by Elizabeth Hines | Jun 19, 2019 | Blog, Content Marketing, Current Events, Logistics, Marketing, Supply Chain
As the internet is increasingly dominated by visual content, social media analytics are failing to keep up.
Highlights:
- Most social media analytics tools are purely text-based.
- Even tools that analyze images are costly and offer limited insights.
- We predict that machine learning capabilities will improve and the gap between analytics capability and brands’ needs will close.
Here’s an interesting conundrum: social media, and the web at large, is becoming increasingly visual, and social media marketing relies on increasingly sophisticated analytics. However, most of the analytics tools out there are woefully unable to make sense of the visual content that is dominating social media. The alarming truth is that social media analytics are failing to capture invaluable data on visual content.
How social media analytics are failing to keep up
Big data and artificial intelligence expert Kalev Leetaru describes the shortfalls of social media analytics by detailing what they can — and can’t — do. While the capabilities of visual analytics have grown in the past several years, as Leetaru points out, most analytics tools that claim to analyze visual images are in fact based on textual or structural aspects of the image, not the visual content itself.
“The overwhelming majority of production social media analytics research relies primarily on hashtags and associated caption text, rather than the actual contents of the images themselves,” writes Leetaru. Instead, “from simplistic bag of words counting algorithms through advanced deep learning approaches, it is text that forms the lens through which we see social media.”
It’s important to note that this text-based approach is true not only for social media analytics, but for search engine algorithms. At Fronetics, we are constantly advising our clients to make use of visual content, from images to infographics to video, in their digital marketing efforts. But we always advise that marketers optimize their images for search engines, both by tagging all visual assets and publishing transcripts to go along with video or infographics.
In essence, we’re advising our clients to take advantage of the increasingly visual nature of the internet, while also hedging against the ways in which algorithms and social media analytics are failing to assess visual content. As Leetaru points out, even in the rare cases when an analytics tool offers image analysis, it “typically offers only a few basic lenses through which to analyze that content, such as logos and a small number of topics.”
Of course, analyzing visual content is no easy task, and it’s also not cheap. “Images don’t capture reality, they construct it,” observes Leetaru. Not only are there all kinds of variables, like framing or lighting, that come into play, but there is a tremendous amount of non-visual context that determines how an image will be received. And the fact is that “current deep learning approaches are largely unable to incorporate such external world knowledge into their assessments.”
The problem with analytical failure
It’s important for marketers to recognize that, at the current moment, there is a gap between the capabilities of analytics tools and the analytics needs for modern digital marketing. As we as a society “increasingly express ourselves exclusively through visual forms,” brands desperately need insights about this visual expression.
Leetaru sums up the problem with sobering simplicity: “As social media becomes more visual, it becomes less accessible to our data-mining algorithms. In turn, as social media is less and less data minable, we are less and less able to understand it.”
Perhaps even more alarmingly, he cautions that “given that visual expression skews towards the younger and influencer demographics of greatest interest to many brands, this transition is especially damaging to their ability to extract useful insights from social media.”
Essentially, what Leetaru is recognizing is that we’re at a perilous moment for digital marketing. Just when the possibilities for content creation and dissemination seem endless, social media analytics are failing to offer up the insights needed to shape these processes in an increasingly visual climate.
“In the end, as social platforms rush towards a visual-first world, the vast landscape of social analytics is getting less and less representative of what we’re really talking about,” concludes Leetaru.
What does the future hold for analyzing visual data?
While you may be thinking that the future looks pretty bleak in light of how social media analytics are failing us, there’s a silver lining. If there’s one constant when it comes to social media marketing, it’s that when there’s a demand, sooner or later, supply will catch up.
It’s true that the current visual analytics capabilities of most platforms are far behind what’s needed. But at Fronetics, we predict that deep machine-learning capacities will start to catch up, and increasingly sophisticated analytical capabilities will become available to a wider segment of the market.
