by Fronetics | Dec 21, 2016 | Blog, Diversity, Leadership, Logistics, Manufacturing & Distribution, Strategy, Supply Chain, Talent
Women hold just 15% of all executive officer positions within Fortune 500 companies, yet research consistently shows that when women are in positions of leadership, companies perform better. In the supply chain industry, just 5% of top-level supply chain positions within Fortune 500 companies are held by women.
As a woman working within the supply chain industry, I believe that it is important to discuss the lack of gender diversity and point to research highlighting why the industry needs to increase the number of women in all positions, including the C-suite. It is just as important to highlight the incredible women who already are working within the industry.
In 2015 I interviewed Cathy Morris, senior vice president and chief strategy officer at Arrow Electronics, and Mickey North Rizza, vice president of strategic services at BravoSolution. Morris was twice named one of the “Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Technology,” and North Rizza was named a “Top Female Supply Chain Executive.” Both Morris and North Rizza shared how they got started in the industry, and the steps they have taken to get to where they are today.
In 2016 I interviewed Kendrea Durr-Smith, director of global trade compliance at Arrow Electronics, Kelli Saunders, President of Morai Logistics, Hailey McKeefry, editor and chief at EBN, and Barbara Jorgensen, co-founder and managing editor, EPS News. I also invited Tania Seary, founder of Procurious, to share what is happening at her company, and Jennifer Cortez, director of marketing and communications at Transplace, to discuss the role of quality content within the industry.
Here are the most-read women in the supply chain posts of 2016.
It was a “fluke” that Kelli Saunders found the supply chain industry. More than 30 years later, Saunders is president of Morai Logistics Inc., an Authorized Agent of Mode Transportation. Read more.
When Arrow Electronics came across Kendrea Durr-Smith, senior leader of export control audits, training, and communications at Honeywell Aerospace, on LinkedIn, the company was impressed with what she had accomplished in her nine years there. Now Arrow’s Director of Global Trade Compliance for the last four years, Durr-Smith has led a group that is both unique and diverse, and has helped to shepherd in significant changes. Read more.
Data shows that gender equality has improved in recent decades, such as the 15% increase of women working full time in the workforce since 1979. But there is still much progress to be made. As a recent UN Working Group mission to the US to explore discrimination against women found: “In the US, women fall behind international standards as regards [to] their public and political representation, their economic and social rights, and their health and safety protections.” Read more.
Women within the supply chain industry are doing incredible things. Here are some of their stories. Read more.
While there remains a gender gap in the supply chain industry, progress has been made. McKeefry is a clear example of progress. Her internship at EBN in 1990 was a “minority internship,” and today, 26 years later, she holds a leadership position within the company. Read more.
Barbara Jorgensen has more than 20 years’ experience as a journalist, working for leading electronics industry publications such as Electronic Business, Electronic Buyers’ News, and EDN. She is the co-founder and managing editor of EPS News. Read more.
This is a guest post written by Tania Seary, founder of Procurious, the world’s first online social network for supply chain and procurement professionals. Seary shares how she has built Procurious. Read more.
This is a guest post by Jennifer Cortez, Director, Marketing Communications, Transplace. Cortez discusses how Transplace, a North American non-asset-based provider offering manufacturers, retailers, chemical and consumer packaged goods companies the optimal blend of logistics technology and transportation management services, has used content marketing and she offers up 3 tips for creating valuable and compelling content. Read more.
by Fronetics | Mar 24, 2016 | Blog, Marketing, Social Media, Supply Chain
These four supply chain companies constantly post fresh, quality content to their social media accounts.
When it excels at social media, a company’s opportunity for growth is as vast as the web itself. Today, even small businesses can compete shoulder to shoulder with their biggest competitors if leveraging social media properly.
It is estimated that for every 5 minutes people spend online, 1 minute of that is spent on some kind of social media network. And most of your customers are on social media — statistics indicate that more than 79% of adults in the U.S. use social media each day. As the popularity of sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and company blogs continues to grow, it is vital to utilize these tools to your own marketing advantage.
When you think of social media masters, you may not think of companies in the supply chain industry. But there are a few excellent examples, and much can be learned from what they do. Here are four supply chain companies that excel at social media and the reasons why they stand out above the crowd:
1) Cerasis
Cerasis, a top freight logistics company and truckload freight broker, excels at social media because their content is fresh, posted daily, and of high quality. Simply put, they create engaging, informative content and are consistently active across all of the major social networks.
