Norman Wright, Jr., author of Wright-to-Know, outlines 25 tips for driving traffic to a manufacturing blog. Many of his suggestions can be used by distributors to drive traffic as well. How do you drive traffic to your blog? Do you even have one?

Wright-to-Know Excerpt:
If you are in charge of the marketing for your manufacturing company, you should have your blog be a central component to your social media strategy for new business. It is the site that you want to bring your prospective customers & clients to, the gateway and face of manufacturing company.

“Build it and they will come,” is not the answer to generate traffic to your company’s blog. You must employ proactive tactics to create awareness and interest among prospective customers. The more traffic that you can generate, from among your target audience, the more inbound new business leads that will follow.

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MarketingProfs‘ Anurag Mehrotra knows outsourcing marketing may be a perfect way to reduce marketing costs. Take a look at these seven suggestions for outsourcing marketing.

MarketingProfs Excerpt:
Recently, I met a senior marketing executive from one of the world’s largest brands. She was discussing the possibility of offshoring her company’s marketing operations.

As we got into the discussion, it became clear that there were three key drivers for the company’s decision to possibly outsource its marketing operations.

First, the brand had been asked to reduce spend by at least 20%. To put that in context, various industry reports state that 2009 marketing budgets were, on average, cut by more than 20% compared with pre-recessionary levels. And the number of companies that cut marketing budgets was 25% higher than predicted in January 2009.

Second, as brands go global, maintaining brand consistency across geographies is becoming a huge issue for marketers. Consistency is important not just from a customer-experience standpoint but also from the perspective of marketing efficiency. If you create standardized brand “templates,” the local geographies can respond faster to marketing and sales needs.

Third, the marketing function is under pressure to deliver more return on investment and much faster than before. Management is asking tougher questions of its marketing teams, and the focus on metrics has never been sharper.

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BusinessWeek’s Bob Willis reports inventories rose .5% in February, the greatest increase since July 2008. Are you ready for business to boom?

BusinessWeek Excerpt:
Inventories in the U.S. rose 0.5 percent in February, the most since July 2008, as companies boosted orders to try to keep up with sales.

Companies are set to begin boosting investment and output in coming months after the worst recession in seven decades forced a record drawdown in stockpiles last year. Efforts to stabilize inventories in the fourth quarter accounted for two- thirds of that quarter’s 5.6 percent growth pace.

“The extended run of strong demand is now compelling businesses to begin building inventory,” Aaron Smith, a senior economist at Moody’s Economy.com in West Chester, Pennsylvania, said before the report. “Inventories should start to climb toward normal levels as firms become more expansionary.”

Another report from the Commerce Department today showed retail sales climbed 1.6 percent in March, the most in four months, a sign consumers will play a bigger role in the broadening recovery.

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Modern Distribution Management’s Jack Keough recently spoke to Reid Supply Co., an industrial distributor based in Muskegon, MI, and Reid attributes their impressive, recent growth to their new e-commerce platform. Plus, they are using social media to increase awareness. Is your website e-commerce friendly?

MDM excerpt:
The use of e-commerce is becoming increasingly important among distributors and is now an important part of strategic plans for the growth of large and smaller distributors alike. Last week in a call with financial analysts, MSC Industrial Direct Co., one of the largest distributors in the country, said the web was a key driving point for their company, which is famous for its huge catalog filed with thousands of products.

But e-commerce isn’t just for big distributors. Reid Supply Co., an industrial distributor based in Muskegon, MI, has one of the most advanced web sites in distribution. Privately-owned Reid doesn’t share its financial information, but said its sales have increased “significantly” since it redesigned its Web site last July, expanded its products and made it easy for customers to navigate the site and place orders.

“We’ve been promoting our site in a number of ways,” says Greg Palmer, director of marketing for Reid during an interview. The company uses Facebook, Twitter and various other new media to drive customers to their site. And it has worked. In addition, the company sends e-mail blasts, provides print advertising and uses advanced search engine optimization techniques.

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NorthJersey.com’s Carol Lawrence knows cash flow is key, especially for distributors. According to a survey of small business owners by American Express, 32 percent of businesses use personal or private funds, 25 percent delay purchases and 13 percent use credit or charge cards when dealing with insufficient cash flow. Have you ever faced this challenge? If so, what did you do?

NorthJersey.com Excerpt:
Cash-flow issues are growing among small businesses, according to the American Express OPEN Small Business Monitor, a semiannual survey of 727 small businesses.

The most recent findings in September revealed businesses with cash-flow problems rose to 60 percent from 57 percent last April and from 55 percent in September 2008.

“Cash flow is key,” said Michael Prell, who heads the third-generation, family-owned paper distributor Paterson Papers in Paterson. “Without the ability to buy merchandise and pay employees, you can’t survive.”

