by Fronetics | Jan 31, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
Sales teams can use social media to cultivate relationships with potential buyers, a process called social selling.
With the dawn of the social media age and the exponential increase in choices and information available to buyers, we’ve seen a massive shift in the way B2B sales occur. According to the Harvard Business Review, a striking 84% of B2B sales start not with a salesperson, but with a referral.
As outbound sales become decreasingly effective, peer recommendations are influencing more than 90% of all B2B buying decisions. So how do we make the shift from outbound sales to this new reality? One of the more popular answers is social media.
It’s likely that your organization has some sort of social media marketing strategy in place. But making full use of these platforms requires a more nuanced, well-rounded strategy than blanket social media marketing. It’s time to introduce the idea of “social selling.”
Social media as a sales tool
In a basic sense, social selling is the strategy of adding social media to the sales professional’s toolbox. This means using social platforms to research, prospect, and network by sharing curated educational content and answering questions. The key is building relationships until prospects are ready to buy.
So what’s the difference between social media marketing and social selling, and why is it important? While both are necessary to an integrated marketing and sales strategy, the former is about engaging many — with the goal of increasing brand awareness or promoting a specific product — by producing content that users will ideally share with their networks.
Meanwhile, social selling means producing focused content, and providing personal communication between the salesperson and the buyer. Again, the key is building and cultivating a relationship using social media platforms.
How to start social selling
The benefits of social selling are numerous and significant. For example, according to a LinkedIn survey, B2B buyers are five times more likely to engage with a sales rep who provides new insights about their business or industry. Social media is a powerful engagement tool, giving sales people a platform for sharing these insights.
Here are some steps your sales team can take to implement social selling.
1) Put it in your calendar.
Allot a small portion of your day for social media. It doesn’t take a big time investment to reap the benefits of regular interaction with your prospects.
2) Integrate sales and marketing.
Encourage collaboration between sales and social marketing departments, to make the most of both efforts. HBR suggests that “marketing can train salespeople in social media systems, processes, and best practices.” In addition, sales and marketing should be regularly sharing information to make sure their goals are aligned, and efforts are dovetailing. According to a study by Data Room and Marketo, “sales and marketing alignment can improve sales efforts at closing deals by 67% and help marketing generate 209% more value from their efforts.”
3) Prioritize relationship-building.
Focus your business’ ongoing efforts to building and cultivating quality relationships with prospects. This means building in time every day for personal communication. Make your prospects’ needs your priority.
The bottom line here is building and maintaining relationships. Social media — and social selling — are powerful tools for doing just that.
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by Fronetics | Jan 30, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Supply Chain, Transportation & Trucking
Our readers voted Morai Logistics, Women in Trucking, and the Oracle Supply Chain Management Blog as the top 3 logistics and supply chain blogs of 2017.
Every year we ask our readers to vote for the best industry blogs. The results are always interesting — there’s really a lot of great supply chain and logistics content out there, plus it’s great to see where our readers are finding value.
This year was no different. The best logistics and supply chain blogs, as named by our readers, are all new to our best blogs list. They probably couldn’t be more different, either. But all three offer consistent, high-quality content, which is key to running a successful blog.
Here are the top 3 logistics and supply chain blogs of 2017.
1) Morai Logistics
Morai Logistics Inc. is a Toronto-based third-party logistics provider representing Mode Transportation. Morai’s blog covers the most pressing issues facing the logistics industry, as well as trends to watch out for, professional tips, and career advice. The almost-weekly posts have a lot to offer, in terms of information and thought leadership, and they often include valuable (and, might we add, beautiful) visual elements like infographics.
P.S. Check out our interview with Morai Logistics’ President Kelli Saunders.
2) Women in Trucking
The Women In Trucking Association is a non-profit organization focused on encouraging the employment of women in the trucking industry, promoting their accomplishments, and minimizing obstacles. Just one vote shy of the top spot, the Women in Trucking blog — or, should we say blogs — bring to light many issues of concern to both women and men working in the trucking industry. President/CEO Ellen Voie’s blog offers thought-provoking, insight on topics from the driver shortage to recruiting women drivers. The driver’s blog — with content mostly from longtime driver and writer Sandy Long — tackles pressing day-to-day issues facing drivers, such as parking in dangerous locations, family problems stemming from job-related realities, and assimilating to trucking culture.
