Today is the tenth year of my blog. It has been a long journey, but I have successfully published more than 2000 articles, have attended countless press events, launched my own YouTube channel and much more. Additionally, over the last ten years, things have changed considerably.
Smartphones are an integral part of our lives now, we can’t function without them, blogs are not read as much, and magazines are becoming an endangered species. Facebook is slowly losing its appeal and novelty, whereas TikTok has become the new kid on the block. Certainly, therefore, people spend an increasing amount of money on tech rather than buying a car. Ferrari is a separate company now, Saab has gone, JLR is striving to survive and Paypal’s founder even made a car. Furthermore, Ford has evolved into a mobility company rather than a car company.
When I started this blog, I never thought these events would have unfolded within the following ten years. We witnessed an industrial revolution and the car industry turned into a mobility solution. Nowadays, a Porsche Cayman’s competitor is an electric scooter! People are not as excited and captivated by cars as they were in previous generations, this impact is seen in car magazines. They themselves used to have ‘higher-end’ ads, with more pages, nowadays these are slowly diminishing.
I will develop my blog into a mobility blog, but I will continue to write about cars. I used to write daily, even in the Instagram era. Despite people wanting to see the content very quickly and easily on Instagram, this has never stopped my passion for writing.
I will see what the future brings. I hope to celebrate the 20th year of my blog.
Roma non fu fatta in un giorno means Rome wasn’t built in a day. I didn’t start learning Italian or try to impress people who visit my blog. I always wanted to explain what I experienced whilst keeping this blog alive for nearly four years.
I can write about my blogging experiences as a separate blog. Many people think, blogging is just pressing buttons on a keyboard. If you are approaching to blogging like this, you might be thinking Charles Dicken’s novels are just pieces paper, air pilots are only pressing buttons to fly a plane, lawyers are making money by talking or a photographer is just pressing a button. If you are approaching to world like this, unfortunately you need to think again!
If something looks very simple to do it, believe me it is one of the hardest things on earth! You cannot be a journalist to Financial Times easily! You might be thinking, journalist are just pressing button on a keyboard but the important thing is to know which button to press. Pilots are pressing buttons, pulling levers and the rest is done by airplane’s computer. But the important thing is knowing which buttons to press and the degree of lever to take off. Lawyers are talking and all humans are talking but they know what to say at the right time.
When you don’t know the details of very simple looking thing, you cannot do it.
So, blogging is similar to that. Most of the services are free but reality is not like that. You need to buy cloud storage, domain name, applications and many other things. And also, you need to create a new content all the time, you need to know the search engine optimisation thing, you need to keep your moral high all the time despite the Google’s sudden revisions, you need to bare negative comments from jealous people, you have to keep up with new technology to extend your work on new platforms, and you need to find a place among millions of blogs.
A blog is not built in a day. It takes a very long journey to achieve this and if you are reading this post and never been to my blog before, I can explain my achievement by Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Why blogging is important for automotive industry? You might be surprised with this title; you don’t seem to read this type of articles for long time in this space. However, this blog is still a personal blog and I try to express my thoughts here time to time :)
Blogging became quite popular in recent years but it is not something that new! Many people had blogs for nearly a decade and thousands of articles were written about nearly everything.
However, some of the topics from “the everything” became more popular than the others and moved the blogging into a different platform. What I am saying is fashion blogs. Thanks to fashion bloggers, blogging started to receive more respect from the companies and the press. Moreover, blogging considered as one of the most influential contemporary media instrument. And I totally agree with this. When I want to learn more about something, I search for blogs. Also, some of the blogs receive more traffic or circulation than the many well-known newspapers! There is not psychical location on internet and there are no boundaries.
Some people say; bloggers do not have journalism degree, they make grammatically mistakes, they cannot write a coherent article and more. I am not saying we are perfect but we are improving! And whilst criticising the bloggers, please remember your first days at work :) No one was born as perfect :)
Let me go back to blogging and automotive industry. If you are reading newspaper everyday, you may have noticed that automotive industry is in a bit trouble nowadays. The dolce vita days are over, Europe is facing serious economic problems and, people try to sustain their welfare in a good position and ignore other types of consumption except buying iPhone (This another case!). Despite this adverse situation, there are many people are still buying cars. It is not that bad!
However, as the market shrunk and consumers became more picky. They need more information from different information resource. They cannot search for academic articles for a new car, so they end up with social media and blogs. Nowadays, lots of people are writing about cars. Unlike me, many bloggers test them, love them, and write about them continuously. Me? I write about fashion as well, it is very dynamic and entertaining.Some people paint their shoes soles to make their own Louboutin at home :)
So, how a blog can motive consumers to buy a car?
Unfortunately, you cannot motivate someone on social media for the instant car consumption. Existing financial structure and limits of credit cards do not allow anyone to buy a car from a website. Still consumers should visit a dealer and complete the consumption in a traditional way. Until, automotive companies start selling cars online, I am sorry to say but social media will not boost your sales in seconds. But blog do have influence and generate motivation but in a longer time frame.
Literally, blogs are the connection between the online and real world. Automotive companies promote their cars on Facebook, Twiter, Google + and many other places on internet. And consumers know that, it is still advertisement like on newspaper but with more interaction. So, they enjoy playing your games, liking your Facebook Pages and retweeting your Instagram photos. Unfortunately, what happens on Facebook and Twitter stay in Facebook and Twitter. You need another resource to motivate people to buy your cars. And that can be achieved by the blogs.
Each blogger has its own point of view and perspective and if they write constantly, they start to create their own community. This community knows that, the blogger is a person like them and express own views without any influence. So, how to use this tool with your Facebook and Twitter? (Also, if you write frequently, Google shows you higher on search results.)
Quite simple, engage with the bloggers. I don’t mean invite them to your events, engaging with the online people is sharing their content on your Facebook and Twitter pages. But not just for one or two days. Do this constantly, even if the view of the blogger is not matching with your strategy, share it. By this way, consumers can see the positive and negative sides of your car and remove the vague idea from their mind.
I know, this may lead some consumers to stop buying your cars. However, if a consumer has the tendency to leave your brand, it will happen one day unfortunately. If it doesn’t happen today, it will happen tomorrow. Just think about yourself, we all changed a brand that we used for long time.
Back to bloggers, sharing their content increase your engagement with blogger and they will realise that automotive companies take them serious. Eventually, their words will be better for your cars. But this does not happen so quickly, like the engagement with the journalist, you need to construct this relationship in long term. And keep sharing their posts.
So how we can pick up the right person?
Basically, don’t rely on one indicator, such as Google Page Rank or Klout Index. Read the blog by yourself, check how often the content is created, how the blog is designed and connect these figures with Google Page Rank, Twitter Followers, Facebook Page Likes, Klout Index. But never trust on just one value.
Just imagine, if customers evaluates your cars based on their horsepower. Unfortunately, everyone will be saving money to buy a Porsche or Bentley or Bugatti. Because, they offer one of the highest horsepower value on the market. But consumers do evaluate your cars with many different variables, so do the same with bloggers.
Find the good ones! Never stuck on their location, we are on internet, there is no psychical location here. If a great blogger is from 10,000 km away, keep calm and engage! Supply content to bloggers and remove the walls from the media site. Motivate them to write, talk with them through Twitter. Share their photos on your Pinterest. And do this constantly!
Basically, use the social media tools, as they were meant to be used.
If you still struggle to sell car, I would recommend the most basic solution! Reduce the price. It always works :)
I didn’t write this article to criticise anyone or any company, I only wanted to provide a different perspective to the social media and blogging. And feel free to comment :)
