Storytailer

STORYTAILER LLC
CHAPEL HILL

Google’s Inclusion of Site Speed in Algorithm Could Be Self Serving

By

On Friday, Google made an interesting blog post that stated that Google is now taking into account your website’s speed in its search ranking algorithms.

While, for the moment, only a small number of websites have had their search results affected, it’s hard to believe that this isn’t the beginning of a much larger integration of site speed into Google’s ranking algorithms.

Their justification for this new criteria is that “faster sites create happy users”. They say that people who click on a search result and then have to wait too long for a site to load tend to leave and go to another site. Since Google is all about getting searchers the websites that are relevant, a website that a user leaves prior to it loading is less relevant than a website that a user stays on as Google will interpret this website as being more relevant (ie. the user found what they were looking for).

On the surface, this seems like a plausible reason.

However, I’d like to submit an alternative reason:

Google wants you to think that their search engine is faster than the competitions.

How does this new criteria reinforce this perspective?

We know how important it is to appear on Page One of Google search results. So, let’s say someone searches for something on Google. According to this blog, 90% of search result clicks originate on the first page.

So, if 90% of people click on a result from the first page… and page ranking is affected by site speed, then it would be safe to assume that, as Google increases the value of site speed in page ranking, the faster the site is, the more likely it will be to appear on Page One. (This, of course, is treating all of these site’s SEO efforts equally.)

Now, since faster sites appear on Page One and 90% of users click on Page One links, the lay-user (which is the majority of our customers) will get the impression that Google’s search is faster.

Of course, this isn’t actually true as all Google is doing is directing that 90% to the fastest websites but that doesn’t mean that Google is any faster than any other search engine.

The non-techie isn’t going to analyze this, however, or probably even be aware that this is happening. It will just seem (whether consciously or subconsciously) that Google is faster and that certainly benefits Google.

Where is Waldo? (Foursquare: Why You Should Pay Attention and 3 Great Tips for Dealers)

By

foursquare.

For the foursquare clueless, foursquare is basically a cell phone based application that allows it’s users to “check-in” at places they visit using a GPS-enabled phone. The benefits to the user are that they can see where their friends are, can get “tips” about nearby places that people have left and earn points and cool badges for checking in. A user can even become the “Mayor” by being the person who has “checked-in” the most. It’s a game, but one that is growing in popularity and has some value for dealerships and all businesses.

First, let me explain why this application is something to watch. Then I’ll offer a couple neat ideas and things you can do to DRIVE TRAFFIC  to your dealership in a non-traditional way.

The app is adding 100,000 users per day (or so they claim). While a small percentage of the population use it, if the growth rate continues, eventually, it may be statistically relevant.

Now, Bing is incorporating foursquare user “tips” into Bing Maps. The result looks something like this:

So, even if you think it’s the stupidest thing on earth, there is one area in which you should pay attention to this application: Reputation Management.

I’m sure you would want to know what “reviews” show up when someone does a Google Search or a Yahoo Search, so why wouldn’t you want to know what people are saying about your dealership on foursquare? These “tips” are essentially mini-reviews and the best (or worst) part about these “tips” are that, for the most part, people won’t see the “tips” until they are already at your dealership! If I were a shopper in an auto mall, and a foursquare user, and “checked-in” at a dealership I was about to shop for a car at and saw “tips” that told me not to shop there because they suck and will rip me off, I might heed that advice.

Now for three tips on how you can leverage foursquare to assist you in your marketing.

Tip One: There could be “tips” that say a certain salesperson is GREAT and that you should ask for them (hint to salespeople), there could be reviews from disgruntled customers, and there could also be reviews from happy customers. If you’re ahead of the game, it would be easy to get this campaign started in your favor rather than wait until you have to do damage control.

Tip Two: You can easily incorporate foursquare into your Facebook marketing now with a new app that will allow you to add a tab to your Facebook fan page with YOUR business’s foursquare information.

Why would you want to do that? Well, it’s an easy way to see how many users are coming to your dealership, who the mayor is, and, especially to keep an eye on the “tips” that are being left. It’s also a convenient way to add map information in your Facebook page showing people exactly where your dealership (or business) is. It looks like this:

It seems as if foursquare is digging this app since they’re the ones who told everyone about it (see their status update at the top of the above image). Here’s a link to the app on Facebook. Place Widget

Tip 3: I’ve heard a lot of dealers wonder if foursquare is even worth their time. Well, so far, people have been looking at how a foursquare campaign, using traditional methods, can increase traffic, get me phone calls, etc.

