Infographic: Top Tips for Your Supply Chain Blog

by Fronetics | Jan 17, 2019 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Supply Chain

Blogging should be a central part of your content marketing strategy. Here are our top tips for creating and sustaining a successful supply chain blog in 2019.

Highlights:

Blogging needs to be a central part of your content marketing strategy.
Focus on quality over quantity.
Make all posts mobile-friendly.

It’s the start of a new year and the perfect time to start setting goals and strategizing how to achieve them. Hopefully, blogging is a big part of your strategy for 2019 — after all, supply chain companies should make blogging a central part of their content marketing strategy for all kinds of reasons.

[bctt tweet=”At last count, users share 27 million pieces of new content on social media every single day. Twenty-seven million!” username=”Fronetics”]

Making your supply chain blog stand out from the pack isn’t always easy. That’s why we created the infographic below. Read on for our top 5 supply chain blogging tips for 2019.

5 tips for your supply chain blog

(Made with Canva)

1. Set clear goals

We know, this one sounds obvious. But you’d be surprised how often marketers overlook this seemingly simple step or settle for general, vague goals. It’s true that blogging can have all kinds of positive impacts for the supply chain, but that doesn’t mean that you should just be blogging without a clear, documented set of goals specific to your business.

Whether it’s growing your email subscriber base, boosting organic traffic, or generating more qualified leads, having specific goals in mind when you set your blogging strategy is key. For one thing, it lets you target your efforts and generate content that is focused on achieving a specific result or set of results. Furthermore, having objectives allows you to be far more effective in evaluating your results, including measuring blogging ROI, and tweak your strategy accordingly.

What are your top three goals for your supply chain blog in 2019? Let us know in the comments!

2. Make quality top of mind

Ponder this for a minute: At last count, users share 27 million pieces of new content on social media every single day. Twenty-seven million. In a world of skyrocketing quantity, quality is ever-more important. There’s a huge amount of pressure on supply chain marketers to produce a constant stream of content, but the sad truth is, if you’re not producing high-quality, substantive content, you’re wasting time and energy.

For supply chain companies in particular, it’s crucial that every piece of your content be well-researched, clearly written, focused, and trustworthy. We know that producing consistently high-quality content isn’t easy, but, trust us: if you invest the time and energy to make your content stand out, you will see the results. To get you started or keep you focused, check out our guide to creating good content for logistics and supply chain marketers.

3. Be on the alert for changes

Particularly when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), changes happen fast these days. In August of 2017, Google updated its algorithm, continuing a set of changes we’ve been watching for a while now. Voice searches are becoming increasingly prevalent, and researchers estimate that by 2020, 50% of all searches will be voice queries.

As these changes continue to happen, it’s crucial that your strategy is lithe and flexible, ready to adapt to a quickly shifting climate. This means keeping abreast of conversations going on in the industry, following blogs you trust and respect, as well as tracking your own results, and being alert to changing trends.

4. Keep it mobile-friendly

You don’t need researchers to tell you: people are increasingly receiving and reading content on their phones. Whether it’s social media, emails, or blogs, mobile usage continues to skyrocket as devices become more and more ubiquitous and user-friendly.

What does this mean for supply chain blogs? Of course, your website needs to have a visually attractive and accessible mobile version, but it’s also helpful to think about your blog posts in terms of how they appear on a phone. Keep your posts skimmable, with plenty of subheadings to orient the reader, and absolutely include video whenever possible.

5. Make sure your systems are up to date

We keep coming back to the reality of the rate of change these days. It can be exhausting and overwhelming for marketers to keep pace. Take the opportunity of the new year to make sure all your blogging-related tools are updated and running the current software.

As you’re keeping your tools fresh, it’s also a good time to make sure your procedures are running smoothly and are at a pace with the current marketing climate. This means evaluating responsibilities and results within your team, ensuring that your editorial calendar is serving you well, and taking a look at your data collection and reporting methods.

