5 Most Popular Industrial Marketing Blog Posts from 2010

We’re almost at the end of the year and you made it. Congratulations!

2010 has been another tough year for the industrial sector but I’m encouraged by all the good news that I’ve heard throughout the year about a modest rebound in U.S. manufacturing.

This is the time of the year when most of us tend to reflect upon the year that is coming to an end and look forward to the coming year with renewed hope.

December is also a popular time for bands and musicians to release their “Best of” compilations, bloggers like to summarize their best posts and publishers publish their own “Top XX” lists.

In keeping with that spirit, here are my five most popular industrial marketing blog posts from 2010. I’ve compiled these based on a combination of the traffic, time spent on the page etc. from my Google Analytics, the number of inbound links received, retweets and other social sharing.

I hope you’ll get some value and practical help from reading or rereading these articles.

1. Marketing Automation vs. Inbound Marketing
   Marketing automation is very effective in moving prospects through the middle of the marketing funnel until the handoff to sales and provides a good closed-loop system for lead recycling that would otherwise go to waste. However, you shouldn’t count on marketing automation to solve all your lead generation problems. Just like any marketing tactic or tool, there are pros and cons. Read full article…
2. B2B Lead Generation without Lead Nurturing is Doomed to Fail
   79% of marketing leads never convert into sales opportunities. (Source: Marketing Sherpa/ KnowledgeStorm). B2B marketing and lead generation experts point to a lack of lead nurturing as the primary cause of this poor performance. Read full article…
3. Content and Social Marketing: Connecting and Engaging with 10K+ Engineers
   This [content marketing] is a problem across the board for B2B marketers as reported by the same study – the largest challenge is “producing the kind of content that engages prospects and customers” (36% of respondents). One-fifth say that “producing enough content” (21%) and “budget to produce content” (19%) are their greatest challenge in content marketing. Read full article…
4. Three Business Blogs with Proven ROI from Industrial Companies
   Manufacturing marketers do understand the value of a business blog for thought leadership, search engine optimization (SEO), lead generation and community building but proving its ROI has been a challenge. As a result, many of them either ignore blogging as a marketing strategy or wait until their competition launches one. Read full article…
5. Is Content Curation an Easy Way for Content Marketers to Do More With Less?
   Media Curation is the emerging trend toward creating media content using a mix of machine and human resources. The practice includes aggregation (gathering) and curation (sorting, categorizing, art directing, and presenting) such that material from multiple sources creates a unique editorial experience for readers/visitors. Read full article…

I wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas, a Joyous Holiday Season, a Happy and prosperous New Year!

Thank you for being a regular reader of this blog. It is a passion of mine and I also use it as a marketing tool for my business. I’ll continue to share more fresh and insightful industrial marketing ideas and thoughts as long as you keep coming here, regularly. See you next year.