One way is to offer foursquare users who check into your dealership coupons and special offers but what about some creative and “outside-the-box” ways?

One business thought outside the box and had great success. Rather than try and figure out how he can make people want to come into his business to buy things, he catered to their fun for the game. He dissected the available badges and found one that he thought he could leverage to bring in some traffic.

It’s called the “Swarm” badge. A foursquare user earns this badge when they “check-in” at a place where 50 or more users are checked in at the same place and at the same time. He says it took him about a week to coordinate and that foursquare was even on board and helped him. Most of this event coordination was using Twitter. Foursquare even “tweeted” it out for him to their 46,000 followers. There are only 300-400 users in the Milwaukee area but he managed to get 161 people into his restaurant to earn this badge! Are you kidding me? Almost 1/2 the foursquare users in his market showed up for this event! Link to Article

Would you like 160 people at your dealership at the same time? What if there are 3,000 users in your area and 1/2 of them showed up?

Dealerships have events all the time designed to drive traffic to their dealership, why not try a new way?

I bet an enterprising dealer could find some other interesting badges to organize events or functions around.

I also think that an enterprising dealer could contact foursquare and see how they can help.

What about a badge that ONLY PEOPLE WHO BUY A CAR FROM YOU GET? I bet it can be arranged.

While the percentage might be small now, I know I think foursquare is fun and if I had the same deal to buy a car at multiple dealerships but one of them gave me a badge if I bought from them, that would be sweet and a badge not many of my friends had. It just might influence me into buying at your dealership over the other…..

and my friends may just go buy a car at your dealership, also…..

Just to get the badge.

[EDIT: After writing this article, an interesting website was brought to my attention: 4squareoffers.com . I’d certainly want MY dealership listed as having an offer versus not having one at all or having my competitors have one. Just a thought.]

Sticks and Stones Will Break Your Bones… (The Importance of Reputation Management)

By

A website was brought to my attention yesterday that screamed to be talked about.

The website is this: www.ackermantoyotasucks.com

A quick glance of the content will tell you how damaging this website is for this dealership. I guarantee that people see it. I guarantee that there have been potential buyers that have seen it.

Here’s why:

This is PAGE ONE of a Google Search resulting from the search terms “Ackerman Toyota”. The first two organic results are the dealership’s website. The third one is.. you guessed it.. our lovely.. uh.. tribute website.

I drilled down a little into the message board thread and read into the
customer’s complaint a little to see if there was any effort on the
dealer’s part to rectify this and/or could the dealer have done
something about it. The dealer always has a choice on how to handle a customer issue
especially on a new car purchase, in my opinion.

The customer’s complaint seems to be that the a window screeches when being rolled down on his newly purchased Scion.

It seems they blame the window tint job that the customer had done on  the vehicle for the issue while the customer claims it had something to do with some stuff they installed prior to delivery.

The message board thread appears to have been contained within a forum
that the dealership was affiliated with in some way and the dealership
did interact, within the message board, with the consumer. They also
seem to have, at one point, called the customer and talked to him. In
the end, they had the message board thread deleted (probably due to
their affiliation with this forum) but not before the customer could
preserve it in all of its glory.

Anyways, I’m not trying to take sides here. I don’t know what happened but I know one thing, a potential customer won’t dissect this situation near as much as I tried to.

All they’ll see is … Ackerman Toyota Sucks, a complaint, and links to other negative reviews on other dealer review sites… including the dealership’s Yahoo business listing and dealerrater.

This customer obviously has a vendetta against this dealer. I’m sure the customer created this website out of anger, frustration and, probably, revenge. It was pretty much created immediately upon the conclusion of
the message board thread.

This website has been around since 2007 and still has the optimization to show on Page One as the third organic result.

In my opinion, typically the truth lies somewhere in between both sides of any story. Even if the customer was completely in the wrong, which I doubt, as a dealer, my interest would lie more in what can I do to get this website removed, than in who was right and who was wrong.

