Facebook is rolling out it’s new “Timeline” design change. How will it effect your Facebook business page? This list details what you need to know.

Facebook changes you need to know.

1. Cover Photo (think seasonal or promotional changes over time) don’t overlay urls or phone #’s, Facebook thinks it’s “tacky” and the about us page is to detail your verified and claimed data. In an effort to add a new dimension for advertisers via brand recognition- Facebook is now turning more “magazine” like to allow for example brands like Coca Cola and Nike to promote custom Facebook URL’s and have a unique destination vs. the old “sameness” that initially popularized Facebook.

2. Profile Picture = logo. What was the customizable area is not the smaller more static profile picture, which is best taken advantage of, by using this space for your logo.

3. Timeline, remember if you don’t post data then the timeline looks “dead”. You might have to go back in time and add some important information to make these destinations worth visiting for your fans.

4. Milestones. Think about what your milestones are, a new product, a new location, a new team member, and major news worthy achievement. For instance Toyota is launching the Prius C, so there Facebook page might have this as a milestone.

5. Starred status updates, is the update special and worthy of a full page layout? Similar to “starring” something of interest or important in your email software, you can now “star” updates to make them stand out.

6. Pinning a special post to the top for one week. Is there a current sale or special for the week your FB page visitors should know about? Important news that dominates your week? For instance a video game maker might have a bug with a link to a quick patch.
7. Page Tabs/ Apps. Photos is default, what else do you want to share? This space once off to the side of each page, is now more prominent to encourage more interaction. There is by default 4 App tabs, with photos being featured by default in the prominent position. Photos get clicks and get shared, so take the time to post good ones, and don’t be afraid to ask fans to share them too! You can choose the types and order of additional page tabs.

8. Custom landing pages are changing or going away, so do you need to change your FB strategy for like acquisitions? The ability to customize a landing page on Facebook is changing so pay attention to these features if your current set up has a custom landing page tab.

9. Direct messages from FB page visitors, do you have someone on your team to monitor messages from your prospective customers/ or current clients? They can message you direct, so don’t leave them hanging. Instead of ‘ranting’ on a status, people who like your business page can now send direct messages. This is a space to watch and prep for especially if your contact page or contact form ask for too much upfront data to engage a web visitor. Make sure you have an alert set up so that an admin can watch this space. If you get a lot of traffic and people engage on your page, it’s a good thing. Answer your questions right away to take full advantage of this real time communication space on Facebook.

10. Get more likes by adding page admins and having them invite likes, or invest in Facebook advertising. Facebook advertising is gaining the interest of the advertising community everyday. Not just in sheer numbers of users, but the fact that Facebook has a deeper view into who you are, what you like etc. then the traditional cookie supported data sets most online advertisers rely on. If online advertising is part of your agenda for 2012, consider advertising on Facebook.

Call The Rhoads Group at: 813.289.7600 with any questions, or feel free to chat with us during normal business hours, right from any page of our site. If your on Facebook, test our response rate to a private message on our Facebook page, and while your there be sure and like us and share the page.

The Rhoads Group is a full service advertising and internet marketing company with years of experience assisting automotive clients.

1. Too Many 5-Stars – Watch out all you see are five star reviews?
2. Too Expressive - Who has time to write out lenthy great reviews? Not everyone who writes them
3. Marketing Hype – Does the review sound like a commercial?
4. No Caveats – No one is perfect so there should be a few but’s to go along with a review.
5. No Reviewer History – There are still lots of first time reviewers out there. I don’t necessarily agree with this one. Reviewers with no review history are more common than not.
6. Too Much, Too Soon – 300 reviews in the last two months with none before that leaves me wondering.. is something is amiss?

The Rhoads Groups helps our customers get natural reviews through a simple but effective process. It’s not hard but does take time, dedication and training. Be prepared, you will get negative reviews but its not always a bad thing. We strive to get you more positive reviews from actual customers who write the reviews. Not someone who fakes it by writing the review for them.

Check out PC Worlds article about spotting fake reviews. PC Word Spotting Fake Review

Internet marketing has many tools & techniques how does Google Webmaster tie into it all?

It’s the year 2512 and the patient is lying on the stretcher and the doctor holds a slim device over the patients body scanning with it for viruses, internal bleeding and other indications of disease and problems.

