Did you read Chris Brogan's post about how he bought his new Camaro online? Maybe start there.

And then perhaps you should read the fascinating follow up interview with Aaron Smith.

Regular readers will know that I spent many years in the motor industry. I've been watching it from the sidelines since I got out ten years ago, and I've seen the manufacturers and dealers fall further and further behind other retailers in the way they market and in their use (or lack of it) of social media.  read more »

This is a guest post from Justin Aldridge, another Brit who lives in Spain.

I first started blogging about five years ago.  In those days I used to blog all the time as Google, in particular, loved it.  I would blog about a topic and within minutes my blog post would appear in Google's search results.  My main aim in those days was to blog to drive traffic to my main website, and it worked really well.

 read more »

If you follow me on Twitter, you'll know that yesterday I did the first of a series of ocean swims which we've been training for this summer. It was a reasonably easy one, only 1.8KM, although we did hit some current and a pretty choppy section.

In all, just over 150 people took part, swimming from one beach to another. The kind of people who do this fall broadly into three categories:

1/ Serious (often professional) athletes

2/ Ordinary folk who are pretty good swimmers (that'll be me)

3/ People who aren't great swimmers, but just want to "have a go"

Even in group two, I'm nowhere near the fastest, although I'm not bad for my age group.  read more »

You can't buy the Flip here, so I've been waiting for one for a long time.

I recently did some consultancy work with Ben from www.wecanbuttri.com and he mentioned he was planning a trip to UK and asked if I wanted him to bring anything back. We quickly struck a barter deal in exchange for the consultancy and my new Flip arrived today.

Here's a short video just to test out the quality of audio and video:  read more »

I choose to share quite a lot about my life on social media. Here on this blog, as well as on Twitter and Facebook, you can learn a lot about what I'm up to and who with.

It's the way I am, I'm a pretty open book in real life as well.

But some will say you shouldn't share too much. Some might say it's not really very interesting, and others would point out the security and privacy issues that may arise from doing so.

What are your thoughts?

Do you have a line you won't step over?

Are you prepared to share anything?

Does online privacy, or lack of it, concern you?  read more »

This is something I've done a few times over the last couple of years with some success, and I thought I'd share it with you.

Image: jscreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The process is simple:  read more »

Failure is a fact of life for all business people, and of course, that includes bloggers. But we have to deal with failure more than most, because our business is so multi-faceted.

On a small level, there are the daily failures, like:

• People unsubscribing from your email list
• Unpleasant comments being posted
• Not quite getting the tone or meter of a post right
• Messing something up on the working side of your blog
• Reaching a temporary traffic plateau

And then there are the big failures:  read more »

Short answer: Take some time off!

Long answer: I've just had three fabulous, action packed days off from the internet. Somewhat inspired by Gwen Bell's Digital Sabbatical, I didn't read an email or look at any social media on Friday, Saturday or Sunday.  read more »

I was reading Chris Brogan's post "Is a social crash coming?" His point was that with close friends, social media can be a reminder that we've had little or no "real" contact. Chris explores the notion that he digitally "brushes past" people all the time via social media, and those close friends are constantly being reminded that he's around but hasn't been in touch.

Image: renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net  read more »

This isn't another post telling you that you should have started building an email subscriber list ages ago.

It's to show you what you could be doing if you had.

Image from Aweber report "Weekly subscribers to list"

My biggest email list isn't in this niche. If you know me, you'll probably realise that it's in the travel niche. I started it too long after I set up the blog (like so many bloggers) didn't add a decent offer to it for six months, and it took me a full year to start to use a pop up on the site.  read more »