A “screeching” window doesn’t sound like a big deal to me. I’ve sold cars that had this issue. I’ve had customers who’ve had this issue. I cannot think of a single time, on a new car purchase, where the issue wasn’t fixed for the customer if only to preserve our beloved surveys and CSI.

Whether the dealer could use legal methods to remove this website or not, they obviously didn’t (or couldn’t) as this website has existed for more than 3 years. With Toyota’s current campaign of domain “repossession”, you’d think the dealer would be jumping at the opportunity to bring this to the OEM’s attention and let them handle the website’s removal.

I know if I were the dealer, it’d be worth it for me to fix the window issue and make the customer happy in exchange for removing this website.

You might be under the impression that dealer reviews on dealerrater and such (not even including this website tribute) don’t  make much of a difference but I guarantee you that potential customers will believe these reviews more than they’ll believe you.

The customer doesn’t even have to search for reviews of the dealership
to find this.

All they have to do is search and that’s the one thing
that every internet shopper does.

It Must Be Nice To Have Your Own Magic 8 Ball! (Top 25 Technology Predictions)

By

Dave Evans is the Chief Futurist – Internet Business Solutions Group for Cisco.

He’s worked for Cisco for over 20 years. He was responsible for rolling out their first-ever web server. He’s held every job a technology professional could hold. He credits his prognostication skills to technology “street smarts”. Some of his past ideas are currently transforming the automotive industry.

Can he see the future?

Cisco thinks he can.

These are his predictions:

  1. By 2029, 11 petabytes of storage will be available for $100—equivalent to 600+ years of continuous, 24-hour-per-day, DVD-quality video.
  2. In the next 10 years, we will see a 20-time increase in home networking speeds. 
  3. By 2013, wireless network traffic will reach 400 petabytes a month. Today, the entire global network transfers 9 exabytes per month.
  4. By the end of 2010, there will be a billion transistors per human—each costing one ten-millionth of a cent. 
  5. The Internet will evolve to perform instantaneous communication, regardless of distance. 
  6. The first commercial quantum computer will be available by mid-2020. 
  7. By 2020, a $1,000 personal computer will have the raw processing power of a human brain. 
  8. By 2030, it will take a village of human brains to match a $1,000 computer. 
  9. By 2050 (assuming a global population of 9 billion), $1,000 worth of computing power will equal the processing power of all human brains on earth. 
  10. Today, we know 5 percent of what we will know in 50 years. In other words, in 50 years, 95 percent of what we will know will have been discovered in the past 50 years. 
  11. The world’s data will increase sixfold in each of the next two years, while corporate data will grow fiftyfold. 
  12. By 2015, Google will index approximately 775 billion pages of content. 
  13. By 2015, we will create the equivalent of 92.5 million Libraries of Congress in one year. 
  14. By 2020 worldwide, the average person will maintain 130 terabytes of personal data (today it is128 gigabytes). 
  15. By 2015, movie downloads and peer-to-peer file sharing will explode to 100 exabytes, equivalent to 5 million Libraries of Congress. 
  16. By 2015, video calling will be pervasive, generating 400 exabytes of data—the equivalent of 20 million Libraries of Congress. 
  17. By 2015, the phone, web, email, photos, and music will explode to generate 50 exabytes of data. 
  18. Within two years, information on the Internet will double every 11 hours. 
  19. By 2010, 35 billion devices will be connected to the Internet (nearly six devices per person on the planet). 
  20. By 2020, there will be more devices than people online. 
  21. With IPv6, there will be enough addresses for every star in the known universe to have 4.8 trillion addresses. 
  22. By 2020, universal language translation will be commonplace in every device. 
  23. In the next five years, any surface will become a display. 
  24. By 2025, teleportation at the particle level will begin to occur. 
  25. By 2030, artificial implants for the brain will take place.

Don’t Get Mad, Get Even. (Internet Security and Terminated Employees)

By

In another incident of employee “road rage”, a Texas dealership’s former employee disabled 100 sold car ignitions and/or set off their car horns. He also went into their accounting system and changed the names of buyers (ie. Tupac Shakur), and he ordered $130,000 worth of parts from a vendor. Apparently, the dealership installs GPS systems with ignition kills on sold cars to ease repossession if the customer defaults on payment. (Link)

What is your dealership’s policies and procedures for managing a terminated employee’s access to your company’s online services?