3) Oracle Supply Chain Management
The Oracle Supply Chain Management blog looks at how Oracle helps organizations transform their supply chains into more holistic and integrated value chains that cover the three key operational pillars: Demand, Supply, and Product. Weekly content from a number of contributors cover topics including supply chain management, events, product lifecycle management, logistics, technology, and more.
Honorable mention
These blogs received quite a few votes as well.
What blogs do you read on a regular basis? Which have the most valuable content?
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by Jennifer Hart Yim | Jan 26, 2017 | Blog, Strategy, Talent
The “Right to Disconnect” is combating round-the-clock email culture, but can better work/life balance help boost employees’ productivity?
This guest post comes to us from Argentus Supply Chain Recruiting, a boutique recruitment firm specializing in Supply Chain Management and Procurement.
Here’s a new frontier in work-life balance: For the past several years, work-life balance has been one of the biggest topics in employer and HR circles. Companies are recognizing the productivity benefits of flex time, childcare assistance, on-site stress workshops, and other initiatives designed to make employees happier. They’re also using work-life balance to help attract and retain the best candidates. Read any (good) modern job description, and you’ll see lots of language from companies recognizing the importance of having a life outside of work.
But anyone who’s worked at a few different companies knows that every company has a different track record in terms of actually implementing work-life balance initiatives, and not just paying lip-service to them.
The Right to Disconnect
So here’s an interesting solution from abroad: As of January 1, a new law in France affords workers the “Right to Disconnect” from their emails after hours. In France, a country long-associated with the development of rights, companies with more than 50 employees must now negotiate a new protocol with employees to make sure that their work obligations — like email — don’t carry over to after-work hours.
Europe has long been characterized in North America as laissez-faire when it comes to working hours, mandating more weeks of vacation than Canada (where 3 weeks is the standard) and the U.S. (which typically affords a stingy 2 weeks of vacation). There’s always been a stronger cultural attachment to leisure hours in Europe, where 35-hour workweeks are common, so it isn’t surprising that such a law comes from France.
It’s also not surprising that the idea of completely banning after-work emails has been ridiculed in North America, where many employees work long hours, take lunch at their desks, and answer emails around the clock to prove their value. But outlets like Time magazine have reported on how round-the-clock email culture has taken over France as well, which is part of what’s led to these guidelines.
Work/life balance = productivity?
The idea behind a “right to disconnect” is to restore some of the ever-blurrier boundary between work and life brought about by smartphones with email access. But the idea isn’t just to give workers a break — it’s that if you make sure people can turn off their phones when they leave the office, they’ll likely be more effective in the morning. In other words, a stronger boundary between work and life improves not only life, but work as well.
One interesting piece of Time’s reporting is that checking emails after hours isn’t always company mandated. It’s something that we all often know first-hand: In many cases, checking emails after hours is something we often bring upon ourselves — either out of a desire to get ahead, to be seen as busy and highly responsive, or, let’s admit it, out of boredom. But email begets email, and when everyone’s replying on an email chain after hours, suddenly you come into the office and you’re swamped. Time reports on how companies themselves are tackling the issue of after-work emails. Some companies are building time restrictions into their email clients. Others are formally discouraging using “reply all” to limit the number of unnecessary emails. Others are outright telling their employees not to email after hours.
So does the tendency to email around the clock begin with us, or our employers?
It’s a tough question. For our part, our policy as recruiters is that we should be responding to emails after work hours only for highly time-sensitive issues. We recognize the importance of downtime, even if it’s hard to mandate.
But what do you think? It’s unlikely that a law like this would catch on in the U.S., but is our after-hours emailing obsession making workplaces more productive, or is an always-on mentality leading to burnout and distraction?
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by Fronetics | Jan 25, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy
To stay relevant following Google’s mobile-first approach, marketers need to examine their company’s mobile user experience.
