Just read an interesting post about driverless cars and the change that would be needed in order to adopt such a concept.

David Roberts writes that we don’t struggle with decisions that follow a reasonable progression of change:

If we want to use less electricity, we swap our dishwashers and furnaces for more efficient ones. If we want to transition from coal, we swap out coal plants for natural gas plants or wind farms. If we want our homes to consume fewer resources, we stick solar panels on the roof and chicken coops out back. And if we want to use less oil for transportation, we swap out gasoline cars for cars that run on something else.

And in order to make the change to driverless cars, we ought to think about how that change could benefit our lives:

But adopting driverless cars could mean much more than just substituting a new, better-performing widget in place of an old one, especially if we act with some foresight and thoughtfulness. Let’s ponder what sorts of systemic changes might be possible (emphasis on might).

The rest of his post outlines some of the benefits we might see from this change but as I continued to read I felt the room closing in on me. It was as if I could see where this was going and I didn’t like it at all. By the end of the article I felt that every aspect and every decision was out of my hands and my ability to feel the freedom of driving where I wanted, when I wanted was just snatched away in favor of something that could make me more productive, efficient, always working.

I have given this a lot of thought and the more I think about it I cringe. It feels more like imprisonment that anything else, perhaps because I love to drive. I love knowing where I am and not having to use technology to tell me how I should go from point a to point b.

Driving to me isn’t just accomplishing the task of going from one place to another, it’s being in control, being in the driverseat, making decisions on the fly that may have nothing to do with arriving at my destination. This is the complex nature of the human brain, and the reason computers won’t ever have the parallel capacity to compete with us. Sure computers might make less mistakes but they aren’t going to see what we see and be able to relate it to what we know. It’s our life experience that helps guide us, and it makes us who we are.

If we are in a driverless car and we see someone in need of help, will the car stop, or will it just keep on going?

It’s not like we’re going to wake up one day and everyone is going to be in driverless cars, there would be a time period for this transistion so how are people going to drive regular cars mixed in with driverless cars? I don’t know about you but I don’t like it when someone follows me too closely, but I suppose if it’s a self driving car I shouldn’t blame the person riding in it? How about those times when your about to change lanes at the same time as someone else but one of us has to let the other one proceed? There’s an infinite number of situations like this that a computer is simply going to be inferior until it learns how to react, and with that in mind what’s the reaction time going to be, I certainly wouldn’t want it to hesitate like my phone does on daily basis without reason.

I think the technology is very impressive, and for some people it might be the right thing. Some people may care less about experiencing things along the way, but for me that could be just as important as getting there.

We are creative beings, and sometimes we might take Highway 101 along the coast even if I-5 would get us there quicker.

IDEO David Kelley 60 Minutes Interview

David Kelley gets it. The founder and CEO of IDEO summed it up brilliantly with the simple term – empathy.

If you put empathy into how you create the customer experience you will win, period.

Look at the reactions of peoples faces when they use your website and fix the areas that cause them to frown or become impatient.

Make it your mission to see all the negative reactions go away, and then strive for smiles as they navigate or experience the product.

Empathy, the secret ingredient, the thing that makes what you do and how you do it better than the competition.

At the end of the interview, Kelley shared his passion for cars. He said his car brings a smile to peoples faces, it’s who we are he said. I couldn’t agree more.

For more, check out the post on TED

I’m reading a book called Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance. If you haven’t read this book, I would highly recommend it!

Pirsig does a tremendous job of explaining the differences between people who are interested in technology, want to know all about it, vs. those who use it but want no part of learning how it works.

I also see this in some of my SEO clients, they don’t understand SEO and have no interest in learning how it works. They just want to know that the work is producing results.  It’s like building a race car for someone who doesn’t want to know the build, only cares about time slips and running a faster ET. 

I know that in performance applications, you use the highest quality parts you can buy, and the same goes for a website if it is a critical source of leads or sales for the business. 

If you don’t understand why you need to used forged pistons, and a billet crankshaft, why bother building something that’s just going to produce the power you need?

If you put together a website that doesn’t convert, its like building a race car that won’t start.  If you rely on that race car to make you money, it might be wise to get it running, and start tuning or you’ll be stuck on the side of the road while the competition just picks up your losses.