With dealership vendors increasingly moving online, and dealerships increasingly adding web-based services, how do you insure that a terminated employee would not be able to access your valuable data and/or sabotage your dealership in any way?

It’s not just enough anymore to just cancel their accounts and remove their access. Many of your employees know the user names and passwords of co-workers and, in some cases, managers despite any policy you may have in place that restricts that.

So what do you do?

  1. Keep track of which employees have access to which systems.
  2. Only give employees access to systems they need to do their job.
  3. Have one person who manages all your DMS, CRM, ILM, IMS and any online service’s access (and “all managers” does not count as one person).
  4. If you can avoid it, do not allow remote access to your systems.
  5. Do a regular audit of your system and user access.
  6. Don’t allow people to keep their passwords taped to their computer monitors, written in a notebook, or in a file on their computer. This is a recipe for disaster and happens way too often.

In the event of a termination:

  1. Cancel all of the employee’s user names and passwords before informing them they’ve been terminated.
  2. Require that all employees change their passwords upon a termination of any employee to all the systems/services which they have access to.
  3. Monitor access frequently immediately after an employee termination. Typically, if there is revenge or sabotage brewing, it will occur fairly quickly after the termination.

While some of this may seem like overkill and is inconvenient, you could be held liable for any misuse of customer data or consequences of a disgruntled employee’s actions.

Do you think the 100 people who had their ignitions killed on their cars are going to blame the disgruntled employee?

As dealerships become more virtual in their operations, security of your data and services becomes more and more important. Implement policies and procedures to minimize any backlash that could occur from a disgruntled employee.

It is not only your duty to protect your information, but also your customers.

                                  

You Rock and It Sucks! (or Computer Generated Interpretation of your Tweets)

By

We all know (and have been warned) that what you put out on the internet can come back to bite you. We hear stories of people all the time having their personal and/or work life interrupted by things they’ve said or posted on Facebook.

My personal favorite (and a great example) is the following “status update” on Facebook followed by the boss’s comment:

           

So, now we have privacy controls and the ability to specify on a piece-by-piece basis what, and who, can see things.If you use them, they’re better than nothing. At least your boss (or potential employer) can’t see that drunken photo of you dancing on the bar top as easily, if you do, in fact, friend him/her.

Let’s talk about Twitter, now. Twitter is completely public and indexed by search engines. I have Google Alerts (and other services) setup to monitor certain things and I am always fascinated by what pops out in the results.

An item popped up in my Google Alert last Thursday and, while I found it amusing at first, as I started thinking about it more, it made me concerned.

What exactly I’m talking about is a website called “Amplicate”

According to  the website, it’s purpose is to do this:

“Amplicate
collects similar opinions in one place; making them more likely to be
found by people and companies.”

This would be fine because you actually DO have the ability to input your opinion on things if you, in fact, choose to participate in and interact with this website. Your opinion is, however, limited to whether something “Sucks” or “Rocks”.

My concern is that apparently it indexes Twitter in some way and automatically generates your “opinions” for you. I don’t know how it chooses which tweets to use to form your opinions, nor do I even know how it selects the specific people which it chooses to form (and announce) opinions for. I do know that, at least in my case, I didn’t choose to participate in or interact with this website.

It seems to take keywords from your tweets and then determines whether you think the subject of your tweet “sucks” or “rocks”. It then posts that to the world under the guise that these are YOUR opinions. It’s obviously a computer generating these because some of the “opinions” actually make no sense and it’s apparent that the “opinion” is out of context.

The peril in this is that, to someone who doesn’t actually analyze the opinions that were generated by a computer based on your tweets, they may just assume that these are, in fact, your opinions. If there’s a potential (or current) employer doing a little research on you for whatever reason, this could potentially harm you.

As an example, the Google Alert that returned this discovery to me shows the following (it even hijacked my photo):

So, apparently, I think the word “enough” rocks and that the Oscars and Toyota sucks.

Now we not only have to be careful about what we say, but also about how a computer would interpret it.

Here’s Looking At You, Kid! (Live Video Broadcast on Your Facebook Fan Page)

By

Last night, I was introduced to a new app that is a “cloud-based, interactive, live video broadcast application” or, basically, an app that will allow you to stream live video right within your Facebook Fan Page.

