Bing.com recently started listing Twitter feeds, and now Google has jumped into the fray with “real-time” search. Now that real time search is here, how does it impact your online presence, if it impacts it at all? If you haven’t tried social media marketing, now is the time to get started. Real time search is here, and social media marketing for auto dealers needs to take notice. In the past, it might not have been so clear a need to engage in social media, but with these recent changes in the search engines, the relationship between social media and search engine marketing is clearly in focus.

Much more than catchy buzzword, “real-time search” is a concept that has been around for a while longer in some form or another. Fresh content has always been a driving force in Google search results, and the results from Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and other social sites can’t get much fresher. So now these social streams may appear right in regular SERPs.

It’s now up to the search engines to deliver relevant quality using key factors like author quality, probability of relevance and “query hotness,” all very subjective and fuzzy.  So how do you protect your dealership brand image? Start first by getting a basic knowledge of what real time search is and what it means for you and your company.

Using Google as an example, real time search for them is not a replacement for their regular google search results. in the case of Google, real time search is added technology and factors in the search algorithms that display ALL results within a standard search page. This means that content from Twitter, news sites, blogs and other social sites will appear on the same page as “regular” results.

Following closely on the heels of Google’s fairly recently launched universal search results, the addition of real-time results is just one more challenging obstacle for the much coveted high organic rankings on the top of the results page. Paid search engine marketing for auto dealers is a common tactic used to combat real time search. A well optimized paid search marketing campaign allows you much more control over where your brand or company will appear on SERP’s.

Social Media Marketing For Auto Dealers

The most obvious way to get in the game is to use your own internet marketing strategy that includes social media marketing. Your strategy might include:

• keywords in your content, titles, and your posts,
• mentioning current events that are relevant to your brand, business, or industry,
• topics that people are interested in – spark a conversation,
• a “call to action” to share your content.

In real-time search results, you may show up at the top of the results page, but that may or may not be a good thing. Using social media marketing for auto dealers is a great way to manage your reputation online and present your dealership in the most favorable light possible.

With these recent and ongoing changes to real-time search results in SERPs means you can’t afford to ignore social media. As you become more active using social media marketing in your automotive marketing campaigns, you generate more relevant content that may have find high placement on Google SERPs that display real-time results.