5 Reasons Supply Chain Companies Need to Be Curating Content

5 Reasons Supply Chain Companies Need to Be Curating Content

Sharing content from third-party sources establishes your company as a go-to resource for all things related to your industry, sector, products, or services.

When I hear the word “curate,” I think of an art gallery. I think of someone systematically picking pieces of art to display together. I think of the time and effort it takes to put these pieces together in a cohesive manor.

Curating content is no different. It is the process of finding, strategically piecing together, and sharing content that is relevant to your audience through your various distribution channels. Using third-party social media posts, blogs, videos, and more, supply chain companies can enhance their content marketing efforts by distributing information that is readily available.

Research shows content curation is a widely practice content marketing method.

  • 82% of marketers curate content. (IMN Inc.)
  • 83.3% of marketers curate/share content with their customers and/or prospects. (Curata)

Obviously if so many marketers are curating content, there’s a reason. Here are five benefits of content curation for your company.

5 benefits of curating content

1. Establish your expertise

By digging around industry websites or social channels to find interesting and relevant information, you are proving to your readers that you are an expert in your field. You know what’s important and where to find it. You’ll become the go-to company for the most cutting-edge content — all in one easy-to-find place (meaning your audience doesn’t have to scour the web themselves). This will increase your visibility and encourage visitors to trust you as an authority in your industry.

2. Offer a variety of content

Marketers work hard to create different types of content. From blogs to videos to white papers, everyone is trying to stand out and keep things fresh. But you may not be successful at every medium. By curating content from other sources, you can get around that. If you struggle with creating videos, for example, find a reliable source that is already successful in that arena and share with your audience. Your followers will appreciate the change in scenery and will want to come back to see what else is in store.

3. Engage with influencers

TopRank’s Caitlin Burgess writes, “By curating your influencers’ content, it can take less time to achieve your goals, such as developing a working relationship with them and borrowing their audience.” By sharing content from someone who is important and/or influential to your target audience, you can begin a relationship that can have benefits to both parties: Your audience enjoys the content, and the influencer gets free publicity (from you!).

4. Stay in the know

One of the major complaints about content curation is the time it takes to research and find reliable pieces to share. And though there are tools out there to help automate this process, there are major benefits to going through the motions yourself. You’ll not only discover content you can share with your audience, you’ll also keep your finger on the pulse of what’s going on. Consider curation part for your audience and part for you to stay educated on the news and trends in your industry.

5. Keep up the demand for constant content

The foundation of content marketing is to generate leads through the consistent creation and sharing of relevant material. Unfortunately, marketers often struggle to keep up with the demand for new content around the clock. With content curation, you don’t have to be the only one producing content. By sharing quality content from various sources, you are able to supplement your own content and publish more consistently.

Being able to identify, make sense of, and distribute relevant and helpful information makes you valuable to your customers. Over time, readers will come to know you as a trusted, reliable source of knowledge — someone who is not always trying to sell them something. You are an expert in your area of business, and you save your customers and prospects lots of time and effort distributing relevant information so they don’t have to go searching for it from independent sources.

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Content Curation Facts for B2B Marketers

Content Curation Facts for B2B Marketers

If you’re not distributing content created by others, these six facts will convince you that content curation is an essential part of any content marketing strategy.

Content will help you grow your business. By creating and distributing valuable and relevant content in a strategic and consistent manner, you can drive profitable customer action.

But, it’s not all about you. And it’s not all about the content you and/or your business creates. In fact, content curation is an essential component of a successful content marketing strategy.

What is content curation?

Content curation is the process of sorting through the vast sea of content that is the internet and sharing only that content which is most relevant to your customers.

Being able to identify, make sense of, and distribute such information makes you valuable to your customers. Over time, readers will come to know you as a trusted, reliable source of knowledge — someone who is not always trying to sell them something. You are an expert in your area of business, and you save your customers and prospects lots of time and effort distributing relevant information so they don’t have to go searching for it from independent sources.

How are other businesses handling curation?

Companies that curate content report positive effects on their business. Here are six convincing statistics about content creation for B2B marketers.

The vast majority of businesses curate content.