A sales trainer could hold a live training session from within his (or her) Facebook Fan Page. Conferences could stream live video of sessions on their Fan Page. Dealerships could hold live video conversations with Facebook fans. An Internet Manager could actually work with a prospect this way. A vendor could have a presentation. I haven’t fully-digested creative applications for this new application but possibilities abound.

The company’s name is Vpype (I’m imagining it’s supposed to read V-Pipe) and this app is supposed to be as easy to start using as clicking a button within Facebook.

Here are some highlights of the application (from their Press Release dated January 21,2010):

  • create scheduled or unscheduled live shows
  • send video notes
  • store completed broadcasts with audience participation
  • share videos in Facebook
  • requires no software download
  • easy-to-view chat history
  • embeddable web video player
  • broadcast Tweet notifications
  • built-in viral marketing tools where you can promote your broadcasts through instant notifications to Facebook walls as well as broadcast alerts to Twitter
  • content automatically archived

Here’s a picture of the interface:

I know there are plenty of live video chat/broadcast companies out there, but I don’t think any of the other companies have a potential installed customer base starting at 400 million people (and growing by 1/2 million per day).

Most of the other live video broadcast applications require a software installation on the users end. While frequent users of a particular service may not mind this, the consumer that wants to talk about a car, see a sales training session or view a vendor presentation might not attend just because of this hurdle. (Hey, we all can’t be computer geeks, you know!)

Most people have Facebook accounts, however, and if you can connect with them and all they have to do is click a button within their Facebook account, the odds of them participating and listening to whatever you have to say increase exponentially.

People like easy.

Will Facebook Make Web Sites Obsolete?

By


Facebook offers a simple to use, standardized user interface. It’s non-threatening, easy to use and easy to navigate. You can almost do anything on Facebook that you need.

“There’s an app for that!” may be Apple’s slogan but it certainly applies to Facebook.

Businesses are scrambling to set up Facebook Pages and integrate effective Social Media Marketing campaigns. Some of them are doing it because they realize the value and some are doing it because.. well, everyone else is.

Some statistics:

As of September 2009, there are 227 million internet users in the US (74% of the US population and the U.S. accounts for 13% of the world population of internet users). (link)

As of January 2010, there are 102 million Facebook users in the U.S. (or about ½ the population). (link)

Facebook is adding 50 million users every 90 days (537,634 per day). (link)

Keeping the increase in Facebook users at the same proportional level as the percentage of internet users (13%), that would mean that Facebook adds almost 70,000 users per day from within the U.S.

There are approximately 11,000 babies born in the U.S. everyday. (link)

You see where I’m going, don’t you?

Now, Facebook has decided that its user interface is so attractive to consumers that businesses will want to mimic the “Facebook experience” on their actual web site.

Facebook is launching a new API they call Open Graph.

This API will allow “any page on the Web to have all the features of a Facebook Page.”

Is this the start of a Web 2.0?

We already have many of the tools a dealership would need to effectively make this transition.

  1. You can have a “Page”.
  2. You can interact with your customers through Ads, News, Specials, etc. 
  3. You can have
    your inventory on your Facebook page now through Gumiyo and other providers. 
  4. You can have effective, professional looking ads and landing pages. 
  5. You have analytics and can drive customers to specific pages. 
  6. You can have live chat on your Facebook Page through ActivEngage. 
  7. There’s a Marketplace to buy and sell things (including cars). 
  8. There is now even a full-featured customer support center (ie. App) for use on your Facebook fan page now through Get Satisfaction.
  9. Everything (just about) interacts in some way with Facebook whether its pushing or pulling data (or both) through Facebook Connect or in some way (ie. Fan us on Facebook)

Why would businesses do this? Well, simply put, because that’s where the customers are.

People like simple. That’s why Apple’s products have been so popular. Sleek, minimalist, easy to use interfaces are attractive. Standardized web pages would certainly be attractive to consumers rather than hard to navigate websites that are “too busy” with all the widgets, gadgets, flash, and video.

The shift is taking place right under our noses. All spear-headed by Facebook.

Consumers are on Facebook. Business are getting on Facebook.The tools that you have available for your website are becoming available on Facebook. Facebook is creating an API allowing businesses to mimic the Facebook experience.  Businesses adopt the new API and make their websites look like Facebook.

