Automotive Social Media | Automotive Internet Marketing | Automotive SEO.

Hiring Any Cyber Workers Lately?

Hiring Any Cyber Workers Lately? I am

not talking about Cyborg’s or the Borg from StarTrek. In the evolving world of dealerships, you’re going to need “Cyber Workers.” As Joe Louis said, “You can run but you can’t hide.” That means you might put off the inevitable but at some point you have to face reality and spend part of your budget on resources to maintain your dealership’s cyber presence.

Today, most dealerships have an Internet Sales Director or Manager, some have Internet Coordinators or appointment setters, and still others have Internet Sales Consultants and IT specialists. All these positions are necessary, but rarely do I see a dealership with a “Cyber Worker.” Okay, let me explain what I am talking about.

My definition of a Cyber Worker is a person(s) that spends their entire work day at the dealership maximizing all online opportunities for the dealership. The majority of that work will be utilizing FREE or extremely inexpensive websites, social networks, blog and micro-blogging sites on the Internet such as:

• Face Book
• MySpace
• YouTube
• Twitter
• Flickr
• Photo Bucket
• BestPlaces.net
• Compete.com
• Craig’s List
• Google Base
• Wikipedia
• Tube Mogul
• Various Video Search Engines
• Free Press Release
• PR Newswire & PR Web
• Vertical Search Engine Optimization
• Google Alerts
• Google Word Analytics
• CarFolks
• Dealer Rater
• Edmunds Reviews
• Google Reviews
• Other online forms of reputation management

Besides utilizing these resources, your Cyber Worker will be responsible for content acquisition. That means gathering all forms of content such as text, audio, graphics, pictures and video. Content acquisition is so very important. Search Engines prefer unique content but most dealerships cut and paste content that has been recycled many times before. One of the most important things a dealership can do is secure a massive amount of relevant, unique content for the search engines.

In many dealerships today, the Internet Director or Manager is asked to do

most or all of what I just identified as the tasks for the Cyber Worker. The disconnect comes when the other priority tasks of the Internet Manger end up taking all their time, so they never have a chance to accomplish their “cyber tasks” or they do it in a haphazard fashion.

Also, it doesn’t make sense to have a highly trained Internet Manager do these tasks which can be handled by someone a little lower on the staffing ladder. You don’t need a high level employee to focus on those tasks. I recommend that you recruit a Cyber Worker to address these items. This staffer’s job will be to manage ALL of the online social networks and resources as well as content acquisition.

With one (or more) full time people working diligently only on these tasks, your dealership could save thousands and thousands of dollars each and every month on advertising. Plus these online marketing efforts could reach a vast majority of prospects in your markets.

Please remember that 88-98 percent of auto shoppers goes online before they ever step foot into a dealership. And that over 69 percent of America prefers to communicate through Social Networks. Those are two very important numbers for you to internalize and incorporate into your overall dealership strategy.

How much should you pay your new Cyber Worker? This is the best part, and based on experience you could start them at between eight and 12 dollars per hour. And depending on the caliber of the individual and the results you return you can go from there. Be sure they have knowledge of your business and these Internet sites. They need to watch the “rules of these sites” and promote your store in a professional manner.

The dealers we see working with Cyber Workers are seeing immediate results from those efforts. As a matter of fact Dealer Synergy has its own “Cyber Worker”. Yes, we practice what we preach. I will give you one quick example, our Cyber Worker uploaded 170 images on Flickr two weeks ago and there are now 14,000 views on that campaign. 14,000 views in two weeks! All for FREE! If you have any questions about a Cyber Workers, or would like specific examples of recruitment ads or suggestions for text to post in the job description, feel free to contact me either through email or phone.

Sean V. Bradley can be reached at Seanb@dealersynergy.com or by calling 888-379-6374