by Fronetics | Jan 19, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Data/Analytics, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
The chances are that your company is not tweeting as often as it should.
Each second around 6,000 tweets are tweeted. Each minute over 350,000 tweets are tweeted. The median lifespan of each of these tweets is just 18 minutes. After 18 minutes of being live, the chance of someone seeing your tweet is very low. The chance of someone interacting with that tweet — even lower.
Given the large volume of tweets and the short lifespan of each tweet, how often should you tweet?
To get the most value out of each tweet, tweet around five times each day. To get the most value out of your company’s Twitter presence as a whole, tweet up to 30 times per day.
At Fronetics, we recommend focusing on getting the most value out of your company’s twitter presence as opposed to getting the most value out of each tweet.
When developing your Twitter strategy, here are a few things to keep in mind:
Timing is everything.
Identify the time of day most of your followers are active and what time of day your tweets receive the highest level of engagement. Followerwonk and Tweriod are two tools you can use to conduct this analysis. Rival IQ takes the analysis one step further and shows you when your competitors are tweeting and when they are realizing their highest level of engagement.
It is important to conduct this analysis on a regular basis and to adjust your strategy accordingly.
Be relevant. Be strategic.
Every single tweet you send should be relevant and should fit within your strategic goals and objectives.
Don’t be annoying.
Tweeting when your followers are active and when you have the highest levels of engagement is important, but don’t go overboard. For example, if you learn that 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. are the best times of day for your company to tweet, do not schedule all 30 of your tweets to go live at those times.
Be creative.
Don’t tweet the same tweet over and over and over again. It’s ok to share the same article a few times, but change up the image and/or the tweet to make it fresh.
Be visual.
Tweets with images get more engagement than tweets without images. Analysis by Buffer found that tweets with images receive:
- 150% more retweets
- 89% more favorites
- 18% more clicks
Be realistic.
Determine what you can realistically do on a consistent basis. If you can only commit to tweeting 5 times per day, stick with that. It is better to have strategy that you can execute than to have a strategy that cannot realistically be executed.
Finally, remember you don’t need to go it alone. Tools such as Buffer, HootSuite, Sprout Social, and HubSpot allow you to schedule tweets. Scheduling tweets makes it easier to tweet more often so that you can realize the value of a Twitter strategy.
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by Elizabeth Hines | Jan 18, 2017 | Blog, Logistics, Strategy, Supply Chain, Warehousing & Materials Handling
Having a modern, flexible supply chain is important to finding the way out of inventory dilemmas.
Imagine your irritation when you try to place an order online and are greeted by the message: “We apologize for the inconvenience, but this item is out of stock.”
However, even if the item is in stock, your mood is likely to sour if delivery will take more than a few days — and, even worse, you also have to pay for shipping. If you’re anything like me, you will quickly find an equivalent product that’s available immediately and ready to be shipped that same day.
It’s in the light of this hyper-competitive environment that the current inventory crisis should be seen. To sum it up from the perspective of warehouse owners: these are good times. Warehouse rents are hitting new highs as vacancy rates sit below five percent in many major cities.
From the viewpoint of retailers, on the other hand, it’s a significant challenge. Excess inventory is building even as consumer demand remains relatively high. Well aware of the consequences of not meeting ever-rising consumer expectations, retailers have felt compelled to stock up to — at all costs — avoid that irritating “out-of-stock” disclaimer. On the other hand, a chock-full warehouse is not necessarily good for business or speedy fulfillment.
Modernity and flexibility are key
This is when the importance of having a modern, flexible supply chain really comes into play:
- How quickly can the supply chain adjust to changes in demand?
- What’s the visibility up and down the supply chain?
- How aware is each link of what others are doing?
- How fast can inventory be refocused?
Some companies like Nordstrom have invested in cloud-based supply chain services. In Nordstrom’s case, the acquisition of a minority stake in DS Co., a supply chain software firm, which links inventory management between retailers and suppliers, was designed to facilitate direct shipments from vendors to customers, thereby circumventing the need for more inventory space. When suppliers and retailers track the inventory of one another, the risk of out-of-stock disappointments is reduced and risk is shifted up the supply chain.
