Image courtesy of Hooniverse.com
Today’s piece is a two-fer, bringing together both Work and Wheels. I found an interesting article about turning an old BMW E36 into a weekend track car. The story was on the Hooniverse car enthusiast site, “hoon” being Australian slang for a reckless driver/gearhead.
My 1999 M3 is an E36, so obviously I was the right demographic for the piece. It was clearly stated that the article was a sponsored piece of content. Hooniverse is working with eBay Motors, writing articles that talk about and link to items for sale on eBay:
[Disclaimer: eBay approached us about writing posts on how you could buy a project car and fix it up using stuff purchased through eBay Motors. Crazy, we know. We’re still looking for someone who’ll pay us to drink beer or eat burritos.]
So this is a content marketing program, tied to increasing sales and delivered straight to a very specific audience through social media channels, with clear attribution. Put quality content in front of the appropriate audience and good things happen.
In talking about some of the replacement parts and upgrades to the 1996 328, the article covers some procedures I’ve done on my car. I’ve recently replaced almost all of the cooling system, the spark plugs, air filter and rear shocks. Next spring I’ll tackle the front shocks, brake rotors and pads. Some of the chassis components mentioned in the piece are already reinforced, since my car is a M3. They also talked about many of the same tire brands I considered when my car needed new ones last year.
I also enjoyed the prominence given in the story to the Bilstein PSS9 coil-over suspension kit. This is the same kit purchased by the previous owner of my 2002 M5, and it features adjustable shock dampening. I really like how the car handles, after I adjusted the height of the car back to OEM spec and got an alignment. As the article states, I’ll never have to worry about this suspension ever wearing out.
eBay is also executing a content marketing strategy through their eBay Motors blog. The content partners program with sites like Hooniverse is called #eBayFinders, and it makes a lot of sense. I’m sure eBay promotes their own blog aggressively, and at the same time it’s smart to work with publishers who already have built their own car enthusiast audiences.
Transparency is critical in these types of partnerships, and Hooniverse makes it very plain they worked with eBay Motors in writing the article. Recently I’ve written about how tough the current online climate can be for smaller publishers. This kind of direct sponsorship is encouraging and would seem to work for everyone involved, as long as readers understand the relationship.
Audiences self-identify online, making it very clear what kind of content interests them. Reaching out to third party authors in your niche is something I counsel my clients to do, though in most cases it’s with a guest author opportunity rather than a sponsored post/advertising play.
Kudos for a well executed content marketing strategy. This spring I’ve got some DIY work coming up on both my cars. eBay Motors, if you’d be interested in sponsoring some of my Wheels stories, let’s talk!
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