Don’t forget the marketing part of content marketing!

In this week’s video, we talk about content marketing. Most dealers have blogs now, but they’re forgetting the marketing part of their content marketing. They’re not posting the right kind of content, and they’re not sharing links on social media.

We share tips on the right kind of blog posts to write, and lots of helpful information about the social sharing side of blog posts. We explain why Open Graph tags are vital, and where and how to share links to your posts on social media.

As always, if you’ve got questions or comments, leave them down below and we’ll get back to you ASAP!

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Welcome back to another Wednesday Workshop with DealerOn. Today, we’re going to talk a bit about content marketing. Most dealers have heard the term before, but most don’t really understand what it’s all about, why it’s important, or how to do it…

If you’ve been to any conferences or read any blogs in the last year or two, you’ve heard people talking about content marketing, and blogs, and the importance of social media.Tons of dealers have jumped in with both feet, but hardly any dealers are doing content marketing correctly.

There are two major problems with what we see most dealers doing… 1) they’re writing the wrong kind of blog posts, and 2) they’re forgetting the marketing part of content marketing.

When you do content marketing, you have to “market” your content. That means you’ve got to go out and promote the content on social media. We see SO many dealers who have blogs, and some of them even have really amazing posts – but hardly anyone shares links to their blog posts on social media.

You can write the best blog posts in the world, but if no one sees them, they’re pointless. You shouldn’t be writing your blog posts “because SEO” – that’s the wrong mindset. Yes, they can help you show up for searches for some longer tail keywords, but you should never put anything on your website or blog just for the sake of trying to show up in Google. If you’re not putting things out there to make a better user experience, or answer users’ questions, you’re doing it wrong.

Most dealers don’t even have a link to their blog on their main menu – it’s usually buried somewhere in the “about us” submenu. If someone’s shopping for a car, they’re not likely to spend any time looking for your blog to read it… and if they’ve already purchased, why would they come back to your site and look around for your blog?

So first, you need to make sure you’re writing the right kind of blog posts… Please – stop writing all the crap that most of you are writing. You should never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever go to Car & Driver and copy the article about the new Acura MDX and post it to your blog… or even just rewrite it – people won’t care.

Your blog posts need to be about things that people WANT to read. Your blog shouldn’t be all buy my stuff, buy my stuff, buy my stuff, hey, i’ve got stuff, you should buy it, oh, and i’ve got other stuff over here you should check out and buy, and don’t forget to buy my stuff, and hey, buy my stuff… Write things that people will be interested in – your blog doesn’t even have to be all about your dealership.

Make your blog a local destination – share interesting things about the local area, talk about things going on in the community, share your favorite restaurants, or parks, or whatever – not only will these things be more interesting, it’s a LOT more likely that people will want to read the stuff that you’re writing.

Shoot for a 50/50 mix – half of your content should be more sales or marketing focused, and the other half should be about the local area.

THEN – don’t forget the “marketing” part of content marketing. Make sure you set up custom Open Graph info on each post. Most dealers are using wordpress, so you should have the Yoast SEO plugin installed. You should be filling out custom title tag and meta description info anyway – but if you don’t specify open graph info, that’s what will be displayed when you share the link on Facebook – and Facebook will choose a random image from the page to display as well.

Instead, click this little icon on the left edge of the Yoast plugin to access the Open Graph info fields. Here, you can set what the Facebook share will look like… Put in a title and description, but more importantly, upload an Open Graph photo. The recommended dimensions are 1200 by 630, but you can go as small as 600 by 315.

Once you’ve got this saved, head over and share the link on Facebook – but be sure to leave a comment that explains why you’re sharing it and why people should read it… And then go push out links on Twitter. You can share it a lot more on Twitter – there’s nothing wrong with sharing a great post several times a day for the first week after it comes out.

Organic reach on Facebook is notoriously low. You might want to consider setting aside a small budget for boosting content marketing posts so you can get more reach. The more people that read your posts, the more likely it is that people will convert into leads either immediately, or at some point in the future.

I kinda hit a lot of different topics in today’s video, so if you’ve got any questions or comments about content marketing, blogs, or social media, leave them down below and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can… or, find me at Internet Battle Plan at the beach or Digital Dealer in Vegas and we can grab a beer and chat. And, don’t forget to come back next week for another Wednesday Workshop with DealerOn.