I am the type that really likes to know how things work, and I find it fascinating when I figure it out and want to share that with others. I’m not saying I know everything there is to know about SEO, but it’s very much like motorcycle maintenance, they way Pirsig writes about it in the book.

He is very diligent about maintaining his machine, and his reasons are on the money.  He’s adjusting the air fuel ratio with changing elevations, he is checking plugs and notices that he’s running a little rich but it’s better than being lean.

You may go a little faster running lean eventually catches up with you, and you risk blowing the engine.

It’s kind of like maintaining your website. If you put the same amount of care into well written titles, descriptions, and content on the page then you will likely see much better results. If you don’t care to change those things on your site, fine, but your not going to be even remotely fast enough to catch the top of page one.  Those guys are living and breathing the tune of their sites, down to every letter that’s shown in the snippets.

Lots of things affect SEO, just like there a lot of parts on an engine that affect the overall performance of the engine.

The difference is how those parts are assembled, maintained, and tuned for peak performance. And knowing how to diagnose what parts need to be replaced when it’s not running right.

You can go out and a crate engine, or you can find a builder that will push the limits of thermodynamics to find peak performance and efficiency.

I don’t like asking for help.  Unless it’s nearly impossible for me to do on my own, and not asking would be considered dangerous, perhaps even reckless and stupid.

On the flip side, I like to offer help when I see someone that could use it, and like me they don’t really want to ask. 

Today I was reminded that such characteristics are not part of everyone in this world we live in, and even though it was something that took only seconds to transpire it made me angry for a long time because I couldn’t understand it.

So I’m walking in with tons of groceries my hands were beyond full and there is a card reader to get into the building,  but if someone happens to be walking out you don’t need to swipe. I see this person walking out and normally I wouldn’t have to say anything because it’s just common courtesy to let someone else in that clearly lives here.

It was dark, and I know you can’t see someone walking up so its more of a spontaneous thing that occurs and they had to act accordingly.  They chose to let the door close, as if consciousness of their environment was a burden they could not bare.  Sidetracked, or whatever the case may be, they might as well have been a ghost.

I suppose it isn’t right for me to pass judgement on others, but I couldn’t help the reaction to such a bizarre event, or I am getting old and this is how old people react.

It was just blatantly obnoxious to come walking out, let the door shut right in someone’s face, that clearly couldn’t stop it because the hand their hands were full!  They hesitated, if for a 1000th of a second, and then walked pointlessly towards their destination.

Several minutes later, I think of how this type of conduct would be perceived if someone else had seen it happen.  Unbelievable.  Really?  Then I think that the person hesitated only to see if their actions would be witnessed by others, otherwise what’s in it for them?

Nothing.  Nothing to gain.  Nothing to lose.  Apparently.

Just a simple selfless act, but done when it benefits.  Using words like measurable. 

That seems to perfectly describe some dealers I have encountered.  They only care about the stuff people see, not the actions themselves.  It shows though, no matter how heavy they try to cover it up.

It’s no different than ignoring someone on the lot that doesn’t look like they can afford anything.

Get a bad review, don’t respond and it’s like letting the door slam while hundreds watch.  Respond, and its like saying, sorry about that….let me get the door for you. 

But, what about those who do get it, they blog and they understand the message they are sending, and don’t care how many people see it.

They do the right thing when nobody is looking and that’s what everybody sees today.

It’s like standing at the door holding it open and greeting everyone who walks in.

The company Blekko was something of an inspiration to me, and other SEO’s, as they stood for what they believed should be openly available. They freely shared the kind of data that SEO’s use frequently, which I often shared with other SEO’s, energetic website owners who didn’t need much data, but liked to learn a little as we worked on their sites.

I remember seeing some videos of the Blekko team getting interviewed, and although they were a small team it seemed they were passionate about the concept of keeping this kind of data open. That’s why this comes as a shock and a disappointment, and makes little to no sense in the way they rolled it out.

If you look at the paywall (image posted above), the one that’s supposed to be compelling and filled with reasons to pay $99/mo. and it’s nothing other than paypal button where they opted to skip the free trial option that paypal includes by default, which speaks to the planning that went into this.

Google’s cache shows the free trial but then they got greedy and must have quickly yanked it because no other blog has this image up.

