by Fronetics | Mar 13, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media, Supply Chain
Use these two strategies to help your blog generate leads faster.
Creating quality content for your blog that educates and engages consumers takes significant investment and resources. But, unfortunately, blog posts usually don’t deliver the immediate ROI that many companies are looking for.
A blog is an excellent lead-generation tool. But, as I’ve written about before, it takes time to generate leads and sales.
Like a fine wine, blog posts become more valuable with age.
Older content — likely, with more shares, likes, and referrals from other webpages — hold more credibility with search engines. The more credible the blog post, the higher it will rank in search engine results. What does this mean for you? The more time your blog has to circulate the internet, the more opportunity people have to read it, the higher it will appear in search queries. It’s that simple.
But your boss wants to see results in the form of leads and sales now. How can you bridge the gap between giving your blog the time it needs to become credible and boosting your lead-generating efforts for this sales cycle?
If you want to accelerate lead generation, it’s going to take a greater investment. But if you’re willing to commit more time and resources, here are two things you can do to see results sooner than later.
Two things you can do now to get leads faster
1. Publish more frequently.
Search engines value posting frequency because it shows that your blog is a consistent source of content. The question is, how much can your organization publish without experiencing a decline in quality and relevancy? Those are other factors influencing search engine rankings, not to mention readership, leads, and conversions.
But “more frequently” doesn’t have to mean going from 0 to 60. Even publishing once more per week can make a dramatic impact. This story, for example, shows how publishing one more post per week helped a client’s web traffic increase by 23%, sales leads double, and a prospect convert to a customer — and that was just in just one month.
A HubSpot study showed a tipping point around 400 total blog posts — blogs with 401+ total posts generated twice as much traffic as those that had published 301-400 posts. And more specifically, B2B companies with 401+ total blog posts generated nearly 3X as many leads as those with 0-200 posts. The faster you can reach that 400 mark, the quicker your results.
2. Don’t neglect your old content.
It’s important to keep in mind that the majority of your web traffic (aka potential leads) will first encounter your older content. Looking at Fronetics’ most-viewed posts last month, for example, 80% were published at least six months prior. In fact, 50% were more than a year old.
What does that mean? For one, you should keep tending to your already published content, particularly those posts that prove to be a consistent source of traffic. Update information; add links to new related posts or other relevant resources; and seek opportunities to insert or update calls-to-action to current offers and campaigns. Making sure those older, consistently popular posts continue to serve and engage your readers will increase your chances of conversion.
Secondly, it’s crucial that you look beyond how the posts you published recently perform. Something that doesn’t get a lot of views in the first week may be a huge traffic source and lead converter in a little time. Many content management systems, like HubSpot, can generate attribution reports, which tell you which web pages users most often visit before converting to a lead. Compare these pages with your high-traffic pages that don’t make the list to see how you can create more opportunities for lead conversion on the pages earning the most traffic.
If you invest the time and resources to run a blog, you owe it to yourself to see it through to success. Doing these two small things can get you there faster.
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![The Role of Content in the Logistics & Supply Chain Industries [Infographic]](https://www.fronetics.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/role-of-content.jpg)
by Fronetics | Feb 28, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Supply Chain
Nearly 80% of logistics and supply chain companies consider content an effective tool for their businesses.
We often use this space to talk to the logistics and supply chain industries about content marketing. Some companies are surprised to learn that this modern marketing method can be so effective for their business. The truth is, content is one of the most useful tools for not only building brand awareness, but also generating leads and earning new customers.
I can tell you this until I’m blue in the face. But, really, what’s most convincing is seeing how other businesses in the industry approach content and how it’s paying off for them.
So we at Fronetics polled supply chain and logistics marketers to determine how their companies are using content. We wanted to find out whether it’s working, as well as their challenges; how they approach outsourcing, distribution, and curation; and more. The below infographic illustrates a few of the key findings from our survey.
(Made with Canva)
To get a complete picture of the role of content in the logistics and supply chain industries, download our report:
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by Fronetics | Feb 22, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy
Follow these 4 steps to learn how to build a successful DIY content marketing strategy that will help grow your business.
Are you trying to create a content marketing strategy, but don’t know where to begin? Even the language around content marketing can seem foreign to newcomers. That’s why Fronetics created its guide, How to Grow Your Business with Content (download below) — to make creating a content marketing strategy possible for the DIYer in your company.
Setting your content marketing strategy is a crucial first step in trying to reach your target audience. Before you begin writing blogs and posting tweets, you need to set goals. A content marketing strategy outlines the methods by which you will target, reach, and engage your audience. Here are four steps, outlined in the guide, to creating a successful foundation to your content marketing strategy.
Steps to building a content marketing strategy
1. Identify your target audience and buyer persona(s)
Knowing who your ideal customer is allows you to create content that is informative, educational, and entertaining to that specific person. Trying to write compelling content for an unidentified audience is like taking a shot in the dark. The more detailed you can be with your buyer persona(s), the more specific and effective your content can become.
