Brand Conversion - One piece at a time....

When I was an Internet Sales Manager I had created several lading pages to have consumers contact me directly to save money on their next vehicle purchase. Now I have a tremendous amount of content out there that I must either convert to affiliate marketing or just value added content to those people who find it.

When I was the ISM we carried the Hyundai product and I LOVED IT. So I concentrated there in my personal online branding. Now that I no longer anticipate ever working at a car dealership I have started that conversion process. The first of many pages that needs editing is my Hyundai Dealer page. I just hope that it does not lose visitors since I reworked it.

hyundai dealer, hyundai dealership, hyundai branding

Garbage creates more garbage

I am working real hard to build my brand and to try to keep things that may seem negative to others out of my personal content publishing. Some things I have not been doing real well is giving links to others in my content. Usually when I blog about something I reference my own content and not do a good job of attributing others.

So I have set a new goal for myself. Every time I reference my own content I will make sure I reference two other sources if it is on properties that I control. This will accomplish a couple of things.

• notify other blogs and individuals that I am referencing their content and help increase traffic to my properties
• increase the search engine trust my properties have
• bring better value to those who view my content
• better establish "My Brand"

What does this have to do with "Garbage"? Well it means when I see garbage and blog about it for now on I will link to it, regardless. I just have not figured out a way to call out BS from car guys in such a way as they can save face and not appear hyper critical. I just have to make a choice on providing real value vs playing my cards close to my chest and getting people to pay for the knowledge.

garbage content, paul rushing, building a brand,

Diluting My Brand? Maybe, Maybe not!

Had a long conversation this evening about brand dilution.  There are so many ways this can hurt, while at the same time it also helps build market saturation.  My biggest product right now is Paul Rushing without a defined product offering.  That does not stop engagement.  Almost daily I have people reach out to me for advice and opinions and also have people attempt to interfere with my search engine reputation management efforts for what ever reason.

I have been cast into a public eye in the the automotive industry best practices arena, while I will openly admit that pushing a mouse to follow a defined process is not my strong point, adapting to current changes in the search markets and online publishing are.  My efforts backed by a defined process for follow through is what will win.

Here in the very near future I will be publishing some online marketing and networking how tos to capitulate the brand that I have built into a marketable product.  I have spent to much time on proofs of concepts versus delivering quantified results for others.  I am looking forward to the challenge.

search engine reputation management, online branding, auto industry best practices.

Trying to reach giant squidom

Many people who have known me more than 30 minutes or so realizes that I love Squidoo.  One thing that I have not been doing is engaging the community there like I should probably.  This is really not a good thing.  I am trying to get into the Giant Squid club.  This give some unique benefits once you are in.

One of the biggest things it stops lenses from being a work in progress.  If you don't understand what the means it is ok.  It took me a while to figure it out as well.  If you don't use squidoo or have a desire to then it does not matter.

If you want to know more about squidoo just visit Paul Rushing on Squidoo.

squidoo, giant squid, paul rushing

Having Fun Helping Others

One of my favorite user generated content sites is Squidoo.com. I love to build pages there some are for business, some are for fun and others are to prove a point.

I know that sometimes exerting effort to prove a point can actually be counter productive at times but it still is fun. On of the social networks there was an exchange about "dealer micro sites" and the ISM from Jim Glover Chevrolet took the time to get really caustic in his remarks to me. So I built a page that effectively showed up in Google for what he considers a "money" term.

The cool thing about Squidoo is you can use the platform to build effective landing pages like I am doing for a friend of mine who happens to be trying to sell Suzuki Autos. I made this page to help him get traffic for Kansas City Suzuki Dealer, I sure hope it works.

kc suzuki dealer, dealer micro sites, jim glover chevrolet

Automobile Industry Events - J.D. Powers Automotive Internet Roundtable

The JD Powers and Associates Automotive Internet Roundtable will be held October 7th - 9th at the Bellagio Resort in Las Vegas Nevada. As a member of the staff of the premier Automotive Social Network hopefully I will be able to attend to network with auto industry professionals.

While there is a competing conference at the same time, which will probably have more dealers in attendance, this will be an opportunity to reach out to the community that supported me when I was threated to be sued by Ziegler Enterprises.

Also as a result of building up my search engine presence I have been engaged by a new friend, Scott Pitman, of mine to help Suzuki of Wichita build some lenses on squidoo. Hopefully this will help in their online marketing mix.

Hopefully all of the anchor text that I have added to this blog does not hurt my efforts, because some people consider me knowledgeable in Automotive SEO. I would hate to get this site sandboxed...

Networking in the Car Business - Fun Stuff

I really enjoy networking and have become fairly out spoken in viewing my opinion of proper protocol at various automotive social networking to the point that some do not even like for me to enter conversations.

I have been dubbed the king of blog debates by some and people will go out of their way to assault my credentials when I try to contribute to the conversation. It has happened more than once. here and here are two good example. If you visit those links though you really need to look at the whole threads tough.

It has helped me build my brand to the point of almost being highly respected in the industry in certain aspects of online marketing. I will be the first one to admit there are areas that I am not the most knowledgeable in, process being one of them, automotive inventory management being another. On the inventory management side of it though I can draw from enough experience from the manufactured home industry to probably make solid calls in that regard if given enough data.

What I find funny though is some of the people who like to try and take stabs at me will also call me for advice and opinions. So I guess it is not a bad thing. It just goes to show if you have an opinion it does not hurt to give it even if it does not fall into the status quo.