First Blekko Offers Free Trial But Removes It?

There have been a few posts about it, one from Search Engine Land, this one by Jason McDonald shares some feedback on their marketing efforts.

It’s truly sad to see their touting of an open transparent search engine and reap the rewards from all the press, enlist the efforts of those who aligned with their goals, to then have them pull a 180 and offer zero explanation of what changed and why.

Blekko Has Some Major Explaining To Do Because This Is All BS

Took the liberty of amending their bill of rights.

Perhaps they had planned this from the get go, as in they would get everybody who was a believer in opening up and sharing data to see some of what was causing sites to outrank other sites, and they rode that until the traffic peaked and leveled off so they padlocked their data and started charging and shut off access to the ones who helped them spread the word, curate the results and build their traffic.

Here's The About Page, Needs Some Edits Too!

So I hope to see some sort of explanation because this isn’t really how you convert free users to paid users.  Right now, the free users are in shock and would likely burn $99/mo. than pay for something that you said should be free to everyone.

“Blekko makes freely available to its users all of the data that provide the underpinning of our search results.”

Here’s an image from a blog post about their recent traffic growth need some of editing in light of current news, note that they contribute savvy marketing which I’m curious to think of the frame of mind someone has to be in to call their marketing savvy.

Anyone whose written about Blekko might need to help them with an edit or two.

Blekko Has Changed Their Mind So Deal With It

That’s what they seem to be saying, to all who might have been a bit surprised on a recent visit to the site.  Maybe they felt SEO’s were using them, getting away with the data like little data junkies who can’t pass up free data so they decided why not make some pizza money for the office and told an intern to figure how that Paypal widget works.

What Can You Charge For That Used To Be Free

Unfortunately, when you take what you used to give out for free and try to charge for it, usually doesn’t hold up.  There are some examples in this post titled “If a paywall is your only strategy, then you are doomed” via Gigaom.  Food for thought.  Be interesting if they can avoid that fate, but right now I don’t see anyone getting through to the captain whose clearly not following their original course.

Getting customers to leave reviews about their experience gives us insight into how a business operates. It allows us to choose who we want to deal with based on how others have been treated. Some are good, others not so good, but even a negative review helps us.

Negative reviews let us see what the worse case scenario might be and we can act accordingly.

All reviews are an asset. Even the ones Google just misplaced, accidentally deleted, or decided to help everyone out by erasing the really long-winded ones.

Google Isn’t Thinking This Through

I’m sure Google isn’t happy about the new Yelp reviews integration in Maps on iOS. Whatever the reason they could have communicated their concern and sent out a warning email that explained what could happen allowing people to export their reviews if just to keep a record of the reviewers info.

It takes a significant investment of time and money to create a process so customers can leave a few words about how happy or unhappy they felt about the transaction and if they’d come back or just as soon see your business get leveled.

Occasionally, I have a bad experience and thoughts of raking them over the coals seems to feel effective for venting my frustrations and alerting others who may react as I did in hopes I save them some grief. What usually happens is about 15 minutes or so later I’m not really feeling the hatred anymore and the thought of wasting time leaving a review is low on my priority list.

I suspect others can relate, and I suspect that’s why there are lots more positive reviews than negative.

Then there’s the positive reviews that seem to be written in a state of euphoria. Can’t possibly be that many happy people filled with an overwhelming joy who think of writing reviews like they’re writing a poem. Just let them leave their own review for God sakes, even if all they can muster is 4 or 5 words mostly mispelled and abbreviated, let em be and maybe Google will take the cuffs off you.

So if Google 86′d most of your reviews, you can fight back or you can look at focusing on new reviews and implementing some changes along the way.

One suggestion would be to get some feedback on your reviews. Ask a friend to read through some of your reviews and give an honest opinion of what they felt while reading them. Repeat a few times with people you know will give you good feedback and try to implement their suggestions.

If you have nothing but 5 stars and each word in your reviews places you up there with the Gods, you’re not going to get results. You’re going to make people think you’ve got a pair of concrete shoes for the wise guy who wants to sling mud. That’s not exactly the best way to make people comfortable doing business with you. You leave 5 stars or I break your face isn’t the type of look you should give your customers when asking for a review.