Currently, social media analytics can recognize text, faces, and brand logos within images. While these capabilities are, at present, too costly for most companies to take advantage of, we’re keeping our eye on some emerging technologies. For example, analytics provider Scraawl has recently released a tool called Scraawl PixL, which will allow users to run object and face detection, as well as Optimal Character Recognition, which extracts text from images.
Expect to see more tools like PixL on the market, offering increasing sophistication. While social media analytics are failing to keep up with the onslaught of visual data at the moment, we predict that they won’t be behind for long.
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by Elizabeth Hines | Jun 18, 2019 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Strategy, Supply Chain, Website Development
The percentage of visitors that stay on your site is key to lead conversion and search engine rankings. Here are our top tips to reduce your website bounce rate.
Highlights:
- A high bounce rate will compromise your site’s search engine rankings.
- Slow website load times are a major cause of bounces.
- Publish high-quality, visually appealing content with relevant keywords and meta data.
When it comes to evaluating the performance of your website, bounce rate is a key indicator. But what does this term really mean for supply chain marketing? After we take a deeper dive into what a bounce rate is and why it’s important to track, we’ll offer 10 ideas to reduce your website bounce rate.
Bounce rate defined
Simply put, your website’s bounce rate is the percentage of users who enter your website and immediately leave, or “bounce,” without visiting any additional pages on your site. Bounces happen when visitors click the back button, navigate to a different URL, close their browser, or leave a page open without taking action.
Having a high bounce rate can be an indication that your site failed to convince the visitor to explore further or act on your call-to-action (CTA). Of course, no website, no matter how effective, has a 0% bounce rate. Some users are bound to leave your website without taking any action. But a healthy bounce rate is a key indicator of website success.
While bounce rate ranges vary based on industry and page type, the general ranges are:
- 80% or higher: bad
- 70%-80%: poor
- 50%-70%: average
- 30%-50%: excellent
- 20% or lower: likely a tracking error
However, the truth about good versus bad bounce rates is more nuanced than these ranges. Bounce rates can vary widely based on website type, channel, and the device visitors are using.
For example, blog posts typically have a high bounce rate (between 60% and 90%), simply because an effective post will give a user what he or she came for, and there’s no further need to explore your site. This doesn’t mean your blog is performing poorly, as bounce rate is just one in a list of metrics needed to assess the overall performance of a site.
Why does bounce rate matter?
Aside from the fairly obvious fact that a high bounce rate means that visitors aren’t being converted into customers on your site, there’s another serious ramification to your bounce numbers: search engine results. According to a recent study from SEMRush, “Bounce rate is the fourth most important ranking factor on search engine results pages.”
Every time a visitor bounces from your page, it signals to search engine algorithms that your site isn’t what the searcher was looking for, and your ranking will suffer. Having a handle on your bounce rate will help you form a clear picture of how your website is performing, as well as give you understanding of one of the key factors in determining your search engine ranking.
10 ways to reduce your website bounce rate
1) Keep an eye on your page load times.
A major cause of bounces is long loading times, particularly on mobile devices. If your page load time is slow, consider switching to HTTP/2.
2) Make sure navigation is easy.
For your website to entice visitors to stick around, it needs to be clearly labeled and easy for prospects to find and get to what they’re looking for.
3) Evaluate your first impression.
You only get one first impression. When it comes to your website, this means clear navigation menus, engaging headlines, easy-to-read text, subheadings and bullets, and minimal pop-ups or auto-play videos.
4) Publish high-quality content.
Perhaps this goes without saying, but there’s no substitute for high-quality content when it comes to keeping visitors engaged on your site.
5) Optimize your meta data.
A meta description is the text that appears below your website’s URL in search engine results. This text should accurately represent what the page contains, which helps ensure that visitors find what they’re looking for when they click.
6) Create a quality design.
Clean, compelling design is important for keeping users on your page. Ideally, your site’s design should not only be functional and intuitive, but aesthetically pleasing.
7) Optimize mobile experience.
Bearing in mind that mobile users typically have even less patience than desktop users, your site’s mobile version should have a quick load speed, clean design elements, and easy navigability.
8) Use relevant keywords.