Isn’t the next step for businesses just to get rid of their web sites all together and just have a Facebook page? I mean, why MIMIC a Facebook page when you can just HAVE one?

It’s a devious plan, and it’s already been set in motion.

How Do You Sell Your Bottled Water?

By

It’s easy to sell your bottled water if you have the only
bottled water stand in the middle of the desert.

What do you do when there is a bottled water stand every
mile? What about every 100 yards? Now, what if every bottled water stand in the
world were 2 feet in front of you, all in the same place?

Well, the strategy a lot of people take is one of price
competition.

“Buy from me because my bottled water costs less than that
guy’s!”

Another strategy is one using the quality argument.

“Buy from me because my bottled water is better than
everyone else’s!”

You could also use the branding method.

“Buy from me because you can trust that my company stands
behind its bottled water!”

Now take off the sales hat, and put on the consumer hat.

Who do you buy the bottled water from? Why did you make that
choice? What factors contributed to that choice?

Most of the time, we are told how consumers would choose our
bottled water over the “other guy’s”. Someone, somewhere, sat down with a lot
of analytics, focus groups, case studies, market research and a lot of other
people and decided that this way was the best (or at least most successful) way
to sell our bottled water.

They handed you a script and said, “Do this.”

If it doesn’t work, it’s easy to blame “those people”.

You did what “those people” said and it didn’t work.

Do you have a strategy? Do you have something that “works”?
Could your “something” work better than what “those people” handed to you?

Don’t be afraid to be different. The people that are the
most successful in this world did things differently. They tried new ideas.
They probably failed more then they succeeded. That’s how they became
successful.

In my automotive sales career, I did things differently. My sales managers hated that I did what I wanted. At the end of the day, however, it worked. I don’t know whether they were bothered more by the fact that I wasn’t doing what they told me to or by the fact that what I was doing was actually working.

How do you sell your water?

You better figure that out because every bottled water stand
in the world is, right now, 2 feet in front of the consumer’s face… and they’re
all only a mouse click away.

Socialnomics and Guerrilla Marketing (inspired by Sean Bradley of Dealer Synergy)

By

There’s a book that’s been out for awhile called Socialnomics:How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business by Eric Qualman that is fantastic.

If you’re still on the fence about what social media is doing to our society and how you can capitalize on it, you need to read this book. Since this book came out, I’ve seen the videos I’m going to embed here pop up in presentations at conferences and conventions. Yes, they’re that good and they’re eye-opening.

Amazing, isn’t it? 1.5 million people have watched this video (the longer version).

Here’s the follow-up to the first video you just watched. Not as many people have seen it but it goes into the ROI of Social Media Marketing.

I just had to share those two videos. They’re very powerful statements and really illustrate the value of social media and how it will transform our lives.

Now that Google has incorporated real-time search results of Facebook Fan Pages (link), the question you have to ask yourself is do you want your business to show up when consumers search for your product, or do you want someone else’s to?

An interesting article popped up in the Automotive News this week detailing a campaign that is being run by Scott Robinson Honda in Torrance, CA. Sean Bradley, CEO of Dealer Synergy, Inc., helped design this campaign. In a nutshell, Scott Robinson was targeting people shopping for Toyota Corollas (right in Toyota headquarter’s backyard). When people searched for the term “Toyota Corolla” at the top of the first page of search results there was a little video of a guy telling these searchers that maybe they should consider a Honda Civic (from Scott Robinson Honda, of course).

Imagine the possibilities of a dealer using a similar technique on their Facebook fan pages. Heck, they don’t even have to do it on their REAL fan page. They can have a fake Facebook fan page solely designed to be used for this purpose. Stick rich, relevant keywords in the status updates that can be indexed by Google or Twitter.

What would happen if you filled a Twitter feed and/or Facebook page with tweets or status updates like this….?

(Imagine YOU are a Honda dealer)

“Looking for a Toyota Corolla? Why not consider a Honda Civic? (insert TinyURL here)”

“Thinking about buying a car from (insert competitor name here)? We won’t be beat! Come to XXX Honda! (insert TinyURL here)

You get the idea.

Guerrilla marketing at its best.

Contact Me