So what’s Google planning to do about this debacle. They seem to have no accountability or urgency in communicating with those affected. It might be time to take your business elsewhere, and find alternatives until they offer some sort of explanation. If they can’t adequately support and moderate the reviews they allow people to enter other than to simply drop nukes to clean up a few happy go lucky reviewers they shouldn’t offer the service and let someone like Yelp handle it.

So if you’re curious to hear what some dealers are finding, here’s a quote from a dealer who expressed his frustration when Google stole all his positive reviews and left him standing there looking like the stereotypical car dealer crook.

Wow, I have been requesting that all of my customers, good, bad, and ugly post a review on Google to two of our stores (West Houston Volkswagen and West Houston Subaru) for almost two years. It was going great. We had over 300 reviews at VW and over 150 at Subaru. These were all reviews that the customers did from thier home or office, never at the stores and never with any coaching. If we got a bad review we were able to fix a customer issue and retain that customers business. Things we may not even had known were wrong, we fixed. It was a great tool.

Now we only have limited reviews showing up and they are ALL BAD! Why are legitimate reviews wiped out?

This was a great tool in the past now all the hard work has gone to c…@p!

We work with our manufacturers every day to get our Customer Satisfaction Ratings high by making customers happy, now all we have are bad reviews.

I need help to fix this.

Thank you,

Steve Palmisano,
General Manager
281.675.8602

[source: Google Product Forums]

This issue will probably take awhile to settle down unless there’s something Google can do to revert whatever filter that caused this to occur. It may have been too aggressive as one of my Lexus clients lost over 150 reviews and is left with less than 10 as of today. I am very anxious to see where Google is going with this, you can take away something very valuable to a business and do nothing.

All The More Reason To Engage in Social

I believe Google has made a choice on how they plan to handle reviews, although I can’t see how they can rely on an algorithm that simply will never have the ability to detect with the precision needed to judge whether a review is authentic or not.

Here’s an example. I recently went to my chiropractor, who’ve I’ve been going to for many years and we’ve become good friends. Last week, I decided to leave him a review on Yelp, I also uploaded a couple photos of his office to Yelp and Facebook. I was doing this while my wife and kids were being seen and I was just sitting in the waiting room. I did this from my mobile phone, and wasn’t connected to their wifi, but I would suspect my location was detected from the apps.

I noticed something while writing my review though. I really began to think my review could almost seem too good to be true, given the fact I have the utmost confidence that he’s the best chiropractor in my opinion and has helped me tremendously. Now it seems that if my review is too good it could be considered spam, depending how Google is trying to filter fake reviews.

I didn’t even bother writing a Google Review, and may never again simply because I don’t want my time spent writing something to simply vanish, no I’ll share my experience in other ways.

So I hope to have an update early this week on what I find out by doing some recon work to see where Google might have misplaced some reviews.

When we consider the amount of effort put forth daily into blogging, social media, relationship building, it’s no doubt we’re working hard, but what can we expect to happen as a result?

We’re accustomed to acquiring tangible things to validate our time, effort, acheivement. If I went to college for 1-2 more semesters I would have had my bachelors degree, something I’d probably frame and look at, and show my kids.

But something seemed more important to me, and although there’s no plaque on the wall, I’m confident that this decision was the only decision – but it comes with the understanding that I’ve chosen something that people aren’t clear on yet.

I chose it because it fit my identity, it connected me to thought leaders, and it gets more exciting everyday. I don’t know why, it just seems right – like coming here and doing what I do is right – and I’ve spent years working for companies where what I did just didn’t seem right.

We Start To See Things Right

This is the fundamental change that’s happening right now, to all of us, blog or no blog. We are seeing a shift in the way companies ought to advertise, not to push products but to build awareness.

We are drawn to things that are done right, for the right reasons, to help the right people.

We are attracted to those who we see as visionaries, with unstoppable work ethics, relentless passion, and determination to drive change. It gives us confidence that we’re not alone, that our vision is shared amongst those who are changing the world.

When Others See It Too – We Win

It’s getting easier to spot the ones who are nailing it, and when we do we must identify them, or we begin to lose our most valuable skill – sharing.

This is what we contribute, our collective awareness to identify greatness and spread it as far as possible.