2. Define goals and objectives
Your content goals should be a direct reflection of your business goals. What do you want your content marketing efforts to accomplish for your company? The top marketing goals for content marketers in 2016 included converting contacts/leads to customers, growing website traffic, and increasing revenue derived from existing customers. Make sure you include short-term and long-term goals and that you frequently refer back to these goals to make sure your strategy is on track.
3. Developing and distributing content
Once you have identified your audience and defined your content goals, you can begin to educate yourself about the distribution platforms that will work best for your business. Let’s face it: Social media is not a one-size-fits-all solution. It’s imperative you know not only what to post but where to post it.
There are lots of great resources to help you optimize your content marketing presence. You can individualize your outreach so your blog posts are reaching one target audience, while your tweets are capturing another.
4. Put your knowledge to work
Once you have worked through the initial steps of planning a successful content marketing strategy, the real fun begins. It’s time to start pushing valuable, effective content out to consumers. If you’ve spent the time and effort up front to really thing through your strategy, you’ll reap the rewards in good time. Just remember that your strategy should be fluid, and you should be able to adjust your plans as you move forward and find what is working and what isn’t.
Pulling together a content marketing strategy for your B2B business can seem overwhelming. But having the right tools to support you can make all the difference. Download Fronetics’ easy-to-follow, step-by-step guide How to Grow Your Business with Content below to take the leap to a successful DIY content marketing strategy today.
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by Fronetics | Jan 10, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing
You can do these three quick things in your blog posts to improve SEO and help your target audience find your content.
Search Engine Optimization: It’s a phrase every blog writer looking to grow readership has wrestled with at one time or another. Part science, part art, SEO writing can evade even the most seasoned blogger. You want people searching the internet to find your blog, but you also want readers to enjoy your posts and not feel like they’re written for machines.
So, how do you write for search engines while ultimately trying to appeal to human beings? The answer is, of course, trying to balance the two objectives.
Three quick SEO tips for blog posts
Ultimately, your content will be effective only if it is valuable to your target audience. That should be your priority when planning and producing content like blog posts. But you can also keep these three quick tricks in mind to optimize your posts, and thus increase the likelihood internet searchers will find them in the first place.
1) Use your keyword(s) in the right places.
A thoughtful keyword strategy should be central your content strategy. Also crucial is the strategic placement of your keyword(s) within your blog posts.
Firstly, it’s important to know that search engines don’t read all parts of your blog posts the same. They weigh some features — like your title or subheadings throughout the post — more heavily than, say, the last sentence. This helps them quickly determine what your post is about since, in theory, your title and your headings most likely reflect the topic about which you are writing.
That being said, you should prominently feature any keyword you are interested in ranking for in several key places. These include:
Including your keyword in these places lets search engines know unequivocally that your post concerns that topic. That way, readers looking for articles like yours will be more likely to find them when searching that keyword.
2) Incorporate internal and external (outbound) links.
Including both internal and external links in your posts can improve SEO. Obviously linking to other content within your site or blog is beneficial to you and the reader: You keep the reader engaged, while the reader can find other related content of interest.
Sometimes our clients are hesitant to use outbound links, or hyperlinks to pages on other websites. They’re afraid of driving readership to other places and away from their blog.
Firstly, a simple solution to this concern is to ensure all external links open in a new window. That way, the blog post someone was reading remains open, along with the new page from the link. When the person finishes browsing the page from the link, your blog post is still available and at the ready in the user’s web browser.
Secondly, including external links in your posts improves SEO. Well, I should say using trustworthy external links improves SEO. See, search engines consider the value of the links you use. So, if you link to a well-known site, like nytimes.com, you are actually benefitting from that site’s credibility and popularity. Some top factors search engines consider when it comes to outbound links include:
So, it is worth noting that you should only include external links from credible sources that are relevant to your posts’ content. Linking to uncredible sites can actually harm your SEO.
3) Include an image.
Images aren’t just nice pictures for readers’ viewing pleasure — they help strengthen the message of your post. And, if optimized properly, they can improve your post’s SEO.
Here’s how it works: When you place an image within a post, the content management system automatically pulls the image file name into two hidden fields: the alt tag and the title tag. Web browsers read alt tags as descriptions of the image, so that if the image doesn’t load, users can still see what the image is supposed to be. Screen readers also use this field to communicate the content of the image to visually impaired users. Every image, therefore, should have alt text.
But beyond that, alt text is used by search engine crawlers to determine the content of the image and surrounding text. If a keyword is included in the alt text, it supports your ranking for that keyword.
It’s important to note that keyword stuffing in your alt text won’t help your cause. That can cause your site to be perceived as spam. Instead, you should choose an image that naturally is described by your keyword and is relevant to your content. Your image title, too, should be descriptive and reflective of the content.
These are three quick SEO tips to help improve the visibility of your blog. It’s worth mentioning again that you should never artificially stuff your blog posts with keywords or links or images. After all, search engines will continue to evolve to help readers find what they’re looking for, meaning they’ll become increasingly better at spotting any b.s. you try to sneak past them (and they’re already really good at that).
Your best bet to improve SEO is to create content that is valuable to your target audience. Then you should use these best practices as a guide to help users looking for content like yours to find it.
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by Fronetics | Oct 10, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media
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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