Put to practice, it means that an order placed on the luxury retailer’s website is routed to the manufacturer, which then ships the item directly from its warehouse to the buyer. The Wall Street Journal noted Nordstrom’s investment comes “as retailers are racing to compete with e-commerce companies such as Amazon.com Inc. to provide convenience and speedy delivery to customers while keeping costs down.”
J.C. Penney is also shifting gears to avoid inventory gluts. The new business model essentially turns part of the store into a showroom for one of its suppliers, Ashley Furniture. Instead of keeping inventory in store or in distribution centers, all orders will be shipped straight to the consumer from Ashley Furniture.
Drones are not surprisingly part of solving the inventory dilemma. Walmart, for example, is testing the use of drones to catalog inventory, finishing in one day what it takes employees a whole month to get done. The intent is partly to make the giant retailer’s supply chain more efficient.
Clearly, traditional retailers are exploring new territory to meet consumer demand.
What do you think is key to solving the inventory crisis?
This post originally appeared at EBN Online.
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by Fronetics | Jan 17, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing
Research and firsthand knowledge show a very strong correlation between posting frequency and traffic/leads.
Clients often ask us, “How often should I blog?” It’s a great question that has no simple answer.
The reality is that the more often you blog, the more traffic and leads you’ll get. Search engines consider posting frequency in their rankings. What’s more, every time you post, you create a new opportunity to be found, to be shared, and to be linked to by other sites.
The trouble, of course, is balancing resources so that you’re publishing frequently but maintaining value and quality within your content. So while there’s no universal magic number, there may be a sweet spot for the amount of posts your organization is able to publish to maximize traffic and leads.
Let’s look at some data that makes the case for frequent blog publication.
The more you publish, the more they’ll read.
There is a high correlation between publishing frequency and web traffic/leads. This is evident in a number of recent studies:
- HubSpot’s latest benchmarking data shows that blogs that published 16+ times per month received 3.5x more traffic than those that published weekly or less often.
- From the same report, companies that published 16+ blog posts per month got about 4.5X more leads than companies that published between 0-4 monthly posts.
- Curata’s recent survey of 400+ marketers found that 90.5% of the most successful business blogs (over 10,000 views per month) publish at least once a week.
If you’re a small business, you may be thinking, “Sure. Those successful blogs are all run by big brands with endless resources!” Not so, friends.
Two-thirds of the best-in-class blogs (with 10,000+ views per month) from the Curata study were run by small companies. The Hubspot report found that increasing posting frequency had the biggest impact on smaller businesses: Companies with 10 or fewer employees that published 11+ posts per month had almost 3X more traffic than companies publishing 0-1 monthly posts, and about 2X as much traffic as those publishing 2-5 monthly posts.
Will blogging one more time per week really make a difference?
We often encourage our clients to increase their blogging cadence by just one more post per week. Though some are skeptical of the impact this will have on their traffic and lead-generation efforts, they inevitably find that such a small step can make a big difference.
Take one client of ours for example. We suggested moving from publishing one post to two posts per week. The client was unsure this would have any impact, especially for a company in the supply chain industry. But the immediate results spoke for themselves. After just one month, traffic increased by 23%, sales leads doubled, and the client landed a new customer.
How often does your company blog? Have you ever experimented with posting frequency to determine how your resources are best spent?
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by Fronetics | Jan 16, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Supply Chain
Keep these four trends in mind when planning out your marketing efforts in 2017.
Marketo recently revealed its predictions for upcoming marketing trends for 2017. It’s a list of technologies, strategies, and tactics that the marketing software automation company believes will be important to focus on over the next year.
We culled through these predictions to highlight what the supply chain industry needs to know. Below are four trends marketers should have on their radars.
4 marketing predictions to watch out for
1. Customer-Centric Marketing
For B2B companies, customer-centric marketing means buyer-centric marketing. Because the cost of switching vendors is increasingly low, and the buyer is faced with endless choices, it’s likely that 2017 will see “an aggressive shift in attention toward increasing customer spend.”