This is why we must do what we can to communicate what we know today, whether it’s a tweet or a Facebook like, or a blog post. It’s getting to a place where we feel comfortable letting others know what we’re thinking, learning, experiencing.

This leads to inspiration. We are inspired, and we inspire others.

We challenge ourselves to seek the best experiences so we can share them with friends. It’s what saves us from making mistakes that others before us have made.

It protects us from frustration, inferior products, incompetent staff.

You can’t put an exact value on something like a positive review that has led to a dozen or so new customers, but you can get positive reviews and then realize where your business would be without them.

It tells people what we value, what we strive for, and what we can do better.

Basically, you can let opinions shared about your business tell the story – or you can brand your business and experience and customers will validate it if you delivered as promised.

Tell a story about what makes your company the best – and let everyone in the company read about it and figure out who was the key figure in making that experience possible.

And do it agian and again and again until people can’t stop thinking about it.

This all leads to a place where we can see ourselves changing the world, influencing, guiding and helping others see what we see and watching them as they begin to do what you did.

When we think of advertising today we think intrusive, disrupting, uninvited, ignored and so on. The reason is because it literally gets in our way and our reaction is to find the little “X” in the corner as quickly as possible to shut it down and resume our original course of action.

Anything that gets in the way of our ability to discover new things and make connections in our thoughts is not adding value, it’s consuming our most valuable asset, time. We give websites only a few seconds and if there is nothing of significant value we move on, until we find something profound. I’ll provide some examples of how to create profound or remarkable content later in this post.

We should start with why people are becoming immune to advertising, and why companies should be setting higher standards for their brand sooner rather than later.

Advertising online consists of some sort of call to action, such as a banner, or in search engines it can be above or to the right of the organic results, it can be videos that display a product, a promoted Tweet, a sponsored Facebook post, or god forbid a popup, etc.

Where Do Customers Learn More About You

If we see an advertisement, from a company we aren’t familiar with, for a product we haven’t heard about or expressed the need for, then why would we suddenly decide to click on an ad. We don’t, we ignore it, and if it keeps interfering we resent it. It’s right up there with telemarketing. We can’t draw any connections to it, so we can’t trust it, or even give it a fraction of a second to explain why we should.

However, we react differently when there is a connection. It doesn’t have to be a close connection just something that would explain whether it’s going to be interesting (they researched who I am, why I’d be interested) or a waste of time (they have a list with thousands of people to call).

The first thing I want to know is the name of the company, so I Google it, look at their website and perhaps their about page. If that tells me something of interest, I may want to go to Twitter, Facebook or their blog to see what they’ve been talking about recently. It might give some insight into why they are reaching out to me, and what they want to sell or show me.

What About Brands I Already Know Exist

You can look at brands like Apple, who go to the extreme in expressing their aligned vision for creating beautiful technology that enables anyone anywhere with the tools to pursue their dreams. We can thank the visionary in Steve Jobs for creating something that would truly make a difference and change the world. We are attracted to that, and anything that reminds of its existence is not seen as inappropriate but as inspiration.

To be like Apple, you have to inspire. To attract people, you have to give them something profound. To become a great brand, you have to employ great people, who do great things, and are given the opportunity to share great things about those they admire or about their love for the product and what it stands for.

If Apple calls, I am intrigued because my initial thought is it will be something good. They don’t need to resort to unsolicited type sales, their customers are very much aware of what they are up to and this is typically because people expect game changing technology from Apple. They know Apple is on their side, and working hard to deliver the next revolutionary device that makes our lives better.

What’s The Value

To justify the costs of communicating your brand effectively, building awareness about what makes you different (to avoid differentiation on price – aka race to the bottom), you might look at the specific demographics of your ideal customer. What occupation are they in? What are their interests? How can you create content that would align with their interests?

In addition, you should also have an idea of the value in gaining your ideal lifetime customer, one who buys from you repeatedly, comes to you for service, refers customers willingly and leaves positive reviews about their experience.

If your dealership doesn’t have a social media strategy, or isn’t actively engaging online where others can see conversations taking place, then the only differentiator is price. There is a way out, and it’s about creating value in the form of content which gives customers an inside perspective on your business so they can determine if there’s synergy between your company and their values.