Dr. — “Aha there it is, I can clearly see the problem!”
Patient — “What is it doctor?”
Dr. — “Don’t worry, now that I see what it is, we can get you some medicine to help solve the problem.”

In this fictitious example the Dr. of the future, used a device to scan and look deep inside of the patient.

This is precisely why you need to learn to use the Google Webmaster tool for your internet marketing!

It allows you to look inside your website, at the content, at the pages that your web visitors are going to. What pages they spend the most time on, and which pages might have some problems.

By taking just a few steps, you will not only be able to verify and guarantee that a Google web bot* can “crawl” your site but you can also check your site for bugs and errors that could prevent your site from being “indexed” and visible on Google search engine results pages in the first place. And we all know what that means, your site is all alone out there.

Some of the benefits include:

Determine if Google can see your site, and what it sees.

See how many people are searching for your site and what they click on when they come to it.

Set up alerts so that if Google sees an error or problem you get a heads up and can fix it.

See who is linking to your site, and links are the most important element of SEO!

Make a formal introduction of your site to Googles massive army of web bots and the servers they feed data to.

If you don’t have Google Webmaster set up and configured it’s like getting in the car for a road trip with out any gas.

If you have any questions about how The Rhoads Group Internet Marketing company can assist you, hop on our chat service in the upper right hand corner of any page, or send us an email and get a quote on a variety of our Tampa internet marketing services that help you leverage the power of google!

* Google Web Bots or bots in general are tiny programs designed and built to scan the internet, they literally drive around the information highway and scan content, sending a report to a server so that it can then present this data back to someone searching for it.

While I was re-tagging and optimizing our many automotive advertising videos, I came across a few gems, that I really liked. Here is one of the many we produced for our clients this year. I don’t know if it was the music or the beach scenes, or perhaps the convertible but something stood out for me.

What do you think?

Check out more automotive advertising commercials on our YouTube Page.

The Rhoads Group has been offering advertising services for over 20 years, of those the last 15 have been dedicated to expert level automotive advertising services.

Here is our current automotive advertising demo reel:

Under the creative direction of Loren Rhoads, we have produced thousands of television commercials, radio commercials and print advertising campaigns for automotive dealers across America.

Now more then ever auto dealers need a dependable reliable partner that not only has automotive advertising experience, but can also lead with new technologies and services related to internet marketing.

It’s a new world, and in many cases search engine optimization and Google pay per click services are just as relevant and important to the success or failure of an automotive advertising account as are traditional advertising mediums.

This is why we have had, and continue to create successful advertising campaigns for our clients. We offer the best of both worlds. By offering a holistic approach to balancing our clients needs and wants, we can create an automotive advertising campaign that will meet your short term as well as your long term goals.

Looking for answers on how our advertising services can benefit your dealership? Give us a call: 813-289-7600 X 241.

This blog features a review of some of our favorite videos for the automotive advertising industry as featured on YouTube.

We are not featuring any of the 2011 automotive advertising commercials or automotive advertising videos we produced for our clients in this list. This is simply a non-biased list of videos we liked for one reason or another.

Some originally aired as television commercials, like the VW “The Force” advertisement and then were featured on Youtube.

Some only saw the light of day as videos on YouTube, and some were part of larger automotive advertising campaign such as those featuring the Chevy Sonic and the Hyundai Veloster.

Either way they are all entertaining and engaging and show the power of automotive advertising for connecting with people in many ways.

Having been in automotive advertising for close to 20 years, we know the power of videos and commercials and simply wanted to share some from around the world that we liked. So here is our list:

The Best automotive advertising videos/ commercials of 2011:

Audi A8 Features good music and tension, makes car look very desirable to drive total views so far: 3,324

BMW Filming of a rocket car at Salt Flats, makes car look engineered for speed and reliability. Style of video with few words, and no one doing a voice over. Total views to date: 10,625

Fiat Old school classic style car commercial of one upping the competition, views: 39,220

Camaro Two dudes dream up their idea of a perfect car commercial featuring sexy chics in a bad ass car- total views to date: 73,928

Vaughn Griffin- Dub Edition Ford Festiva at X Games 16. I like this because it’s a video blog style of video. Someone who is respected in his or her industry simply gives a nod in favor of a car worthy of their respect. Views to date: 156,246

Reinvented 2012 Camry This video totally matches and conveys the overall theme of the Re-invention of the Camry. Very technical and Transformer-like Views to date: 183,007

Mercedes A class promo CONCEPT Why does this shiny metal car look so appealing in this tiny tunnel? Views so far: 273,218

Hyundai RE:GENERATION Features various artists from popular music culture, and how they all came together to remix music from different generations. Designed as part of a larger overall branding campaign. Views so far: 293,927 (Of NOTE: Hyundai uses a custom YouTube app to wrap it’s page similar to what companies did on Myspace. It looks good, and you can access the videos like a normal YouTube page with a click, but it takes getting used to.)