The keywords you choose should not only be relevant to your audience’s search queries, but they should reflect what visitors will actually find on your site. If your site ranks high for a keyword that doesn’t relate to the majority of your content, then users searching for that keyword will quickly leave.
9) Write good calls-to-action (CTAs).
A good CTA is key not only to converting leads but also to reducing your website bounce rate. Ideally, your CTA should be clearly visible within the first few seconds of being on a page, and it should be compelling.
10) Use images and videos.
We live in a visual world, so naturally, this type of content connects best with users. Statistic after statistic supports the idea that visual content is dominating the internet. To reduce your website bounce rate, include visuals that keep your audience interested.
What tricks are you using to reduce your website bounce rate?
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by Elizabeth Hines | Jun 13, 2019 | Blog, Content Marketing, Leadership, Logistics, Marketing, Supply Chain, Talent
A new LinkedIn post takes a refreshing look at achieving a work-life balance for working parents. The article has been shared all over social media begging the question: does your office need to know?
The New York Times reported that more and more couples are choosing to have smaller families due to economic factors. Let’s face it: kids are expensive. Most families have to balance wages with the exorbitant cost of childcare.
And that doesn’t even begin to look at finding harmony between your career and your family. In a recent post on LinkedIn, Ian Sohn, a single father and president of Wunderman Chicago, takes a clever and honest look at creating a work-life balance, a juggling act many of us know all too well.
“You should never apologize for having a life.”
The post was a list of things this Chicago-based boss ‘never needs to know’ about his employees, including:
- I never need to know you’ll be back online after dinner.
- I never need to know that you’re working from home today because you simply need the silence.
- I never need to know why you chose to watch season 1 of “Arrested Development” (for the 4th time) on your flight to LA instead of answering emails.
- I never need to know you’ll be in late because of a dentist appointment. Or that you’re leaving early for your kid’s soccer game.
- I never need to know why you can’t travel on a Sunday.
- I never need to know why you don’t want to have dinner with me when I’m in your town on a Tuesday night.
The sentiments of Sohn’s post hit home with a lot of working parents — the post has almost 2,000 comments to date. So why does this list ring true for so many working mothers and fathers?
“Like any modern business … there’s an additional need to respect other people’s lives and environment you work in, and everyone is accountable for getting their job done,” says Sohn in USA Today.
As businesses have become more digital, the ability to do you work remotely has increased. Ask any employee who works remotely, and they’re very likely to tell you that working from home makes them happier and more productive. And they aren’t necessarily wrong. There’s certainly evidence to suggest that with today’s technology, there’s essentially no downside to working from home, and it does often enhance productivity.
Here at Fronetics, we believe, much like Sohn, in the balance between work and home life. As individuals, we strive to excel at our jobs through accountability. Have a doctor’s appointment? Need to attend a school performance? We don’t need to know.
Has your office implemented policies to encourage flexibility? Has it been successful?
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by Elizabeth Hines | Jun 6, 2019 | Blog, Content Marketing, Leadership, Logistics, Marketing, Supply Chain
Here are 5 books for supply chain professionals to gain insights about the industry and leadership practices.
Highlights:
- There’s no substitute for the in-depth analysis and explanation made possible by the long-format of a book.
- Leadership and professional growth means learning from the perspectives and insights of others.
- This year’s list includes works by Richard J. Sherman, Steven Bowen, and Edward H. Frazelle.
There’s no question that we live in a digital age, with information on almost any topic quickly accessible at our fingertips. But even in this age of short soundbites and reductively simplistic explanations, there’s no substitute for the value of sustained analysis and critical insight. To that point, we’ve put together a list of five books for supply chain professionals.
The supply chain leaders and analysts whose books are on this list each bring unique skills, perspectives, and approaches to the table. Being your best professional self means learning from the successes, failures, and insights of others. Add these five books to your summer reading list, and let us know how they make an impact on your professional life.