According to the National Federation of Independent Business Web site, “projecting cash flow is a delicate relationship between readily available funds, upcoming fixed expenses, upcoming unanticipated expenses, and projected income.”

Business owners say they have to monitor cash flow more closely these days because customers take longer to pay, suppliers want to be paid sooner and clients are going out of business.

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MarketingProfs‘ Dan Ziman recognizes the importance of utilizing the customer network. Try his six suggestions for getting the most out of your current network and building a stronger one.

MarketingProfs Excerpt:
Your customers are your company. For every one interaction your company knows about today, there are hundreds and thousands more that are already happening among customers, influencers, and prospects.

With the revolution in social technologies, customers are now in control of the conversation. That may seem like a daunting proposition, but there are key steps you can take to engage with that customer network—and therein lies the opportunity.

Despite having spent a great deal of time and effort building, managing, and analyzing your corporate website, customers and prospects demand ever greater levels of interactivity. And they want not only more interactivity with you but also more access and engagement with one another.

That means managing your brand has become increasingly difficult. Though we’ve all been very cognizant of key areas such as search results, customer experience, and Web leads, 2010 is clearly highlighting a new imperative: We need to engage with our customers and prospects—or risk losing them.

One of the most powerful, proven ways to build your brand and customer network is through online communities. Enterprises (global B2C and B2B brands) are identifying and engaging customers who willingly share insights, help solve support issues, and drive word-of-mouth marketing on their behalf.

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Fast Company’s Adrian Ott challenges you to look B.E.Y.O.N.D. so as not to risk being blindsided by competitors. Ask yourself the following 6 questions to uncover hidden risks and opportunities.

Fast Company Excerpt:
Success breeds complacency. Business school case studies are chock-full of innovators that truck along, and Pow! in comes a new player and customers are suddenly gaining value from somewhere else. Such formerly high-flying firms default to the approaches that brought them initial success, even when markets change.

Such upheaval is evident everywhere in the business world today. Did you know that big-box retailer Walmart now competes with Comcast, and Netflix for movie streaming on TVs? Or that a business-to-business network equipment giant Cisco now competes with Kodak and Sony for consumer camcorders?

Most market incumbents stick with their current products, business models and industry for their entire existance, such that they don’t see opportunities to move–or the risk of new entrants. Such tunnel vision presents a tremendous opportunity for savvy executives looking outside their current base to grow revenue or maintain leadership.

To win, look B.E.Y.O.N.D. business boundaries…

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While this Construction Equipment Distribution article is from a few years ago, the content is very relevant, and sometimes, the easiest tasks are those we overlook. Are you doing the following things to run your warehouse in the most efficient way?

Construction Equipment Distribution Excerpt:
What does your warehouse say about your dealership?

Having grown up in a construction supply house, I spent countless hours observing the good, the bad and the ugly of warehouse management. I am probably the only person you’ve ever met who has vacuumed warehouse shelves.

The erratic demands of customers make maintaining a warehouse a never-ending battle, but here are a few tips I’ve found useful over the years…

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MDM’s Bob DeStefano offers a list of ten questions to help you capitalize on your website, which has the potential to be your most powerful marketing tool! Are you making the most of the web?

MDM Excerpt:
Is your Web site a lead generation machine? Your Web site can be your most powerful marketing tool, delivering a steady stream of new business leads and filling your sales pipeline. Unfortunately, most companies do not optimize their Web sites for lead generation —offering, instead, nothing more than passive online brochures.

What about your website? Find out your website’s lead generation potential by giving it a lead generation checkup. Review the following 10 questions, and give yourself one point for each “yes” answer. Good luck!

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Frank Scavo, an independent analyst of issues and trends in enterprise applications software and the strengths, weaknesses, advantages, and disadvantages of the vendors that provide them, recently spoke with Dennis Michalis, General Manager of Infor Flex. Scavo was interested in learning the progress Infor has made with the Flex program over the last few months.

Take a look at his findings:

By way of background, Infor Flex was introduced in June 2009, to allow customers to upgrade to the latest, SOA-enabled versions of their Infor products or to exchange those products for other, newer products in Infor’s portfolio–at little or no license costs.

I was bullish on the program when it was announced, as I saw it as a win-win for Infor and its customers: customers get to move to a newer platform with newer expanded capabilities and Infor keeps customers, or gets them back on maintenance, and has a chance to sell them new stuff in the future.

But what have the results been in practice in the nine months since Infor Flex was announced? As it turns out, Dennis is the right person to ask, as he is now the General Manager for Infor Flex (in addition to his work in charge of all Infor partners worldwide).

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