffective at getting targeted, high-quality fans but there seems to be an insistence on continuing it in order to bulk up the numbers.

The problem with this is…

Over the last couple of weeks, my exploration into the world of effective automotive social media has turned more towards pitches and consultations. We’ve spent 9 months now digging deeper than ever before into what constitutes success and we’ve come to the conclusion that it’s pretty simple – if you aren’t selling cars and driving business to the…

I was having a casual conversation with a counterpart at a different automotive social media company yesterday when he asked, “Why do you guys monitor on the weekends? The dealer doesn’t care and as long as we reply on Monday, they’ll be fine.”

The discussion that ensued was long and nearly got heated. Thankfully, cooler minds…

For a long time, I assumed that this was a well-known technique, but after talking to some clients I realized that it’s not as common as I thought. If you have a Pinterest account (you should) and you don’t mind using it for business (you might), then you should definitely be mixing in some business-relevant posts.

Here’s the basic idea – your personal Pinterest or…

Businesses are starting to get it. They once saw social media as a channel like many others through which they could broadcast their message. When that didn’t work, they shifted to using it as a branding tool only. When that wasn’t effective, they started communicating with people. Bingo! Now, more need to take it to the next…

There have been valid business reasons to use hashtags for years. Twitter started it off. Pinterest added to it. Google+ mastered it in many ways. Instagram, Tumblr… the list of social sites on which hashtags are relevant is long. Facebook was the last major holdout. Now that they’ve joined the bandwagon, it’s go time.…

Looking at the screenshot above of the landing page that Facebook took me to when I clicked on Dodge’s advertisement in the sidebar, one might believe everything was in order. It’s not exceptionally attractive and definitely offers way too many options to be a strong landing page from a social media campaign, but at least it’s pretty compelling. The clear call to…

I was consulting with a potential client yesterday and started looking at their Facebook and Twitter pages. Once a day, every day, they would post a question that had very little to do with anything at all. "What was the last movie you watched?"

Once a day, every day, they wouldn't get a response from anyone. It was awkward…

For a few months now, I’ve been discussing the idea that local businesses should never fall into the trap of trying to be funny or interesting through the use of irrelevant pictures and memes. “No cat or dog pictures” has become a mantra of sorts with the concept being that businesses should try to stand out, not fit into the mix on Facebook and other social media sites.

As some have argued, there are definitely…