This means increasing your focus on building and cultivating relationships. Marketo suggests that companies balance their marketing spend to “invest in building engagement, brand loyalty, and advocacy with current customers rather than just finding new ones.”
It’s likely that technology will play a big role in this 2017 trend. Your company needs marketing team members who are tech-savvy and who know how to analyze and respond to customers’ digital signals.
Focusing on the customer also means building authentic connections and a move toward “giving as much as you get, if not more.” We’ll see more and more customer advocacy, which means that marketers need to focus on taking relationships beyond the transactional. Marketo recommends “providing them with opportunities to showcase their expertise and be recognized by their peers as leaders and innovators.”
The key takeaway: 2017 is the year of building quality relationships.
2. A New Generation of Marketers
We used to live in a marketing climate where specialization was the key to success — no longer is that the case. Your business needs leaders who are “full-brain marketers,” multi-talented generalists who are comfortable handling challenges from the creative design to demand generation — and beyond.
It’s time to abandon thinking in silos. Marketo recommends that your marketing team be in constant connection with other teams within the company. “B2B marketers can now use technology to ensure their sales team have visibility and participation in programs — versus being isolated from critical activities.”
This kind of structural shift requires openness and humility. Marketers need to be willing to take questions and ask them, and to be open to making changes based on increased intra-business collaboration.
Marketo predicts that 2017 will see the perfect storm hit the marketing world, bringing an intersection between fulfilling customer needs, storytelling, and digital interactions. Your company needs to look at its organization and build deep expertise across these three functions. “Any marketing organization that’s missing one of these three functions is destined for failure,” warns Marketo.
This new generation of marketers means that top-performing B2B companies will be making optimal use of technology and data. You need to be investing in resources and technology to drive data enrichment and data governance activities to set a good foundation for your account-based marketing strategy. This also means working closely with sales to understand their thought process for lead prioritization and acceptance.
Here, the key to success is open communication within your organization.
3. Techniques
Marketo has laid out a new equation for how marketers will incorporate techniques to engage buyers at every stage of the cycle:
Inbound + Broad-based lead generation + Account-based marketing + Paid media personalization + Direct marketing = Successful customer engagement
What does this mean for the supply chain? Your company can use a combination of these strategies to engage prospects. For example, combining account-based marketing (ABM) strategies with broad-based strategies will allow marketers to build long-term customer relationships, while bridging their advertising and marketing technologies to demonstrate ROI.
All this focus on ABM solutions will allow marketers to become more efficient, taking advantage of cutting-edge technologies. Marketo suggests creating a detailed ABM plan for all departments, which includes creative marketing ideas to test, as well as new technologies.
It’s time to harness the technology at your fingertips.
4. Content & Channels
2017 is likely to usher in a return to value over volume, both in content assets and in content distribution channels. It’s time to stop creating content for the sake of creating content and to shift toward “deeply listening to and understanding the customer.” This will allow you to cull some of the content and channels that aren’t benefitting your business.
It’s easier than you might think to put this trend into practice. Marketo suggests starting by “deeply understanding the content you already have, and taking the time to evaluate what resonates and what doesn’t.” Next, you can create a plan to keep your content strategy going forward in a meaningful way.
As far as channels go, user experience, particularly for mobile, is going to be increasingly important. You can prepare for this by adding structured data to your site, and by providing valuable content. It’s important to keep a watch on the changing user behavior and expectations, as it will be the biggest driver of change in SEO.
As algorithms continually change, and chronological timeline updates increasingly being phased out, social media channels will put more focus on individuals over brands — this means an absence in brands showing up in feeds organically. You can rise to this challenge by making real-time engagement a priority.
We’ll also see ad inventory becoming tighter and more expensive across social platforms. This means you’ll need to become more specific about the audiences you target, and make your offers increasingly personalized and relevant. Marketo adds the hopeful prediction that “advertisers will benefit from more ways to track offline conversions and non-immediate revenue.”
