WOW! Talk about timing…

Last week a colleague shared with me some Wordpress themes by Revolution that I was really impressed by. I have been looking to get a new look for this blog and so naturally took a good look at these themes. I really like them.

Then, just the other day, I get a BlogCatalog Group Announcement from the Bloggers and Blogging Group. bloggingmix is sparking a contest of sorts where the 3 winners will be selected to receive a premium Wordpess theme, and one of those themes is a Revolution. Needless to say, my interest level was sparked.

It’s a viral campaign of sorts. Or at least it can be. I think it is clever and I also am interested in winning. So, playing by the rules, this post is my official entry form into the contest. Pretty obvious which of the 3 themes I am interested in.

Check it out. Maybe you too will be interested in one of them. If you claim my prize though I might have to get creative on you.

Cheers to all the participants and SHOUTS out to bloggingmix for the unique contest approach.

The other evening our power went out during a small storm. The Wife was out that evening so it was just mew and my 3-year son. Talk about cool.

Naturally when your power goes out at night you have 2 options for lighting - candles and/or flashlights. We went with both.

The interesting thing was the timing of this loss in electricity. Earlier that day I had retrieved a small but powerful halogen flashlight from my car to replace its batteries. As it turns out, the flashlight we keep in the kitchen for occasional use was on its lest leg and so was completely useless for us when we lost power. Fortunately for having intuitively brought my car’s flashlight up that day, my son and I were not stranded in the dark.

Little things like this really impress me. I think it shows how significant a role intuition plays in our lives. Not just for life-changing decisions and events but also for small little conveniences like this. Just wanted to share.

In the past week, literally, I have put $180 of gas into the tanks of cars I have driven. $69 into my wife’s car that I borrowed for a day to visit a client on site because I had a rental I didn’t want to inconvenience my partners with its black interior on such a blazing hot day. I poured nearly $70 into that car after driving it for less than a week before dropping another $40 into my own car after picking it up from the body shop. That $40 got me less than 3/4 a tank and I stopped because the though of my fuel expense was making me ill.

This is really crazy. I am inclined to cancel my upcoming on-site client visits because technically I can do them via web meeting, but web meetings are not the same. But the economics of these on-site visits just doesn’t add up. It’s an annoying situation.

Dick Morris has a book coming out in 2 weeks which apparently sheds light on the responsibilities that the commodities markets have on our gas situation. I trust Morris’ point of view and am curious to see what his insight has to offer us.

Personally, I do not hold the oil companies accountable. Sure they are making incredible profits, but this profit is necessary for them to create alternatives. I have a growing itch that it is up to us, THE PEOPLE, to take a stand. By curbing our driving habits, we truly can make a difference. I can start by doing my client appointments via the web. My wife has a 50-mile-plus round trip work commute and she could push for telecommuting 2 or 3 days a week.

These are slight examples and in reality we all would have to be committed to making minor and major sacrifices to take this stand. Consider the impact of say 25% of the U.S. driving population cutting back fuel consumption by 25% for a few months. You have to wonder what sort of impact this would have.

Being an Ann Arbor native, the beat in that town is something I strive to keep an eye on. But having not lived there now for nearly a decade, I find that really I am just an on-looker. Being involved with the town itself is not realistic from afar.

There is so much going on in that authentic Michigan town considering the dismal state of affairs across the state, i.e. the economy, job market, real estate market, etc. Google positioned an advertising leg there within the past couple years. My parents recently purchased an investment property in their own nearby hometown (they are builders and mortgage brokers by trade), for about 65% less of the selling price it was a year ago. A wise choice on their part considering the only farther downward that real estate market could go there would be to completely vanish, and that is not likely to happen.