Bonus: What not to do in 2019

These might seem obvious, but again, you’d be surprised how may marketers fall victim to these blogging “don’ts.” We figured it bore repeating.

Don’t: attempt to post content that doesn’t reflect your business’ “comfort zone.” Stick to what you know, and do it well.
Don’t: copy and paste text or images from other blogs. Using other content for ideas is great. Copying it verbatim is verboten.
Don’t: post at irregular intervals. Creating a content schedule and sticking it is key to establishing a loyal following and boosting your credibility.

What goals do you have for your supply chain blog this year?

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3 Questions to Ensure your Content Marketing Strategy Is Sales-Focused

by Fronetics | Feb 7, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy

To be effective, your content marketing strategy should align with your sales goals. Here are three simple questions to ask yourself to make sure your documented strategy is on target.

I recently read an article on the Harvard Business Review that discussed pairing your sales goals with your marketing goals. This strikes at the heart of what we do at Fronetics: build a client’s content marketing strategy that will help advance their short- and long-term business goals. It sounds simple, but you have no idea how many organizations’ marketing goals are misaligned with what the larger organization is trying to accomplish

We need to make sure that — while we’re continuing to increase content production — we have a fundamental understanding of what we’re trying to create.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, 88% of marketers use content marketing. But a mere 30% of B2B marketers say their organization is effective at it. What that says to me is that a lot of companies are dumping their resources into content marketing, but, without a strategy that advances their business goals, they’re throwing away their time and money.

A content marketing strategy outlines the methods by which you will target, reach, and engage your audience. Research and execution of these tasks can be quite complex. Writing out a plan and assigning appropriate resources can offer clarity and guidance to your organization throughout the course of your program.

Here are three questions to ask yourself to make sure that your content marketing strategy is complementing your sales goals.

3 questions to align your sales goals and content marketing strategy

1. Why: Why am I doing this?

This question should be fairly easy to answer. The reason you’re documenting a content marketing strategy is for your business. You’re looking to align your marketing efforts with your business objectives. For a lot of companies, this ultimately means increased revenue from sales growth.

When done correctly, content marketing can support sales goals, making it easier to generate leads and helping the sales team close business. But you need to continually ask yourself, why?

The constant demand for more and more content can have a great impact on quality. More isn’t always better. Make sure you’re checking in with your strategy to make sure the content you’re producing is in alignment with your business goals.

2. Who: Who am I trying to attract?

In order to get the ball rolling in content marketing, you have to understand who you are trying to reach. Your company’s sales goals will help guide this target audience. It’s important to think holistically when considering who you are trying to reach at a potential prospect’s company. Typically, your target audience falls into two categories: Primary (decision-makers) and Secondary (influencers of the decision-maker).

Going one step further, you need to identify your target audience’s needs and pain points so that you can direct your content marketing strategy at creating awareness around those needs.

Once you have a thorough understanding of who your target audience is, you can begin to identify the different social media platforms they use. Using analytics tools within social networks can help you identify trends in social media use.

3. What: What content is going to work the best?

You’ve discovered your why and who, but now you need to finalize what kinds of content you’re going to create. Create the kinds of content your target audience seeks, and distribute it through the platforms on which they seek it. How-to videos on YouTube? Thought leadership on LinkedIn? Optimize the material you distribute for each channel. Use the social channels that best suit your brand message, type of content, and target audience.

Valuable and relevant content is not a sales pitch, but can help the sales process. Create content that communicates valuable information to customers and prospects so that they have the knowledge to make more informed decisions. Moreover, concentrate on content that establishes your business as a reliable source of knowledge — as a thought leader within the industry. Be thoughtful when you create content.

Even though 39% of marketers expect their content marketing budgets to increase this year, that doesn’t mean you should continue throwing money at your content marketing efforts until you have a clear plan that will advance your business. To be effective, marketers should document a content marketing strategy that aligns with their business and sales goals. It doesn’t have to be complicated. But it should reflect the “why, who, and what” of your sales strategy.