5 books for supply chain professionals
1) Strategic Supply Chain Management: The Five Core Disciplines for Top Performance, Second Edition
Co-authored by Shoshanah Cohen and Joseph Roussel, this classic guide to supply chain strategy has been re-created to help business leaders gain an advantage in today’s volatile, globalized arena. The global landscape has changed dramatically since the first edition of Strategic Supply Chain Management established itself as the authority on creating value and achieving competitive advantage from the supply chain.
This second edition is your answer to gaining a strategic advantage in the face of these challenges. Drawing on dozens of new company examples as well as cutting-edge benchmarking research, it shows you how to make your supply chains more agile, flexible, and resilient.
2) Supply Chain Transformation: Practical Roadmap to Best Practice Results
Much is being written about global supply chain and sourcing options emerging in today’s marketplace. Transforming supply chain management to achieve operational excellence is a mandate for many companies globally. Supply Chain Transformation, written by Richard J. Sherman, walks you through this potentially difficult process and gets you started on the journey.
Much more than just a how-to book, it’s a why-to book that is as compelling for any business person as it is for supply chain management professionals. This book provides an invaluable road map to companies looking to transform their supply chains and organizations to achieve best practice results, beginning with guidance on how to make the case for change. Change is inevitable; growth is optional.
3) Total Value Optimization: Transforming Your Global Supply Chain into a Competitive Weapon
Today’s corporate leaders are under increasing pressure to deliver differentiated, lasting performance, fast. New business models are continuously cropping up, with competitors becoming more numerous, more formidable, and more global. This puts profitability at risk as whole supply chains shift in industries.
Steven Bowen provides a clear pathway to transforming supply chains into the ultimate competitive weapons. Bowen’s method, which he calls Total Value Optimization, places customer value at the heart of the business-model, through a demand-driven digital supply chain. Grounded in data analytics, Total Value Optimization is essential for companies looking to survive and thrive in today’s fast-paced and ever-changing business environment.
4) Designing and Managing the Supply Chain – Third Edition
Designing and Managing the Supply Chain provides state-of-the-art models, concepts, and solution methods that are important for the design, control, operation, and management of supply chain systems. In particular, authors David Simchi-Levi, Philip Kaminsky, and Edith Simchi-Levi attempt to convey the intuition behind many key supply chain concepts and to provide simple techniques that can be used to analyze various aspects of the supply chain.
Topical coverage reflects the authors’ desire to introduce readers to those aspects of supply chain management that are critical to the success of a business. Although many essential supply chain management issues are interrelated, the authors strive to make each chapter as self-contained as possible, so that the reader can refer directly to chapters covering topics of interest.
5) Supply Chain Strategy, Second Edition: Unleash the Power of Business Integration to Maximize Financial, Service, and Operations Performance
The industry standard in supply chain management, Supply Chain Strategy’s Second Edition is fully revised and updated to provide today’s logistics solutions. The proven pillars of success in logistics and supply chain management introduced in the first edition of Supply Chain Strategy now guide the supply chains of many of the world’s most successful organizations.
Written by Edward H. Frazelle, Supply Chain Strategy includes up-to-date case studies showing how some of the world’s most successful companies meet supply chain goals and helps you overcome your own challenges with the latest supply chain innovations, including big-data analytics, supply chain command and control centers, large-scale supply chain optimization, integrated supply chain planning, and real-time global supply chain visibility.
Bonus read: “First: Sandra Day O’Connor”
No, Evan Thomas’ bio of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor doesn’t specifically relate to the supply chain. But if you’re looking for inspiring reading on leadership, overcoming adversity, and empowering women in the workplace, this newly released biography of the first female Supreme Court Justice is an excellent read.
What books for supply chain professionals have you read recently?
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by Elizabeth Hines | Jun 5, 2019 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Robotics & Automation, Social Media, Supply Chain
When it comes to digital marketing, social media is here to stay. Here’s our four-step guide to leveraging social media for the robotics industry.
Highlights:
- Having a documented strategy is key to reap the benefits of social media marketing.
- Define your audience and establish concrete goals for social media campaigns.
- Set metrics and use data to adjust your strategy consistently over the long term.