Rob Dydrek Chevy Sonic KickFlip   Chevy Sonic kick flip stunt at six flags. This one just launched and is part of a larger Sonic brand boost and introduction. Chevy is having the Sonic car featured in a variety of stunts. This video shows a real “kick-flip” of a Car in the skateboard style. It has already pulled in: 321,822 views to date in it’s very first month. (This one is my personal favorites, as I am a former skateboarder turned professional marketer, and this just shows how to present your product to your potential public in a great way. Someone cool doing awesome real stuff with the product.) DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!

RE:Generation Hybrid  Skrillex “Breakin a Sweat”  This is another one right up my alley. Part of a larger campaign, Hyundai has a variety of artists from blues, to dance to hip hop to dubstep each make a custom audio bit for the Hyundai Brand. This one featuring the dubstep artist Skrillex, actually features music from the classic rock group “the Doors” and is aimed at the now generation for the Veloster Model. (NOTE: this isn’t even a video, it simply shows that Hyundai has it down with regards to direct targeting to a car culture through music.)

Kia Party Rock for Kia Soul This is traditional television and shows the power of the right tune at the right time, and the right vehicle for the market. With already 11,046,459 views to date, the choice of the Party Rock 2011 anthem, along with dancing B-Boy Hamsters battling Halo death bots, on a battlefield dance floor is a pop culture anthem that has struck a lot of the right cords with it’s public.

Imported from Detroit Not to be outdone in the music department, Chrysler worked with home town hero and hip hop/ pop culture phenomenon Eminem to invoke a sense of pride and humility in a newer tougher Chrysler brand. 13,404,562

Finally the number one automotive industry commercial/ video for 2011 is:

VW “The Force” This is a hit or miss idea, and it paid off big for VW and Star Wars Fans. Probably something an entire generation of males can relate to. A well executed parody, with humor to spare. Total YouTube Video views to date: 45,248,798 Make this the best automotive advertising video of 2011.

Helpful links for more information on Automotive Advertising services offered by The Rhoads Group.

Tampa Florida Automotive Advertising Agency   |  Tampa Internet Advertising for Dealers  | Tampa Automotive Television Commercials 

Advertising styles and technologies are constantly changing, and with them so are the needs, wants and desires of our clients.

After experiencing much growth in 2011 we have had to create systems that not only make us more efficient so we can continue to grow and take on more clients, but even more importantly deliver to our clients the results and access to crucial data that they care most about.

The Rhoads Group Advertising Agency and Internet Marketing company is proud to announce a new suite of services specifically designed and engineered for our automotive advertising customers.

Among the many enhancements designed to save time and offer more powerful and insightful analytical data access are a new centralized cloud hosted data center that combines the following powerful metrics into one info portal:

• SEO – search engine optimization
• Google Analytics
• Google Adwords
• Social Media
• - Facebook, Twitter and Youtube
• Social Monitoring
• Domain and Website Analysis
• keyword analysis and ranking,

among other important sets of analytical information;

are now all available to our clients and our team of automotive advertising and internet marketing professionals.

One of the biggest requests we were able to provide a solution for is automated reporting.

Now, long gone are the days of waiting to pull reports, users of our new system are able to enjoy the following benefits of our new suite of automotive advertising tools.

Real time access to crucial web data.

ROI tools that show the effectiveness and forward movement of social, SEO, and traditional media campaigns.

In addition to empowering our clients with being able to see their most important data all in one place, the efficiency and time saved for busy Auto Dealer General Managers is what makes our new suite of tools so powerful!

If you want better results from your automotive advertising agency consider a test drive of our new system!

Or should you have any questions about how The Rhoads Group new Automotive Advertising tools can help drive more leads to your automotive website, and more people through your dealerships doors please contact:

David Lefevre 813-289-7600 x 241

or submit your request via email.

He will be able to answer any questions and even offer an online demonstration.