  • 82% of marketers curate content. (IMN Inc.)
  • 83.3% of marketers curate/share content from third party sources (e.g., blogs, social media, industry publications or news sites) with their customers and/or prospects. (Curata)

How often do companies curate content?

  • 16% of marketers are curating for their audience every day.
  • 48% are curating from third-party sources at least once a week. (Curata)

How has curating content impacted business?

  • Over 50% of marketers that curate content indicate that it has increased their brand visibility, thought leadership, SEO, web traffic and buyer engagement. (Curata)
  • 41% of marketers that curate content indicate it has increased the number and/or quality of their sales-ready leads. (Curata)

Does your business curate content? How do you find content to curate?

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Strapped for Content to Share? Try Reddit

Strapped for Content to Share? Try Reddit

Reddit

Reddit is a gold mine for relevant, engaging content to share with your social media followers.

You probably have heard that Reddit is useful in content marketing. But what, exactly, is it, and how do you use it?

Reddit is a news website/social network in which registered users submit content, such as posts and links, which the community of users (called redditors) curates by voting up or down. The more positive votes, the higher the content will appear on the page. Users also can comment on the content, and their comments are organized by the same up-down voting system. The discussion by redditors is often the most important part of any post.

Content is organized into categories, called subreddits. Subreddits can be as broad as News and Music and as specific as Supply Chain Risk Management and 3-D Printing News. Users can subscribe to a subreddit to have popular posts from that category published on their homepages.

Reddit, which ranks as the 9th most popular website in the U.S. and 31st globally, refers to itself as “the front page of the internet” for a good reason. Whatever the industry, topic, or perspective, there is content about it, ready for you to share.

That’s what makes Reddit great for content marketers, who are always looking for content to distribute to followers to keep them engaged. It is also intuitive to find and share exactly what you need.

5 easy steps to get started on Reddit

1) Sign up

First, you must register. Go to Reddit.com and click the “Sign Up” link in the upper-right-hand corner. Mobile users can download the Reddit app.

2) Get to know the community

After setting up a user account, you begin following a default set of subreddits, including topics like Art, Jokes, and Sports. Access them by clicking the “My Subreddits” dropdown menu on the upper-left corner of the homepage. These default subreddits are great for learning about the community.

3) Customize your subreddits

Find subreddits in your niche. It can take time to browse individual subreddits, but you can slash your search time by creating a multireddit, which is a custom dashboard of content around your particular topic of interest. First, find subreddits you want to include with the subreddit search box . This lets you search for all subreddits related to a keyword (for example, supply chain technology). Narrow down further with advanced search options.

4) Create a multireddit

Next, compile a master list of subreddit names, organized by topic, and save them in a multireddit. So, sign into your account, then go to the Reddit front page, and click on the dotted line on the left side. Click the “Create” button, and type in a name for your multireddit. (You can’t use spaces or symbols in the multireddit name.) When you’re finished, click “Create.” You can then filter the posts you see by those that are:

  • Hot: Posts that receive the highest engagement (upvotes/comments)
  • New: The most recent posts
  • Rising: Posts that are gaining popularity
  • Controversial: Posts that receive an equal mix of upvotes and downvotes
  • Top: The most popular posts of all time
  • Gilded: Posts that received reddit gold
  • Promoted: Sponsored content

5) Share

Once you find a link you would like to share on social media, you can queue up content directly from Reddit using Buffer and/or IFTTT. If you have the Buffer extension installed in your browser, you’ll see its link for each Reddit post. Click the link and schedule the Reddit post in your Buffer queue. You can also set up IFTTT recipes, which connect your Reddit activity to Buffer.

Can you post content on Reddit? Yes, but directly marketing your business and self-promotion is not allowed. Instead, create a presence by being relevant within a specific community. Check out reddiquette and FAQs to learn what posts are acceptable. Essentially, 10% or less of your posts and dialogue should link to your own content.

Posting your content can benefit your business. If your post rises to the front page of Reddit, it can drive more than 200K visitors to your content, get picked up by other websites, and garner a ton of social shares.