The demand for high-performance robotic systems is growing steadily and showing no signs of slowing down. In fact, New Equipment Digest predicts that the robotics vertical within the materials-handling-equipment sector will grow by over 8%, reaching $20 billion by the year 2024. To capture the benefits of the sector’s growth, robotics companies need to invest in digital marketing. Social media for the robotics industry holds tremendous potential — if it’s leveraged properly.
In our work with clients across various verticals in the supply chain, including robotics, we frequently hear that they have been skeptical about the potential of B2B social media use. While social media management does require time and resources, robotics companies should absolutely be reaping the benefits of social media marketing.
Read on for tips on how to create a strategy and leverage social media for the robotics industry.
4 steps to developing a strategy for social media for the robotics industry
1) Define your audience.
For supply chain companies, one of the biggest predictors of success in a social media marketing campaign is a clearly documented strategy. A big part of that is defining your target audience. Chances are, you have some target buyer personas already. Keep these top of mind as you create your social media strategy.
What are the unique needs and challenges faced by your audience? Where do they go online for information? What are their goals? What do they value from you? The more you ask and answer questions about your audience, the better positioned you are to create a strong and effective social media strategy.
2) Determine your goals.
Next, consider what your goals are on social media. You’d be surprised how often this step gets skipped. Marketers are often pressed for time or resources and think of social media marketing itself as a goal, rather than defining specific, measurable objectives for their social media campaigns.
When it comes to social media for the robotics industry, common goals often include increasing brand awareness and authority, generating leads, or establishing thought leadership. But before you embark on a social media strategy, consider what your company specifically needs to achieve.
3) Define your metrics.
One of the best things about having documented goals for your social media strategy is that it helps you define what metrics you should be using to track your progress toward those goals. Measuring social media ROI is no easy task, but there are plenty of tools and strategies that can help. While your full list of metrics will be determined by the goals you set, robotics companies should be tracking at least these four metrics:
- Where traffic is coming from
- Revenue derived from posts
- Visitor behavior on your site
- Social media conversions
In addition to the analytics tools offered by social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, Google Analytics can give you a bird’s eye view of your social media efforts, as well as delving into detail on the metrics that matter most to you. For more, be sure to check out our guide to getting the most out of Google Analytics.
4) Choose your platforms.
Not all social media platforms are created equal. When it comes time to choose your social media platforms and create a strategy for each, it’s important for robotics companies to consider where their audience spends their time online (see step 1).
As you identify what social media channels are the best fit for your company, keep in mind that the characteristics of each platform should inform what content and how often you should be posting. Twitter, for example, lends itself to short-form, pithy content or links and frequent posting, while a more visual platform like Instagram only requires 1-2 posts per day.
Going forward: using your metrics to stay agile
Once your strategy is established, you can simply put it into place, start posting content, and forget about it, right? Wrong. Effective use of social media for the robotics industry requires ongoing evaluation and adjustment.
If you’ve defined the right metrics to track, the data you collect should help you determine where your efforts are successful and where your methods need to be adjusted. As you refine your strategy and learn the needs and preferences of your target audience, you’ll find that social media is an extremely effective tool for capturing leads, broadening your brand’s reach, and building your reputation.
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by Elizabeth Hines | May 29, 2019 | Blog, Content Marketing, Data/Analytics, Marketing
These Google Analytics reports are crucial to understanding the visitors who are browsing your website and how you are more likely to get them to convert.
Highlights:
- Audience reports tell you who is visiting your website.
- Acquisition reports convey how are users getting to your website.
- Behavior reports show what visitors are doing on your website.
(Made with Canva)
Your website is your best opportunity to convert digital prospects into leads. But how can you learn who is browsing your website and what they are doing while they’re there? Most importantly, how can you get more of them to convert? Here’s where tools like Google Analytics can help.
Google Analytics is one of if not THE most comprehensive analytics tools available to digital marketers. But it can be very overwhelming if you don’t know how to navigate it. So, we’ve come up with the 3 Google Analytics reports you should be running if you want to understand how to get more visitors to convert on your website.