In addition to the new tools we are implementing in January of 2012, we also offer a full suite of advertising tools for non automotive, as well as automotive advertising specific services.

Download our Advertising Agency info sheet.

The Rhoads Group serves Automotive Dealers with advertising needs all across Florida and the South East.

Visit their Facebook Page to learn more about this very successful Tampa area social marketing charity campaign and how you can get involved. You never know, you might be the next winner of a $1,000 check for your charitable organization.

So far, Precision Kia has given out $4,000 to local charities and is continuing the giving with five new charities in December.

Visit Precision Kia’s Facebook page to vote for your favorite December charity.

Well you could spend half a day doing manual data entry, but that would require you to have wi-fi access, so you can enter your info from the cards to your CRM.

What if you could simply scan the cards, with a business card scanner on your phone, and then upload this data to your CRM?

In this internet marketing blog post, centered around quickly and seamlessly adding business card leads to your database we cover both these options.

Please note this article is written from the perspective of Android phone users, but this whole process is also very easy and possible on iPhones and iPads as well. Infact, I would recommend the iPad, as part of a daily use business productivity tool to anyone, especially if you use Highrise, the cloud based CRM or Customer Relationship Management tool that has native apps running on iOS.

Apps used:

Highrise cloud based CRM

Highrise CRM (Cloud based Customer Relationship Management tool from 37 signals. (This is a cloud app for both Mac and Windows PC’s). NOTE: Highrise has a couple Android apps, being developed as plug ins but at the time of writing they are being made by third party developers and not 37 signals. Being that this is a web based program you can simply log into Highrise, with out using a thrid party app, and access most of the functions easily enough, without much tweaking.

Use ASTRO to manage files on your Android phone.

ASTRO Android file manager app. (Free version). Search for edit, copy and paste/ manage files of all types. Search the Android marketplace for this app.

Cam Card lite for scanning business cards.

CamCard Lite (Free version) Business card scanner. Search the Android marketplace for this app.

Dropbox file cloud sharing and management tool.

Drop Box cloud based storage (Free account). Search the Android marketplace for this app. Note, this will only work, after you have drop box installed locally to your Mac or PC. The mobile app simply ties into this via your log in, information. See Dropbox for more information.

Are you ready?

Here we go!

Using CamCard (lite) the free version, you can easily scan business cards.

You have the option of editing data as you scan and save the cards, or you can alter/ edit the data as you enter it to highrise, or after it’s already uploaded to highrise, whatever is easier.

After I scanned a batch of cards, I exported them as .VCF files, in one batch, so that all the cards data was in one .VCF file.

I then used Highrise, on my desktop, but you could do this on your phone, to search for the .VCF files I created. (They are named by date of import, and you can have multiple scans in one .vcf file). I found the files by using another free app, ASTRO file manager, and then selected them and uploaded them to highrise.

Upon entering them to Highrise, you can edit the contacts, and make any chenges for spelling, phone numbers etc, and then import them. Or you can import them and then one at a time make any corrections.

All said and done the process of photo scanning the business cards worked good, although no matter what you will have to do some basic data entry revisions, to correct some data. Business card designs vary and plain text on white card, scan clean every time, but few cards are simple and “old school” enough to work perfect.

That being said, this process allows you to do a quick batch upload of many card scans at a time, and does most certainly save on data entry time.

You can easily add all of your phone contacts to your .VCF files, and then to HighRise or your CRM customer database easily enough. You can also add these files to a shared cloud based file storage system such as Drop Box

I created a custom folder in Drop Box called contacts, where all of these files are stored, prior to being imported.

By leaving them there, they are backed up.

Of note: You may export the scanned files to an .xls excel doc, or sync them with your contacts, or gmail contacts. This gives you powerful options. For instance you can download your contacts from Highrise, as an .xls Excel file, and then merge the data from all the cards you scanned, adding appropriate tags, and then uploading this file to Highrise, so that it contains all of your new contacts.

What if you can’t find the .vcf or other files on your phone that you created after you scanned a batch of cards. Well this is where ASTRO comes in. ASTRO allows you to view all files and folders easily, and even search for files, so this helps you locate and manage your files. After you upload them to DropBox and or Highrise, you can then delete them from your phone with ASTRO.

In review:  If you are looking for a time saving mobile solution for scanning business cards, and adding them to your CRM for follow up the combo of CamCard Lite and Highrise, worked great.