Ford Social Media Visionary Scott Monty and Social/Viral Marketing Scientist Dan Zarrella to Keynote DrivingSales Executive Summit

SALT LAKE CITY, Sept. 14 /PRNewswire/ -- DrivingSales.com (www.drivingsales.com), the automotive industry's largest car dealer social network, today announced that Scott Monty, Ford Motor Company's social media visionary, and Dan Zarrella, author of the watershed The Social Media Marketing Book, have joined the line-up of the second annual DrivingSales Executive Summit (DSES) presented with WardsAuto.com. They join renowned social media analyst, blogger and web strategist Jeremiah Owyang as keynote speakers at the DSES, which is scheduled for October 18th through 20th, 2010 at the Encore Wynn Las Vegas. This year's summit focuses on Innovating Dealership Profit Centers in the Recovery Economy.

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"We are proud to present a line-up of visionary social media keynoters who will provide our attendees with inspiration, insight, innovation and, most importantly, actionable strategies to help them meet the demands of a rapidly evolving marketing universe," said DrivingSales CEO and Founder Jared Hamilton.  "Scott is deservedly known as 'the best corporate social media lead on the planet,' and Dan's scientific and data-based book on social media is a must-have text for today's marketers.  We are truly honored to host them at the DSES."

Scott Monty is scheduled to keynote the DSES on Monday, October 18th at 4:00pm.

As Global Digital & Multimedia Communications Manager at Ford Motor Company, Scott heads up the company's social media function. He is a strategic advisor on all social media activities across the company, from blogger relations to marketing support, customer service to internal communications and more.  He is also an active blogger and podcaster at his 'The Social Media Marketing Blog' (www.scottmonty.com) and The Baker Street Blog. He has been featured in numerous news and business publications, in over a dozen books, and on a variety of broadcast media from podcasts to NPR to national television. Scott coined the Oxford Dictionary of English-accepted term "tweetup."

Dan Zarrella is scheduled to keynote the DSES on Wednesday, October 20th at 9:00am.

Dan is an award-winning social, search, and viral marketing scientist and author of the O'Reilly Media book "The Social Media Marketing Book". He has a background in web development and combines his programming capabilities with a passion for social marketing to study social media behavior from a data-backed position and teach marketers scientifically grounded best practices. Broadly quoted in today's top media from The New York Times to TechCrunch, he was awarded Shorty and Semmy awards in 2009 for social media & viral marketing.

For more information about the DrivingSales Executive Summit Agenda click here.

About DrivingSales Executive Summit presented with WardsAuto.com

The DrivingSales Executive Summit presented with WardsAuto.com is a uniquely collaborative event modeled after the best practices sharing among dealership professionals on DrivingSales.com.  The event brings together the most successful and innovative dealers in the country, along with world-renowned speakers, all to focus on dealership innovations and profitability. Unlike other automotive industry events, the DrivingSales Executive Summit is 100% dealer driven and designed specifically for the most progressive dealer principals and dealership executives in the industry. 

The DrivingSales Executive Summit will be held in the Encore Ballroom, at the Encore Wynn Las Vegas October 18th - October 20th, 2010.  For more information about the conference, visit: DrivingSalesExecutiveSummit.com or contact [email protected].  Follow conference news as it develops on www.twitter.com/drivingsales using #DSES and on facebook.com/drivingsales.

About DrivingSales.com

DrivingSales.com (www.drivingsales.com) is the largest car dealer social network where thousands of dealership professionals collaborate and share best practices in a 20-group style setting. The site is the industry's largest source of free dealership best practices information. 

At DrivingSales, members create profiles, network with each other and share best practices.  Dealership managers are allowed to rate and review their dealership vendors in a verified setting.  DrivingSales hosts the largest retail focused community of automotive blogs, videos, interviews, social automotive news feeds and more.

DrivingSales was created and built from the ground up in 2003 by Jared Hamilton, a third generation auto dealer, as a private automotive business community to network his NADA Dealer Candidate Academy class.  The site opened nationally in 2008 and is the industry's leading automotive social media custom platform.  DrivingSales was named one of ten social media gambits for 2009 by Automotive News and one of the Top 10 Companies to Watch by Auto Success Magazine.

DrivingSales Executive Summit Media Relations:

Melanie Webber ([email protected]), mWEBB Communications, 424.603.4340

SOURCE DrivingSales