What is Social Marketing - Can Dealer Micro Sites Help?

A while back I did a post at my blog about being an Internet Sales Manager describing my research of Dealer Micro Sites. Once I did blog about it I got some caustic remarks from a vendor of Dealer Micro Sites that were comical to say the least. He took the time to post 15 links and description of what he does and trying to justify his pricing. Do not get me wrong, I do feel that people are entitled to a fair profit from their work, but their are some real cons to using dealer micro sites for automobile dealers and unless a dealer is willing to make a concerted effort at using the medium properly they will far out weigh the pros.

The Cons of Dealer Micro Sites

• Dealers do not own the content - Once spending the money to have a vendor create the landing page or micro site for them they lose the use of that web property once
  the contract expires. The dealer does not own vendor created micro sites content in most cases.
• Universal Search
  - Google is changing their algorithm to offer the surfer more options when they search for specific terms. Of course their own directory listing will show on top for specific dealer searches or market area and brand searches. More and more you will see other items such as blogs, video, images, books and maps in addition to plain website returns.
• Content Updates - If something changes and you wish to display different content to your potential customers you must wait for a vendor to update the content or pay them to do so. If there are dealer micro site providers that have a full functioning CMS for dealers to update content please let me know in the comments.
• Loss of website traffic - If a search engine user lands on a micro site instead of your main dealership website it may confuse them into thinking that it is you main piece of online real estate and not offer them what they are looking for.
• Accountability - If a micro site is not performing like it was promised the dealership is stuck in a contract that they cannot escape from in most cases. There will always be fine print that says "results not guaranteed" while you are stuck with a bill each month or even worse prepaid in advance.
• Advertising
  - Beyond creation of the micro site you will have additional expense of SEO and SEM to drive traffic to it. A site does not SEO itself just via submission to the search engines. There are other factors to consider such as link building and pay per click management.

Leaving caustic comments, dropping tons of links, and not using your real name on a personal blog is the anti thesis of Auto Industry Best Practices and violates any amount of decency in automotive social networking environments. Hopefully the car dealer network does a better job an social marketing then the vendors in the space today.