John Todor

Over the last few days Chrysler and GM have fired nearly 2000 dealers. The manufacturers say it will help them become more competitive. The dealers say the customer will suffer. I side with the manufacturer and here’s why.

Estimates have it that about 90% of car buyers goes to the dealer only after they have thoroughly researched the car they want online. They know the model they want, color, options and even the price. What’s the dealer’s role? It seems to boil down to showing them the actual car and maybe letting them have a test drive. Of course they can try to up sell. The question is does this require a fancy dealership in every city?

Released from dealership contracts the auto manufacturers can begin exploring how to make car buying and car ownership a better customer experience. By enabling a better customer experience as well as listening and learning from their customers, they might build the loyalty and commitment they so obviously now lack.

Recently, Nielsen Online reported that more than 60% of U.S. Twitter users fail to return the following month, or in other words, Twitter’s audience retention rate is about 40%.

I quit once. The learning curves seemed just to steep for the perceived benefits. I’ve been back at it for 5 weeks and I’ve been working at making it pay business dividends.

Here are a few realities that you have to work around. Twitter and twitter apps lack any real consideration for the user experience. Most apps are simply tools. People who successfully use Twitter for business purpose realize this and work around them. The majority of people Twitter for reasons other than business. Learn to detect them and avoid them. Twitter is evolving, fast and the business uses are evolving from the ways real businesspeople use it.

To twitter for business successfully you need a...

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 452,000 people make their primary income as a blogger. That's more people than work as computer programmers or firefighters.

Why the emergence of paid blogging? Bloggers have influence in almost every field and industry. But, they must earn their influence by providing information people want.

Is it a living? It takes about 100,000 unique visitors to a blog per month to make $75,000 per year. About 1% of bloggers make more than $200,000 per year.

Then there are the 22 million of us blogger that do it for nothing.

Want to learn more, click here.

In an earlier blog post I asked the question, "Can you trust peer-reviews." My comments stemmed from the growing concern that Yelp.com was exploiting small business. Owners complained that Yelp would not let them comment on peer-reviews or remove one. Yet, there appeared to be evidence that Yelp itself, was manipulating reviews.

Well, media pressure had an impact. Yelp will now allow business owners to rebut comments. There was a tremendous amount of online outrage aimed at their exploitative behavior. There were also a number of very influential talk radio shows on the topic.

Nice to see “we the people” have some power and can exert it to get "fair play."