Car Dealerships utilize FREE websites like www.Flickr.com to CRUSH the competition!

Confused? No worries, so are most dealerships… This month I am going to talk about a FREE and a NEAR FREE idea that will pay BIG dividends to your dealership. How many of you have heard of www.Flickr.com ? Ok, How many of you UTILIZE Flickr for your dealership? If you aren’t utilizing Flickr, you are seriously NOT maximizing FREE resources for your dealership. Flickr is to photos or images as www.youtube.com is to video(s). Just like you can upload video content into YouTube and YouTube will allow you to:

• Create a subject or Header
• The ability to create anchor text
• The ability to embed URLs within your anchor text to relevant drill down content
• Create Meta Tags (Key Words)

You are able to do the exact same thing with Flickr, with images! Your OEM will provide you with marketing materials, such as images, text and even video content. What you want to do is take ALL images you get from your OEM, ALL images you take at your dealership and optimize it for your FREE search Engine Strategy. Here are the EXACT steps you need to take:

• First, you need to open your FREE www.flickr.com account, simply by going to the site and creating your account.
• Next, you want to UPGRADE your account to the PAID account. For $25 dollars a YEAR you get the FULL program. This is ideal, because you are able to upload unlimited amount of photos BUT… with the upgraded account you can ALSO upload VIDEO content as well. So, the site acts as ANOTHER Video Search Engine too!
• Next you want to upload as much photos / image content as you possibly can.

Images of:

• Images of New Car Inventory, ALL models in your line up…
• Images of Pre Owned Inventory…
• Images of YOUR Competition’s Inventory. For example… if you were a Ford dealer, I would UPLOAD images of ALL Chevy products. Or if you were a HUGE F150 dealer, I would upload images of the Chevy Silverado, Nissan Titan, Dodge Ram, Toyota Tacoma etc…
• Images of your dealership (interior and exterior)
• Images of your employees.
• Images of your clients / customers
• Images of your community
• Images of sales events
• Images of car shows
• Images of vehicles “Hooked Up” with aftermarket products…

Now that you have successfully uploaded ALL of these images, you want to be careful that there aren’t duplicate images. What you want to do is start to create Search Engine Optimization campaigns with ALL of your new content. You are going to OPTIMIZE EACH and EVERY one of these images / photos with COMPLETE unique CONTENT. These are the steps to PROPERLY optimize your images in Flickr:

1. Create a relevant “Header” or “Title” - For example if you were a Nissan Dealership in Philadelphia, I would suggest that one title might be “Philadelphia Nissan Dealer” or “Nissan Altima Philadelphia”. What you want to do is make sure that you use Proper Keywords in your title, RELEVANT keywords in your title. Geographical Targeting (Geo-Targeting) your keywords ALWAYS makes sense. If you REALLY want to ensure success, there is software that you can utilize that will tell you what your Keyword Effective Index (KEI) is.
2. Next, after you have successfully chosen your title you need to focus on creating VERY compelling description content. Also known as “Anchor Text”. So lets say for example the picture is of a 2009 Nissan Altima… Your Title will be “Nissan Altima Philadelphia”. Your description could be highlights of the Nissan Altima, hot points, details. Then you NEED to tie it into your dealership, a little information about your dealership, location, phone  number, directions, etc… You want to make sure that you MATCH whatever your title is with TEXT about the SAME thing. If your title is “Nissan Altima Philadelphia”, then make sure that your description talks about Nissan Altima(s) in Philadelphia.
3. Embedded Links- You want to make sure that you Embed proper links into EACH and EVERY one of your photos. Search Engines love to see links to your website from other places that get traffic.  Make sure that you use http://www. You must put http://www.abcmotors.com. I see dealers all over YouTube and other sites and all they do is put www.abcmotors.com and think that is enough… Its NOT. Remember to use the http:// and it will create the Hyper Link. I suggest that you “LEAD” off with your dealership’s website URL in the VERY Beginning of your description. I would recommend that you put 3 embedded links into EACH and EVERY one of your photos. In the beginning, middle and end of your description. The first one should be of your main URL, the second of your “YouTube” Channel (www.youtube.com/abcmotors) and the last one for your twitter channel (www.twitter.com/abcmotors)
4. Meta Tags / “Keywords”- Now its time to create all of your keywords. Using the same example of “Nissan Altima Philadelphia” as the title. Here are the keywords that I would suggest:
   1. Nissan
   2. Altima
   3. Philadelphia
   4. Dealer
   5. Dealership
   6. New
   7. Used
   8. Pre-Owned
   9. Certified
   10. Car
   11. Honda Accord
   12. Toyota Camry
   13. Chevy Malibu
   14. Maxima
   15. Sentra

This is ONLY some examples, I would normally run keyword analytics to make sure I have the maximum KEI on the campaign. But this should give you an idea of what I am going for. You can even get really tactical and go after the competition by having a Titles, description(s) and meta tags of the competing brands…

5. Watermarks – This is the final step, you want to make sure that you watermark EACH and EVERY photo with:
   1. Your dealership’s logo
   2. Your toll free phone number
   3. Your Website address

 
Now try to imagine you having hundreds and hundreds of “Optimized” photos on Flickr. Each photo will get indexed by the search engines and show up in the search engine when people search for the keywords, phrases that you have optimized. And as time goes on, your library of images will increase to the thousands and with that so will your Search Engine Optimization increase as well.
 I have clients that are seeing some surreal results. One client has received OVER 180,000 views in less than 60 days on Flickr for FREE! (They have a total of 560 Optimized Photos).

 Please do NOT misconstrue what I am saying here. I am NOT saying that by you jumping on Flickr you are going  to sell a Zillion cars… or ANY for that matter. I am merely showing you a way to get MASSIVE exposure and visibility for FREE. There are a lot more ways to do so as well. In upcoming issues of Dealer Marketing Magazine I will be writing about these awesome ways to “MacGuyver” your Internet Department or BDC.  If you have any questions about Flickr or you would like me to show you some examples of this working, please feel free to call me or email me. I would be happy to answer any of your questions.

SVB-