Blogger Spotlight: Stuart Masson, Car Expert

Award-winning independent car buyers and advice guide, The Car Expert provides expert advice for anyone wanting to buy a car. From features to finance, The Car Expert is the place to turn for automotive advice and recommendations based on your budget. Founded in 2011 by Stuart Masson, the blog offers the latest news and manufacturer updates, advice on buying, finance, insurance, and technology, as well as a car comparison tool and forum. In this spotlight Stuart chats to us about what makes his blog different, why PRs need to take a more personalised approach to blogger outreach, and what it feels like to have over three million people unique visitors to The Car Expert.

Why should people read your blog? What makes it different? The Car Expert started out as a simple advice blog and has grown massively over the last five years. We provide independent and impartial car buying advice, and answer hundreds of questions each month from readers, often about their car finance problems or whether a dealer is trying to con them. We have also started adding a lot of news stories, having just taken over another site, Car and Van News.

How do you measure the success of your website? In addition to ever-growing traffic numbers, The Car Expert has received recognition from numerous sources. Vuelio has rated the site as one of the top three automotive blogs for the last three years, and we were also a finalist for Best Automotive Blog in the inaugural Newspress Awards, judged by the UK automotive press.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to start a blog? It’s easy to spend far too much time planning and thinking, and not actually do any writing. My site went in quite a different direction from what I had in mind, based on the popularity of a number of car finance blogs I wrote. But you need to have a number of articles written to see which ones the public wants to read. Don’t be afraid to try different things and see what sort of response you get.

How do you work with marketers and PRs? 

I get dozens of emails each day from PR people wanting me to talk about their products or services. Usually they are bulk emails that have gone to everyone else in the world, and they go straight in the bin. But those who take the time to really look at the site and come up with ideas about how we can work together will always get a positive response.

How do you use social media to promote and share content? What are the challenges? Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, LinkedIn, tumblr. The main challenge is not having enough time to do it properly. We auto-publish each new article to Twitter, Google+ and tumblr, but that doesn’t really work so well for Facebook or LinkedIn, which do better if the articles are manually promoted. The other challenge is trying to work out how much (if any) real benefit there is to time spent on social media.

What can PRs do in working better with you? Generic emails go straight in the bin. Personal emails, where someone has actually taken the time to work out what we do and where they can work with us, will always get a warm response.

PRs also need to be upfront and honest about who they are representing and what they are looking to achieve by working with The Car Expert.

What has been your blogging highlight? Seeing the site grow from nothing to 130,000 plus readers per month over the last few years. Over three million people have now visited The Car Expert, ninety per cent of whom are from the UK, and that blows my mind every time I think about it.

What will be big in your blogosphere in the coming months? Technology always moves quickly in the automotive world, and trying to convey complicated systems – not helped by manufacturers who love confusing jargon – is always a challenge. Self-driving cars is the next big issue on the horizon, which will fundamentally change how we own and use cars in the next few decades.