2) Kinaxis
Kinaxis, a global company offering advanced supply chain management systems to customers in a variety of discrete manufacturing industries, offers in-depth blog posts and is consistently active in social media channels such as Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn.
3) Transplace
Transplace, a provider of transportation management services, posts informative articles and incites topics of conversation on Twitter several times per day. The company is active across all social media platforms, including their own YouTube channel.
4) UPS Longitudes
Longitudes is a blog with insights on the trends reshaping the global economy by United Parcel Service, a global leader in shipping. The blog also engages true thought leaders on topics ranging from trade to transportation and ecommerce to emerging markets. Posts are consistently new, innovative, and informative. Longitudes also has its own social media accounts, separate from UPS’s primary accounts, which distribute the blog’s content and engage in related discussions.
Why do these four supply chain companies excel at social media? Here are three commonalities that help these businesses rise above the rest:
Consistent daily posts and content
Having consistent, reliable, fresh social media posts is essential. The more active you are, the greater your outreach to potential new customers.
Think of it this way: search engines pick up on social media activities — like when someone shares content from your website on Twitter or Facebook, for example. Search engines use this to weigh the relevancy and validity of your website and your company. So, fresh daily or weekly content gives people a chance to read and share every time you publish a blog post, ebook, buying guide, case study, testimonial, and other interesting content to your social media accounts. Your marketing efforts reap the benefits of better search engine rankings as a result.
Engaging readers
You want readers to connect and engage with your social media posts. Every time they leave a comment or share or like a post, your social media presence — and your digital footprint — grows.
Quality content
Posting anything just for the sake of posting is not a good social media strategy. Content that is boring and basic will not help your business grow. Content needs to capture the interest of readers and engage them to read, share, and follow your business. Posts should be timely and relevant. This is what builds your following and your brand and generates new customers.
With social media you can find new customers and fans, connect with existing customers who can help spread the word about how great your product or service is, and drive more traffic to your website, which creates new avenues into the digital realm of marketing, company branding, and lead generation. The most successful companies today work daily to improve their social media content and reap the benefits of consistent, quality content marketing.
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by Jennifer Hart Yim | Mar 23, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing
Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Jennifer Cortez, Director, Marketing Communications, Transplace. Transplace is a North American non-asset-based provider offering manufacturers, retailers, chemical and consumer packaged goods companies the optimal blend of logistics technology and transportation management services.
Content has become a critical component of the modern marketing mix, but companies have to walk a fine line when it comes to the information that is being pushed out to the market. Too little and your audience will become bored and uninterested, and unfortunately, may look elsewhere for information (i.e., your competition). Too much and your audience may not know where to start (especially if it’s poorly organized). And if churning out too much content leads to a decline in quality, your audience may be left with dull, unremarkable content that, most importantly, is lacking in value to the industry.
When we’re creating content here at Transplace, (and I encourage others to keep this in mind) we ask ourselves this question: “Why should my customer care?” If you can’t answer that question, then it’s time to rethink your strategy. If you’re creating content just for the sake of it or because it’s something you know you need to do, you are most likely headed down the wrong path.
If you’re new to content marketing, first figure out what you want your content to solve before getting started. Do you want to increase brand awareness or drive more traffic to your website? Or maybe you’re focused on converting more leads into customers? Whatever it might be, each of your marketing goals will influence your content marketing strategy and therefore help you understand the audience you’re writing for, what channels you’ll share the content on, and how you’ll communicate key messages.
3 Key Content Considerations
Content is an extremely important part of our marketing and communications strategy and helps us continue to grow our brand awareness and thought leadership in the logistics and transportation industry. Our main objectives focus on three things: creating quality content that is relevant and helpful to the people in our industry, easy to understand and comes in a variety of formats. Let’s dig into these three areas a little further.
1. Producing helpful content
It’s easy to produce self-serving content such as sales pitches or a 1-pager on ‘Why you should pick our company,’ but let’s face it – tooting your own horn isn’t going to do much in terms of moving the needle closer to any of those marketing goals we mentioned previously. And most likely, these types of content pieces aren’t going to be searched for or probably even read by your target audience. One of two things occurs with standard sales slicks these days – they get deleted or physically thrown in the trash.