As email technology advances, email campaigns will begin to predict the content you want and really need. The end result here is “targeted, personalized communications optimized for each person, based on their online and email behaviors.”
The takeaway for content in 2017 is: quality over quantity.
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by Fronetics | Jan 12, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
Competitive benchmarking should be part of your data-driven marketing strategy.
In August 2016, Elaine Thompson claimed the mantle of world’s fastest woman, and Michael Phelps became the most decorated Olympian of all time. Thompson and Phelps achieved these incredible feats by continuously pushing themselves to do better. To do this, they not only tracked and measured their personal performance, but they also tracked the performance of their peers and of their competitors. Together, this data gave Thompson and Phelps the knowledge and drive needed to improve their own performance.
When it comes to measuring marketing performance, most marketers look inward, focusing on key performance indictors (KPIs) such as website traffic, open rates, social engagement metrics, and conversion rates. While these inward facing KPIs are important, it is also important to look at what is happening outside your organization and to benchmark your marketing performance against peers and competitors. This will give you the knowledge and drive you need to improve your performance and chance of success. It can help you to identify threats and strategic opportunities.
WHO
When adding competitive benchmarking to your marketing strategy the first step is to determine who to benchmark against. I recommend not just benchmarking against direct competitors, but to also benchmark against industry leaders, and against a company or two that you think is excelling (this company does not need to be in your industry). By taking this more global view, you can gain ideas and intelligence from industry leaders and from the creative and strategic minds of top performers. A word of caution – be strategic and keep the number of companies to a reasonable number.
WHAT
While you should determine the KPIs to track and measure based on your business and marketing goals, here are some to consider:
- Traffic by channel
- Visits by source
- Bounce rate
- Keywords
- PPC activity and spending
- Social engagement
- Social reach
- Posting times
- Top performing content
- Meta description (company positioning)
As with your inward facing KPIs, action is key. Use the data you gather to inform your strategy.
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by Fronetics | Jan 11, 2017 | Blog, Current Events, Marketing, Social Media
Learn about LinkedIn’s makeover, the parade of apps joining the live video trend, and more social media news for supply chain marketers.
As part of our ongoing series informing supply chain marketers about the latest updates and trends on social networking platforms, here is the January 2017 edition of social media news.
LinkedIn gets a new look
If you’ve signed onto LinkedIn lately and noticed everything looks a little different, you’ve experienced the new LinkedIn. The latest version should make it easier to find new contacts, interact with connections, and write posts, but it may take some getting used to. Social Media Examiner’s What Marketers Need to Know guide can help you navigate all the new features and organization.
Instagram rolls out live video
Following the massive success of Facebook Live, Instagram has introduced a live broadcasting tool within its Stories feature, now available for all U.S. users. Live videos disappear after they finish running. Reportedly, the Explore tab will feature a “top live” section so users can browse popular broadcasts as they are happening.
Twitter adds live broadcast feature
Twitter, too, joined the live video game by introducing #GoLive, powered by Periscope. Within the Twitter app for iOS or Android, users can tweet live video, while followers on Twitter and Periscope can join, comment on, and send hearts to the broadcast. Read more
Facebook introduces Live 360
Facebook announced the impending arrival of Live 360 for all Pages and Profiles sometime later this year. Combining the experiences of live broadcast with 360 video, the new feature will “[transport] people into new experiences — right as they happen.”
Twitter will pare down Vine to Vine Camera
Contrary to previous reports, Twitter will not completely shut down the video app Vine, but instead dress it down to a camera app called Vine Camera. Users will still be able to create 6-second looping videos and post them directly to Twitter or save them to their phones. Read more
Instagram introduces Saved Posts
Users of the Instagram 10.2 app for iOS or Android are now able to save posts from other users in their own private collections. Instagram has added a small bookmark icon on the bottom-right-hand side of each photo, which allows users to pin that image to their Saved Posts board. This board is not visible to other users, but individuals can access their Saved Posts at any time. Read more
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