Here’s a list of sources where you might find profound content that creates brand associations with the type of experience one may expect. If you hire great people, you will find that they have just what you need to put out there for customers to connect with.

• Employees – What type of employee represents your brand? How do they communicate it in their day to day actions? What can you say about them on a blog that people ought to know about?
• Community – What do you support in the community? Why do you help? What do you want to see change? How does your product help contribute to the community?
• Causes – Do you support or contribute to a particular cause that helps people?
• History – What year was your company founded in? What’s the story behind the business, is it a family business?
• Customers – Who is your ideal customer, can you spotlight them on a blog with pictures and information that they would like shared?
• Awards – What types of awards have you earned? What awards are you trying to obtain?
• Purpose – Besides making money, what is your purpose or vision for your company?
• Vision – Can you explain what you love about your business, how it’s different, etc?
• Stories – What are some customer experiences that would shed some light on how you handle situations?

Those are just a few examples to draw from when coming up with content that will make an impact on others. It’s a way for people to build an identity of your brand because advertising doesn’t accomplish that.

For luxury brands, such as Louis Vuitton, valuation is up 7% from 2011 to $25.9B. The interesting correlation to automotive is that the “product is much more about the experience, than about the product.” They also place significant emphasis on how a brand speaks to their heritage and the history of family businesses. [source: Millward Brown]

Don’t Neglect The Value Of Building A Brand

When you advertise you get peoples attention for a few seconds, when you invest in your brand and create profound content you build relationships, trust and respect.

Sometimes you come across really well executed company blogs.  I wanted to give a couple fine examples of such here in hopes that it might give ideas to those looking for ways to come up with really compelling blog posts.

Zillow’s Blog

Zillow's Blog Offers Interesting Posts About Real Estate

I was instantly impressed at the topics being written about on Zillow’s blog.  Here’s two examples:

Jimmy Fallon’s Childhood Home in Upstate NY on the Market

Before You Start Writing Big Checks, Here’s How to Choose a Contractor

The above posts represent both ends of the spectrum in terms of subject matter.  The first, about a celebrities childhood home that’s been listed on the market.  There’s a natural curiosity, a fascination if you will, for anything celebrity related.  It tells us a story about the home, which brings it to life.  The same goes for celebrity owned vehicles.

The second post is more educational, but very informative in how it explains the process of hiring a contractor.  This could be very valuable to anyone who is looking to do work on their home and is feeling a bit overwhelmed at the process.  Another similarity to the automotive genre, where people hire a shop to do custom work for performance or appearance modifications.

As I look at the author profiles of those blogging I see a range of experience in both writing backgrounds and domain experience.  Domain experience, meaning they are familiar with the subjects related to real estate.

Mint’s Blog

Mint's Blog Offers Compelling Content About Personal Finance

Here’s another fine example.  I have mentioned Mint’s blog before, and as I go back today to see what topics are being covered I see they are very much on track with their content strategy.

How We Pay to Get Away: A Visual Guide to How Much Americans Spend on Summer Travel

Wallet-Friendly Father’s Day Gifts

Take the first post.  Who doesn’t want to get away, take a break but do so being financially conscious of that expense.  They’ve weaved a desirable interest into being responsible, nicely done.

The second post appeals to upcoming events, offering solutions to things we are going to be facing soon.  I think that Mint is doing a great job of presenting financial content in a way that doesn’t at all bore us.  In fact, if anything, it’s making the idea of managing money fun with the type of content that they are producing.

Isn’t that the key to what dealers should be doing with a blog?  Making the car buying experience both fun, exciting, yet responsible and financially appropriate to the buyer?

I’d suggest that auto dealers take a real close look at the content above and consider creating topics on a blog that makes the process easier, more fun and actually a wise investment for those looking to say, buy a fuel efficient vehicle to replace their current gas guzzler.

Here’s some topic ideas to think about if your a dealer starting a blog -

• Celebrity Vehicles – Have Any?  Know of any currently on the market, at auction, sitting at a local customization shop, get some pictures and a back story and throw it on your blog.
• Vehicle Customizing – We love to personalize what we own, especially our cars.  What types of things can be done, who can install it, what does it cost, are their warranty issues if you modify, etc.  Any tips on how to select a good shop, perhaps list some local ones in a post.
• Road Trips – Can you think of some planning tips, things to keep in the trunk, munchies to pack for the kids, roads to take / avoid, think local and let people know of a good campground, a fun lake to go fishing, etc.
• Father’s Day – What Dad wouldn’t like something new for the car, maybe a car wash / wax kit, or a gift card to the local drive through car wash, perhaps a way to mount a smartphone to use the handsfree / speakerphone, etc.