Marketers, take notice: Google’s announcement that it is experimenting with a “mobile-first” search index is a reminder to examine your website content and configuration. The message from the search engine giant is clear: Now is the time to enhance your company’s mobile online experience.
A mobile-first society
The future is pointing toward increasing mobile device use. In 2015, mobile traffic accounted for more than half of internet traffic, and that percentage is growing. Google reported that more searches take place on mobile devices than on desktops. In response to this trend, Google’s new algorithms will rank mobile-friendly web pagers higher in search results than desktop pages.
These days, it’s pretty much a given that your clients and customers own a mobile device and use it quite often in their professional lives. Your site needs to meet the expectations of the viewer, which is to access content easily via mobile. If you fall short of this, you’ll lose credibility and, ultimately, income.
What do B2B marketers need to do?
Google currently uses two indexes to rank search results, 1. desktop pages and 2. mobile pages. If Google makes good on its promise to have a mobile-only index, websites optimized for mobile use will get higher billing at the top of search results, leading to more clicks, more brand recognition, and, ultimately, more sales.
Marketers need to prepare now to ensure a prominent place in Google’s search results. Here are three tips on how to do that.
- Develop a strong working relationship with your webmaster — they are in the experts on the technical side and can keep you abreast of updates and trends in website optimization.
- Conduct an audit of your websites to check for SEO. Use a website such as http://responsivedesignchecker.com/ to give you real-time feedback.
- Become familiar with these three methods of web development:
- Responsive web design – allows website pages to adapt to whatever size screen the viewer is using.
- Dynamic serving – the server responds with different HTML (and CSS) on the same URL depending on the user agent requesting the page
- Mobile-only URL – each desktop URL has an equivalent different URL serving mobile-optimized content
Check here to see how your site is configured.
Google’s tips
Google offers tips to webmasters to make their sites mobile-first. If your site is already optimized for mobile with RWD or is a dynamic-serving site, you shouldn’t need to make any adjustments. But if not, work with your webmaster on the following:
- Serve structured markup for desktop and mobile versions
- Make sure your site is accessible to Googlebot
- Verify both desktop and mobile sites in Google’s Search Console
Should your business website be optimized for mobile searching? The short answer is undoubtedly yes.
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by Fronetics | Jan 24, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing
Long-form content generates more traffic, leads, and social shares than shorter content.
We’ve all heard the aphorism, “quantity over quality.” But when it comes to content marketing, part of quality may well be quantity.
While it can seem intimidating, the value of high-quality long-form content cannot be overstated. According to a 2012 study, long-form content converted 30% higher than shorter-form, and the same holds true today. Additionally, long-form posts generate more social media shares and have a higher average Google rank.
Here are some ideas for generating longer-form content that engages and informs your readers, and promotes your business in a meaningful way.
3 tips for creating longer-form content
1. Know your audience.
You first and foremost consideration should be your target audience. Take the temperature of your readers by frequently checking your comments sections, social metrics, and Google Analytics. It can also be useful to conduct a survey, which serves the dual purpose of directly engaging and communicating with your readers and giving you valuable information.
2. Chose relevant ideas.
Read all the articles that are on the first Google search page for your topic, and make sure your post contains relevant information you find. You should be answering as many of the questions that appear in Google Suggest at the top and bottom of the search page.
3. Write good content.
It seems painfully obvious, but it’s worth keeping quality at the top of your priority list. The idea of longer-form posts is to keep readers engaged and encourage them to peruse as much of your site as possible.
Neil Patel suggests that if you “strive to provide enormous value with every word you write,” your writing becomes more targeted. Keep posts visually accessible and easily digestible with short paragraphs, subheadings, and relevant images. Another key element of good content is research. Posts that include actual examples and case studies perform better than data-free posts.
Creating longer-form content may mean that your business needs to devote more resources to its content marketing efforts. But the benefits are well-documented and far outweigh the cost.
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by Jennifer Hart Yim | Jan 23, 2017 | Big Data, Blog, Data/Analytics, Logistics, Strategy, Supply Chain
2016 was the year of the digital supply chain — here’s a look at how things changed.
This guest post comes to us from Adam Robinson, director of marketing for Cerasis, a top freight logistics company and truckload freight broker.
