Industry Events

Looking outside our industry for workshops and training

Student_deskWorkshop – Online Reputation Management

I’m always looking for different workshops and seminars to attend and I purposely look outside of the automotive industry. Whether its search engine marketing, New marketing, self improvement, motivational or whatever..we all need a boost of energy every now and then and attending a seminar or workshop always gets the blood flowing again.

It’s easy to exhaust yourself with the dealers conferences, NADA, and the many workshops within the automotive industry. They’re usually full of the same information, the same speakers with the same sales pitch. I found out a long time ago, if you want to stay at the forefront of what is really happening, especially with Internet/new marketing trends, look outside our industry.

Well I did just that this week. With all the hype and buzz around dealer rating websites and dealer reputation management within the dealer industry, I decided to attend a workshop on online reputation management. I’ve been following Andy Beal and his blog Marketing Pilgrim has been a favorite of mine for sometime now. Andy has no doubt been at the forefront of online reputation management before most of us even knew what ORM stood for.

Props to Mr. Beal for putting on an excellent and informative workshop!

From sending out an effective press releases, to managing your company brand and personal name in Google to having a Blueprint for fighting a reputation attack, the information he provided was immeasurable for managing and monitoring your dealers online reputation.

The class was closed to less than 20 attendees so it was very open and social. Andy knew I was from the automotive industry; a big thanks to him for tailoring some of his examples around my industry. This was straight up exciting for me; it’s great to step outside the dealer box and converse with other companies that have the same challenges that we have.

Online reputation management is something that I personally have had a strong focus on and been practicing for almost 2 years now. Heck, exactly 1 year ago I put together a video showing dealers how to use RSS feeds and keyword searches to “help” track your dealers online reputation.

I know many of us are still uncertain to whether or not the dealer rating websites will ever have a huge influence on our industry but either way, taking a pro-active stance and securing a positive online reputation will only pay off in the end. Don’t sit around and wait for a crisis.

And if you get the chance to attend Andy Beals workshop, I wouldn’t even think twice about it. Pony up and go!

Oh too, thanks for the beer Andy!

Founder of DealerRefresh - 20+ Years of dealership Sales, Management, Training, Marketing and Leadership.
A
Thanks for the heads-up on Andy Jeff. You're absolutely right about not sticking solely to the Auto Biz for learning. If you're playing in the eCommerce side of this industry, there is a lot to learn, but most of that learning is not inside our own industry.
A
Hi Jeff. Thanks for the kind words, I'm glad you got a lot out of the workshop.

It was a pleasure to meet you--and share a beer! ;-)

Andy
C
A new bookmarked site, thanks Jeff. I hadn't heard of Marketing Pilgrim before but just spent 2 hours reading through page after page. Wish I had known about the workshop.

Chip-
F
Wow that really is a useful list. I know what I want to do but I can see it being useful for others. Loved it!
F