Increasing Your Craigslist Exposure. Craigslist Changes - Best Practice Guide

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1 Craigslist Changes - Best Practice Guide

2 Craigslist changes in 2013 Craigslist is an enormously powerful and important advertising tool for car dealers. However, recent changes made by Craigslist have made it difficult, if not impossible, to use. AutoRevo has successfully navigated the Craigslist minefield and offers these best practices gleaned from the real-world experiences of our dealers. AutoRevo s Craigslist Posting Tool not only follows these best practices, but it is also a no-touch system. It gives you the best Craigslist results possible, while freeing you to focus on running your dealership, instead of worrying about how to get exposure on Craigslist. Best Practice #1: Use a posting tool that will upload photos directly to Craigslist. The most significant change that Craigslist made in it s recent update was to block external images. Dealers are now required to upload photos directly to Craigslist instead of using photos embedded with HTML code. Nearly every posting tool used graphical templates that used photos hosted on other sites. Once Craigslist made the change to where dealers vehicle photos lived, none of the posting tools that used the old technique would work consistently. However, AutoRevo s posting tool works around this problem. Our Craigslist posting tool uploads the maximum number of photos allowed directly to Craigslist and we do not use the graphical templates that Craigslist aggressively flags for deletion. Best Practice #2: Use a posting tool that allows you to control the frequency of your posts. Another significant change that Craigslist has made is the restriction of a dealer s ability to create multiple listings in a short period of time. Dealers that used to post vehicles every morning are finding that they are no longer able to do this. So, how frequently should a dealer post? It depends largely on the Craigslist region the dealer is posting to. We have seen some dealers who are able to post very frequently to a region without any flaggings at all; however, posting with the same frequency to another region has resulted in immediate flagging. AutoRevo s posting tool resolves this issue by allowing dealers to specify how frequently the tool posts to Craigslist from a maximum of once every 24 hours up to a maximum of once every 15 minutes. This allows dealers to fine-tune the posting strategy that works for them.

3 Best Practice #3: Use a different Craigslist account for each region you post. Craigslist prefers that dealers post to a single region. This is in keeping with its philosophy that Craigslist is for the local community, and not commercial advertising over a large area. That being said, many dealers depend on posting their inventory to nearby Craigslist regions. So, if dealers are going to post to multiple regions, they should use a different Craigslist account for each of those regions. When dealers have posted to multiple regions with the same Craigslist account, they have seen that those listings were heavily flagged. Fortunately, AutoRevo s posting tool includes a feature that allows dealers to specify a different Craigslist account for each region. Best Practice #4: Do NOT use HTML in your ads. Craigslist is famous for it s rather bare-bones appearance. While the rest of the Internet has embraced flashy, attractive websites, Craigslist has stubbornly refused to make its site, and the listings on the site, look flashy or attractive. Craigslist is minimalistic and expects its listings to follow suit. Along with the recent changes that Craigslist has made, it has also begun to heavily flag listings that contain HTML. This includes hyperlinks, bold tags and other decorative coding. While there are a few scattered listings that do include these elements, our experiences have shown that including HTML increases the risk of having the listing get flagged. AutoRevo s posting tool uses simple text descriptions that adhere to Craigslist standards and greatly reduce the chances of getting flagged. Now, more than ever it s crucial to chose a provider that adheres to these best practices.

4 I ve Done All Of That And I m Still Being Flagged! Even when dealers are following all of these best practices, it s still not guaranteed that their listings will not get flagged. While Craigslist is one of the most effective marketing tools, it s temperamental at best, and it can sometimes flag listings completely at random. If you still find yourself getting flagged, consider these options: Create a new Craigslist account We ve seen situations where simply starting over and creating a new Craigslist account was all that was needed to avoid excessive flagging. Our experience has shown that Craigslist flags certain accounts as suspicious. Once that happens, no amount of best practices will help. It s time to create a new account. Post from a different computer or different network Craigslist is definitely tracking IP addresses and we ve seen evidence that suggests it will automatically flag any listings coming from specific IP addresses. If your IP address has been flagged, even creating a new Craigslist account won t help. You need to post from a different IP address. Simply changing computers is usually not enough, either. The way most dealerships and home networks are set up, the router used to connect to the Internet has the IP address that Craigslist sees. It does not see the individual computer. So even if you are using a different computer that connects to the Internet through the same router, Craigslist still sees the original IP address. Try posting from a completely different network. For example, if you usually post to Craigslist from your office, try posting at home.

5 Summary: - Upload your vehicle photos directly to Craigslist - Control the frequency of your posts - Use a separate Craigslist account for every region - Do NOT use HTML in your ads There is no guaranteed strategy with Craigslist; it operates the way its moderators want it to and they simply do not care if dealers are able to post or not. These best practices are designed to help you increase your odds of having your listings not get flagged. For more information about the most successful Craigslist Posting Tool on the market, call to speak with an AutoRevo Certified Dealer Consultant.