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7 Things You Should Know Before You Blog for Your Dealership’s Website

7 Things You Should Know Before You Start Blogging for Your Dealership's Website-01

7 Things You Should Know Before You Start Blogging for Your Dealership’s Website

You’ve worked hard to create a website for your dealership that looks great and serves as a valuable resource. But if you’re like a lot of trucking and construction industry dealers, you have so much on your plate you still haven’t launched your company blog. You know it’s important, but blogging isn’t exactly in the center of your comfort zone.

PEER Strategy | Evolve | Blogging | Loyalty BoundYou’re not alone. So we thought we’d pass along some tips to help you get more comfortable with the idea and practicalities of blogging for your dealership. Learning from others is a great way to build your confidence and avoid making “rookie” mistakes, so you can get your dealership blog off to a strong start. Ready?

types-of-content#1: You’ll never run out of material.

It’s a dynamic world. The industry, your customers, your dealership, your website are all evolving with the times. That means there’s always something to talk about. And after some time elapses, there’s often a new angle or updated information you can use to refresh a previous article.

#2: The content you create has long-term value.

There’s no doubt you’ll spend time producing blog content, but it’s not a one-and-done process. Not everyone will read your blog immediately, so whatever you publish today will have value tomorrow and weeks or months or even farther into the future, as people find the article and read it then. One prominent marketer recently reported that a full third of visits to their blog were to posts published before 2013.

#3: Don’t expect instant results.

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Blogging for your dealership isn’t about selling, it’s about building brand awareness and establishing your dealership as a source of valuable, timely information. So there’s no immediate monetary reward. Like any good investment program, it will take time to mature — time for search engines to recognize your blog, for online searchers to find your articles on their results page and for you to build a regular readership.

So push the patience button and know that as you publish more blog articles, the process will accelerate.

 #4: Effective blogging requires more than creating content.

For your blog to really take hold and generate the kind of supportive results you want, you have to be strategic, identifying how you can use your blog to reach and impress your various audiences. You’ll have to create a template to give your blog looks visually consistent, you’ll have to add graphics to each post and optimize it using some specialized behind-the-scenes techniques.

But wait. You don’t have to do these things yourself, it’s why you hire a smart marketing team that knows blogging and your industry, inside and out.

twitter_promote#5: You have to promote your blog.

What if you launched a new service or brought on a new product line but didn’t tell anyone about it? It’s the same for your blog, but once again your marketing pros can help get the word out.

#6: You have to study your blogging results in order to improve.

You already analyze how your dealership is performing compared to your goals and specific key indicators, department by department. It’s the same for your blog. You’ll want analyze the results against the metrics you’ve chosen, so you can see where you’re hitting home runs and where you need some practice.

This can be fun, but it can also get tricky deciding exactly which details to evaluate. Yet another good reason to rely on your outside marketing experts for help.

#7: Blogging can be hard, but it’s not as hard as you think.

The hard part may be balancing your efforts to please a multitude of constituents – within your dealership as well as your various target audiences. Or remembering that, whereas it’s OK to compare your products to those of another dealer or OEM, you must do it positively.

And the easy part? People will help you with marketing assistance, guest blog articles, topic ideas, etc. And, like everything else, practice makes blogging for your dealership easier.

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