What is going to be helpful is producing content that becomes a useful resource for people in their day-to-day job. We want to keep them updated on trends, but it’s also important for us to keep in mind what we should be talking about that others aren’t. What are we foreseeing based on our unique position in the market that we can relay through content so our network is more prepared? If we can do a better job of talking to the buyer and figuring out what they want to hear about, then our content is only going to prove that much more valuable.
2. Content readability is key
Sometimes the topics in our industry can be complicated and it’s our job as the subject matter experts to make these complex topics understandable. It’s also important to not talk above your audience. You’ve probably heard of the Flesch readability score before, which indicates how difficult a reading passage is to understand. Content readability is powerful and your content marketing, website and SEO are dependent on it. Search engines like Bing and Google prefer readable content so when it comes to writing – keep it readable, compelling and easy to understand.
3. Content variety keeps things fresh
What I mean by this is have some fun with the types of content being created or reused for additional purposes. Did you conduct a survey and now have some great data points to share? Instead of housing this valuable information in a long article or whitepaper, you could highlight the research in an animated infographic. At Transplace, we’ve had great success at creating a variety of content pieces – from videos and podcasts to our TIP List and Q&As – we change up the types of content we’re creating to keep our audience coming back for more. You can also leverage existing content to create “new” types of thought leadership to push out. Nowadays there are several different ways people prefer to digest news and information, and we don’t have a crystal ball to show us these preferences, so you do typically need content in multiple forms in several different places whether that be print, online or social media. The permutations of content creation are endless if you tap into your creativity and keep things fresh!
Today, there is so much content out there that it’s become all too important for companies to truly create value in the information that they’re pushing out to the market. And when it comes to valuable content, keeping these three tips in mind will have you well on your way to creating content that is helpful to your audience and keeps them coming back for more!
by Fronetics | Jan 28, 2016 | Blog, Logistics, Supply Chain
Fronetics names the best of the best blogs in the logistics and supply chain industries.
The logistics and supply chain industries are catching on to how successful a blog can be as part of an inbound marketing strategy. Companies are creating content that not only fuels conversation about industry best practices, trends, and issues, but also helps drive business to their websites.
Fronetics Strategic Advisors conducted a survey in January 2016 to determine the top logistics and supply chain blogs in the industry. Here are the results:
Dallas, TX-based Transplace is a 3PL and technology provider serving manufacturers, retailers, and consumer and chemical packaged goods companies. Logistically Speaking is the company’s thought leadership blog. It tells “the latest and the greatest supply chain and transportation stories” through Infographics, interviews with logistics executives, and informative articles offering information and advice.
Readers love: the weekly “TIP list,” or Transportation Industry’s Progression, which curates a short list of articles concerning trending topics and advancements in the industry
Transplace’s CEO Tom Sanderson shares information, opinions, and analysis of factors affecting the supply chain — including company economic data, freight transportation regulation and legislation, and carrier and 3PL financial performance. The blog is rich with charts and graphs that offer big-picture insight on what’s going within the industry.
Readers love: Sanderson’s no-nonsense breakdown of the most pressing issues facing the supply chain
Jennifer Cortez, Director, Marketing Communications, is thrilled with Transplace being recognized by Fronetics and the industry:
“We are thrilled to be recognized as the top logistics and supply chain blogs in 2015. At Transplace, we pride ourselves on providing timely and relevant content to our customers and the industry. Our goal this year is to further connect Transplace and our thought leaders with emerging industry trends.”
Procurious is a UK-based online business network with news, education, discussion forums, and events for procurement and supply chain professionals. The blog goes beyond industry insights — it’s a savvy guide to career advancement and skill development. Articles are written for the modern-day professional, in sync with Procurious’s forward-thinking brand.
Readers love: original series like Life & Style and #firstmovers, which cover interesting, relevant topics in the procurement world.
Thank you to all who took our survey to find the top logistics and supply chain blogs!
Fronetics Strategic Advisors is a management consulting firm with a focus on inbound marketing. We create and execute successful strategies for growth and value creation. Unlike other firms, our approach is data driven. We know ROI is important, so we track and measure results to drive success. Read about our approach to inbound marketing, or get in touch.