Anyhow, in effort to stay abreast with the goings on of my home town, I am subscribed to several Ann Arbor based email newsletters which keep me informed. And my email address seems to be getting around. In April I started receiving a newsletter called Concentrate, and it is a nice piece so I stay subscribed. The blogger featured this week is Ed Vielmetti who has been blogging since 1999 and presently runs two blogs, one called Vacuum. I am not familiar with Ed nor his blogs but the feature on him is informative and inspiring, especially for a guy like me who is from the area.

There is a statement from Ed in the feature that really struck me because it is so dead on with what is necessary today with building an enterprise.

Describing himself, Ed wrote this: “I have talent for identifying a need, forming a group to meet it, finding leaders and giving them the tools they need to organize online and offline.”

Strong powerful words from a blogger don’t you think? How many people are going to read that statement and move on to the next paragraph? Putting effective action behind words like this and producing fruit is much easier said than done. I haven’t picked through Ed’s blogs yet but I wanted to put a small stamp of recognition on this statement because it’s an important reminder for many of us striving to accomplish something unique and constructive in society. In fact it really brings a story to mind that I will have to share here soon.

The meat of this article by Arianne Walker in Online Automotive Review is iterated in the final paragraph:

Even though OEMs and dealers have been shifting their marketing budgets online, the data shows that most should probably be accelerating that transition, putting even more money where shoppers - new and used alike - are increasingly going.

These trends are consistent with the recent Cobalt-Polk-Yahoo! study on new vehicle buyer behavior in how it directly and indirectly influences used vehicle purchases.

When I think of car sales, I think of long-term retention. But immediate sales are important to. While you need to invest into new and used car advertising, a primary benefit with investing in to new vehicle advertising is that the investment not only trickles down into used car sales, but it even influences used car sales. That is what the study suggests at least.

This is a key topic today for dealers and providers. Dealers today are cautious of where and how they shift their marketing dollars. It is widely known that the Internet offers the greatest ROI, however establishing your online brand recognition is not an event, it is an establishment that requires years of vision, commitment, and dedication from dealers and their providers.

Dealers must be prepared to take risks and to embrace long-term change in order to meet auto shoppers in advance, but it can be done with the right tools and techniques.

For the past several months, 5 I believe, we have dedicated this blog to be a working demonstration of our RSS Marketing product. The purpose of RSS Marketing is for SEO promotion and it is highly effective for that, but RSS Marketing does not engage your audience. So, the time has come to re-connect with our audience. Here we are, on a Sunday evening, June 01, 2008, sitting down to initiate a new era for the AC Blog.

I miss the networking aspect of blogging, and the empirical mentality that good blogging perpetuates. We call this Relational Marketing in our product and it is a next step in the evolution of AutoConversion products. That’s right. Now that we have proven the effectiveness of RSS Marketing and have built it in as a core component to our SEO promotion, we are evolving into the next realm of Blog Marketing for Car Dealers - Relational Marketing.

Two years ago when I first got in to blogging, it wasn’t even a buzz word in automotive. There were a few people doing it, such as Jake Jacobson from Higher Turnover, Jeff Kershner from DealerRefresh, Umer Farooq from AutoJini, and Brian Hoecht from Ai-Dealer. We got to know one another a bit from our blogging and still do today. In fact, as many have witnessed, Kersh’s blog has elevated his own career and even inspired many another to take a crack at it.

But there are numerous applications of blogging which pose a choice for Car Dealers today. You have guys like Alex Snyder effectively blogging for Dealership awareness and promotion. You also have guys like Paul Rushing of ISM in Training who blog for what we call Personal Branding, which is essentially using the blogosphere to literally sell cars. I see this as the future of a Car Dealer Salesman quite frankly.

So, as I reflect on the magnificence of where blogging today leaves us, I truly look forward to getting back in to the swing of things at the “relational” level here. For those that still frequent the AC Blog, I commend you for your diligence considering the impersonal nature of our content these past months with the RSS Marketing. But if you are out there and reading this, then may the force continue to be with you.

Here’s to blogging and relationships!

Cheers, -RG