That hopefully helps give you some ideas for content creation on your blog.  If you’re stuck, just keep reading blogs and something will come to mind, bookmark the good blogs as you find them and come back to see what they are writing about.  It’s just like the news, ever see a story covered on multiple news stations, they get ideas from other people and so can you!

Priceless Customers Come From Remarkable Experiences

The people that are going to buy cars from your dealership want you to earn their business.

People want celebrity type treatment, they want you to value their time, and not dream of wasting it.

I’m not going to the extreme and saying that advertising is wasting their time, I’m just saying it has that sort of potential.

Great advertising, think Eminem in the Chrysler Super Bowl ad, that’s remarkable.

This stuff, not so much:

• Putting an ad in a Sunday paper – not remarkable.
• Adwords – not remarkable.
• Clever TV ad at the peak hours of viewership – nope, not remarkable.
• Direct mail – not remarkable.
• Email – not remarkable – unless it’s personal, expected, and very well written.  Then it has a chance.

A Blog? – what the hell is that.  It’s a place where you create remarkable content, publish customer experience stories, reveal your extraordinary service, recognize and encourage your staff, and introduce people to your dealership and what makes it better than the rest.

So Why Bother With Blogging

You know what the lifetime value of a Lexus customer is?  I’ve heard $600,000.  One customer, six hundred thousand dollars.

Do you know why they are worth that much?

It’s because once they buy a Lexus, they will most likely never buy from another manufacturer.  The customer service is that good, the product, don’t get me started on bamboo steering wheels and the never ending laundry list of things the dealers get to teach their customers about.

So, let’s take this to another level.  If a single Lexus customer is worth $600K, what would you guess a very satisfied, networking and socially connected, referring people like they were getting kickbacks like crazy are worth?

Priceless.

That’s right, priceless.  You can’t buy them, you have to earn them.

You have to produce the right content that you think they might be interested in.  You have to connect with them, re-share the awesomeness they spread through the Twittersphere, and you have to comment on their blog and hold your breath and pray they come and comment on yours.

Comments = Trust = Authenticity = What attracts the Priceless Customers

Perhaps this is way too much for any dealer to attempt in their marketing efforts.

Maybe they have tried and concluded after a few months of posting crappy content decided, confidently, that it can’t be done.

Or they have been told, by the head honchos of the Yellow Pages that the Big Yellow Book is coming back, and instead of having contacts on smartphones, people are going to carry them around town like Bibles on a Sunday morning.

Well guess what, you can believe that if you wish.

You might get a few sales from the old yeller book, but ….

They aren’t the sales that you want.  That’s the beauty of a blog, you write stuff that attracts the right people.

Still not feeling it?

Let’s go a tad deeper, I insist.

Remember the $600k customer, those you have, if you’re a Lexus dealer.

Now what would it take to make all your $600k customers priceless.

Simple.

Start blogging.  I’m joking, let us do that for you, seriously unless you want to give it a go and then declare it useless after not investing in it like you know it deserves.  You need to get coached, get content produced regularly, and once it starts to get going then we dial it in however you want.

But, keep in mind, we highly encourage our clients to get involved.

Perhaps that’s not the best strategy for my business.  Maybe once they can do it themselves, they’ll drop us.  I don’t think like that, and so I suppose I don’t attract the ones that would?

Consider this, what would you pay to have 100 of your lifetime customers become active referrers.  Who, mind you, attract their own kind.

Or you can pretend this doesn’t happen.  After all, that’s what some are saying about it.

Blogging is hard work.  HARD.

But just like anything else, you get out of it what you put into it.

That’s the secret, blogging will always give you what you deserve.  Put together a masterpiece, a post that offers high quality information, and you’ll get links, mentions, and of course the most effective longterm SEO strategy ever.

If your dealership blog hasn’t reached that level, doesn’t mean it can’t.  Just needs more work, consistency and dedication to see the results.