But, first, let’s start with the basics.
Understanding Google Analytics
At a fundamental level, Google Analytics helps you understand and make decisions based on the traffic that comes to your website. This free tool is a powerhouse that uses a JavaScript code to collect data surrounding how users interact with your website. It then processes that data and generates customizable reports for you within the platform.
I should say: the data you gain from Google Analytics is all the richer if you begin by setting up Goals on the platform. This way, Google Analytics can go to work for you, measuring how well your website is fulfilling your specific objectives. If you start by properly setting and configuring your goals, Google Analytics can provide you with critical information that’s specific to your strategy. Of course, you can always add to or adjust your goals, as you collect data.
Getting the most out of Google Analytics can empower you to make improvements to your website based on the data it collects for you. The more information you have about your site and its traffic, the more you can make adjustments to meet your objectives. Furthermore, the insights you gain from your metrics can help shape future objectives, to improve user experience on your site.
3 Google Analytics reports that are key to getting the most out of the platform
Using Google Analytics, you can gain insight into some of the most important questions surrounding user engagement with your website. In particular, these 3 reports are helpful in getting the most useful data for understanding lead conversion opportunities:
- Audience reports: Who is visiting your website?
- Acquisition reports: How are users getting to your website?
- Behavior reports: What are website visitors doing on your website?
Here’s what you need to know about each report.
1) Audience reports
As you create and publish content on your website, you need to know who’s reading/watching/viewing/listening to it. With Google Analytics, you can get information about your audience such as age, location, gender, interests, and other behavior.
As users are increasingly engaging with websites on mobile devices, we often encourage clients to monitor the Mobile report as well as other audience demographics. This report shows you what percentage of your audience comes from a mobile device, as compared to a desktop or tablet. You need this information, particularly because mobile device users tend to have different behavior and goals from those on desktops. If your traffic is heavily mobile, your site needs to be optimized for these visitors.
We also encourage clients to make use of Google Analytics’ audience benchmarking reports. These reports allow you to compare your results with aggregated industry data, giving you the context you need to set targets. Benchmarking can also give you insights into industry-wide trends and help you determine how you’re doing as compared to your competitors.
2) Acquisition reports
Knowing how visitors are getting to your website will empower you not only to improve your site, but to make strategic decisions surrounding your other digital channels. Google Analytics offers acquisition reports that provide insight into where your visitors originated from. Users may be finding your website through search engines, social networks, website referrals, and more.
Use the Acquisition Overview to get a quick overview of the top channels that are funneling visitors to your website. You can also see associated acquisition, behavior, and conversion details for each of these channels. If you have your Google Analytics Goals in place, the Acquisitions Overview report will display how well each channel is driving conversions.
Next, take a deeper dive in the Channels section, which gives you rich information about each of your channels. For example, if you click on the “Organic Search” channels, Google Analytics takes you to the Keywords report, which lets you know how you’re faring with specific search queries. Clicking the “Direct” channel will take you to the top landing pages for direct site visitors, and “Social” shows you your top-referring social networks.
3) Behavior reports
Once visitors are on your site, what are they doing there? If you’re getting the most out of Google Analytics, you can see how visitors move through your site and interact with your content – and, in turn, you can be strategic about optimizing your website for conversions.
Start with the Behavior Overview. Here, you’ll find a graph of the amount of traffic your website receives, as well as additional metrics such as Pageviews, Average Time on Page, Bounce Rate, and more.
For more insight, the Behavior Flow report shows you the path users typically take on your website. You can see the first page they view, all the way to the final page they typically visit before exiting your site. Here, you’re getting a visual of how long visitors stay on your website — and learn a bit about why they leave.
The bottom line: Google Analytics reports help you optimize your website
Data empowers you to make informed decisions and tailor your strategies to meet your objectives. Not only that, data can help you determine your objectives in the first place. Google Analytics is perhaps the most robust tool out there for gathering information and insights into essentially every aspect of your website. Make sure you’re making use of it.
What Google Analytics reports have you found most helpful?
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