2016 marched onward with a drive to improve the use of digital technology throughout the supply chain. In our first supply chain trends post, we surmised the previous year’s trends would continue. However, this prediction proved to only touch on how important the digital supply chain would become.
Within four months, the digital transformation had already reached most supply chain organizations. Per GT Nexus, 75% of executives surveyed recognized the digital supply chain as an important factor for the next five years. Meanwhile, 70% have also started processes to implement digital supply chain technologies throughout their companies.
Unfortunately, many supply chain entities continue to hope for a better tomorrow. In other words, the digital supply chain transformation has only been rated as very satisfying for 5% of respondents. In addition, just less than half (48%) of respondents report continued use of traditional technologies exclusively, which include the following:
- Fax machines
- Manual order entry and review
- Land-line phones, not voice over internet protocol (VoIP), which reduces overall costs and downtime
- Email, although beneficial, is susceptible to internet connectivity issues, security breaches and other problems
- Chaotic picking protocols
This infographic, created by GT Nexus, also shows other ways the digital supply chain evolved in 2016.

(Made with Canva)
Essentially, the digital supply chain is essential to gaining and maintaining competitive advantage. Digital technologies, reports Richard Howells of Forbes, including Big Data, analytics, the Internet of Things, social media, and point-of-sale reporting, enable business to know more about consumer needs and wants than ever before. Consequently, they can more accurately respond to changes in product demand across large distances and within infinitesimally small time frames.
Supply chain execs retained fundamentals throughout change.
Innovation is the driving force behind change and improvement in the modern world. Supply chains must evolve to meet an increasing number of omnichannel sales, and technologies must be integrated within existing systems to reach maximum efficiency and productive value.
As explained by Grant Marshbank of VSC Solutions, “The rate of change is not going to slow down. Technology will only delivery […] if it’s implemented with strategy and operations that adhere to best practices.”
Marshbank’s words highlighted the need to focus on fundamental concepts while responding to changes and improvements in the supply chain. For example, an optimized supply chain is good, but it opens more opportunities for errors. Simply putting all an organization’s proverbial eggs into one basket may be risky if appropriate auditing and review measures are not undertaken to ensure continued compliance and accuracy in all orders.
Change is a necessity for businesses, including the supply chain, to grow and expand. Yet many destructive forces can severely undermine a company’s progress. Bad weather, poor hiring practices or inefficient maintenance of consumers’ financial data can decimate a company. However, the response to hindrances in 2016 continued to showcase the importance of fundamental concepts, asserts Ryder, which include the following:
- Continually seeking the fastest, most cost-effective means of transporting products to consumers, including enhanced delivery optins.
- Expansion of global footprint while adhering to local, state, federal and international requirements
- Keeping companies accountable and focused on giving back to their domestic partners through reshoring or nearshoring
- Working with more outside agencies, also highlighted by Samantha Carr of Business 2 Community, including crowd-sourced logistics, warehouse optimization and outsourcing, and greater use of cloud-computing
Augmented reality found its place among consumers.
Augmented reality sounded amazing and far-fetched early in 2016, but the year has shown it to be one of the most successful product in existence. There tends to be more acceptance of technologies in the workplace once consumers can identify how they work.
For example, new hires are likely to pick up tablet-based systems more easily since they have been using them recreationally for some time. Essentially, the virtual-reality (VR), which is the precursor to augmented reality, hype of the 2016 Christmas shopping season is making more people excited about this new way to “see the world.”
While the VR hype may seem like it only emerged for Christmas, think about one of the hottest games of 2016, Pokémon Go! This app was built on augmented reality, combining the digital and physical worlds into one interactive environment. This technology, reports JOC.com, will be a key to practically eliminate extensive training courses and repair time requirements throughout the supply chain.
Ultimately, it translates into greater use of augmented reality in supply chains, which is growing by 100% annually, reports Barcoding Incorporated.
What’s next?
Clearly, technology dominated the conversation for 2016, but there are also changes in how supply chains operate that require a more in-depth discussion as well. In the next post of this series, we discuss the impact of artificial intelligence, agile processes and procurement expansion on the supply chain of 2016.
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