Baron BMW Blog on iFrames and Facebook
Here is a car dealer blog but it is attached to their website using an iFrame. This presents a few problems, but overall Baron is doing nifty stuff and using Facebook well too so far.
With the iFrame, you diminish your SEO influence. An iFrame is like a box inside a room. It’s its own room, but secluded from everything around it. You can link to the blog’s main page, but from an SEO standpoint you are really linking to a box you can not see inside. A search engine knows it is there, but can not see the contents.
You can link to a page within the blog but then you loose the website shell meant to surround it, so you forgo the visitor experience you initially set out for. Additionally, when you link from the blog, visitors remain in the iFrame unless you insert the parent syntax within the frame tag.
target="_parent"
Another issue is that not all systems and browser support frames. Most today do, with the exception of mobile devices, and most blogs naturally do well on a mobile device. With the iFrame you risk mobile visitors not being able to access your blog at all.
From what I can tell, this blogs looks quite new. It has a few posts and the blogger is clearly sharing himself in addition to the dealership. This is good. Although you must be conscientious of what you publish. The NINJA post pushes the bubble. It will appeal to some, but could throw off others still important to the dealership. There is a threshold for everything, including dealer blogs.
Their facebook group has 53 members, including me. I just became a fan. I look forward to seeing how FB shapes the auto industry. I like what Baron is doing off the bat.
Online Marketing through Blogging
Imagine having hundreds or thousands of local customers who knew that the next time they buy a car, they’re buying it from you. That’s what blogging can get you.
Think blogs are just online journals? Think again. According to a recent article in Dealer’s Edge, customers are not only visiting dealer blogs — they’re coming back. Blogs inherently create a community feel, maybe as a result of their diary style origins. The sense of community in the blogging world can create intense customer loyalty and can get people involved and in touch with your business, even when they’re not yet in the active buying stage.
Blogging can “show consumers that your dealer employs real people, gives back to the community, and operates a business under ethical standards,” says Jeff Kershner, founder of Dealer Refresh, an automotive sales and Internet marketing consulting firm and blog. Customers and readers can ask questions and leave comments in a much more informal style than would be necessary with a traditional, static website, and that can make your potential customers much more comfortable initiating contact.
Once your potential customers have initiated contact, you have the opportunity to create a two-way relationship with them. You can position yourself as an expert, someone your readers can go to when they need help or advice. One recent entry on Checkered Blog, the offshoot blog of the Checkered Flag website, featured the question of a reader who wanted to know what to do when someone keyed their car. The manager of the Collision Center answered the question for all of their readers to see, creating the start of a valuable community resource.
The person who reads that entry today may not have had their car keyed, but six months from now, they’ll remember you answered the question and there’s a good chance they’ll come back.
The possibilities here are only limited by your imagination. You don’t just have to talk about selling cars, either you can discuss maintenance issues, after market ideas, even talk about the benefits of getting a new paint job. With each new entry, you can gain more and more search engine traffic, and give more and more people a reason to come back.
The beauty of this strategy is that you’re not limited to an audience of people already in the market to buy a car. Modern consumers are educated and savvy, and often on the defensive when it comes time to buy. As you become a trusted resource — one that isn’t pushing for a sale or asking for anything in return for their advice and information — you stay on your customer’s radar for years to come. When it comes time to buy a new car, they’ll think of you, and not your competition.
Chances are, pretty much everyone in your area is going to buy another car someday. They may as well buy it from you, and a sharp social media marketing strategy might be just the way to make that happen.