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Fronetics uses content marketing to drive results and help businesses grow

Fronetics uses content marketing to drive results and help businesses grow

content marketingContent marketing has become a key marketing strategy for many businesses. Statistics show that content marketing generates three times more leads than traditional marketing methods – and those leads cost an average of 62% less. At Fronetics, we’ve built our content marketing services around one goal – helping our clients grow. We’re harnessing the power of content to help our clients connect and engage with leads and prospects in meaningful ways. And our clients are enjoying faster growth and higher profits because of it.

How do we use content to support our clients in their business growth?

We create quality content that helps our clients connect with leads and customers in a number of ways. First, we appeal to and engage potential customers by creating relevant content that’s aligned with the needs of our client’s target audience. Then, we nurture those leads into customers by proving the value of our clients’ products and services. Even after they become customers, we work to create positive customer experiences that make it easy for them to recommend our clients to others.

Services offerings

Here’s a quick breakdown of some the service offerings included in our comprehensive approach to content marketing:

Content strategy

Research has shown that B2B and B2C companies with a documented content strategy in place are more effective than those without one.

At Fronetics, we work with our clients to create a content strategy individualized for their specific situation and needs.  We learn about our client’s business, target customers, industry, and competition.  We also conduct an audit of current content and digital assets.  All of this information is used to create an effective content strategy.

Content creation

There is a lot of content out there.  If you want your content to stand out and drive profitable customer action you need quality content.  At Fronetics, we create quality content that is keyword-optimized.  Also, unlike other firms, we don’t outsource content creation.  By keeping all content creation in-house we are able to ensure a quality product.

Lead generation

Once we’ve helped our clients draw visitors to their website, we work to identify potential customers and manage their leads. We create and couple high-value content like white papers and eBooks, with strategic calls-to-action that direct visitors to landing pages expertly designed to convert website visitors into leads.

Lead nurturing and customer acquisition

We work closely with our clients to develop a lead nurturing strategy to convert leads into paying customers using email and marketing automation. By segmenting leads and sending them targeted content designed to catalyze engagement, we help our clients build relationships – and importantly, trust.

Social media

Social media is an incredible tool; however, for it to be effective it must be driven by strategy, be consistent, and must have someone managing the execution.  At Fronetics, our social media strategists distribute content, curate content, engage your target audience, and monitor your social networks. We develop a social media strategy that aligns with your company’s goals.  We analyze your competition, classify your target audience & cultural attributes, identify the influencers in your industry, recommend platforms, detail best engagement practices, create social media schedules, and identify specific tactics that deliver results.  Through the proper execution of social media, your brand is given a voice and personality, and becomes more accessible to your target audience.

Analytics and reporting

At Fronetics we take a comprehensive data driven approach to marketing.  Metrics measure success, drive strategy, and demonstrate ROI.  We provide our clients with monthly marketing reports.

In short, our content marketing strategies drive success for our clients. The Fronetics team is comprised of strategists, marketing professionals, writers, designers, and experts in social media. Together we leverage our experience to increase brand awareness, position our clients as thought leaders, and drive meaningful engagement with prospects and customers – all with the goal of helping our clients grow.

Get in touch with us today for a free consultation to find out if our retainer services, full or half day workshops, or a personalized service offering is right for your business. See how Fronetics can help your business grow.

 

 

Content use in the logistics and supply chain industries: Infographic

Content use in the logistics and supply chain industries: Infographic

Chief among the determinants of success and failure of companies around the world is the ability to effectively communicate ideas and information. Both internal and external communication play critical roles in advancing business objectives. To be sure, connecting with audiences to convey messaging is a central component of building a solid business strategy. Recent cultural shifts and advances in digital technology have pushed aside traditional methods of communication and given way to the rise of a new type of communication strategy– one that puts content at the very center.

Fronetics Strategic Advisors conducted a survey to better understand the role and use of content within the logistics and supply chain industries.

The survey found that companies within the logistics and supply chain industries are using content as a marketing tool and are realizing benefits.

Survey respondents were asked to identify the goals of their company’s content strategy.  The top three goals identified were:

  • Increasing brand awareness
  • Lead generation
  • Establishing the company as an industry leader.

To learn more, check out our infographic, or download the report.

Infographic: content use in the logistics and supply chain industries