Although 14 manufacturing industries reported growth in February, including Apparel, Leather & Allied Products; Petroleum & Coal Products; Transportation Equipment; Electrical Equipment, Appliances & Components; Machinery; Chemical Products; Fabricated Metal Products; Computer & Electronic Products; Textile Mills; Food, Beverage & Tobacco Products; Printing & Related Support Activities; Paper Products; Wood Products; and Miscellaneous Manufacturing, the continued weak dollar is being blamed for the high cost of components and raw materials, particularly those obtained overseas. Representatives from Transportation Equipment stated “It is going to force us to increase our selling prices to our customers.” A similar statement was made by representatives from Chemical Products: “We continue to see significant inflation across nearly every type of chemical raw material we purchase.”  Nonmetallic Mineral Products, which is one of the 4 industries to experience contraction last month, along with Plastics & Rubber Products; Primary Metals; and Furniture & Related Products, stated, “Prices continue to rise, while business limps along at last year’s pace.” Plastics and Rubber reported, “Overall demand is off 10 percent.”

While the weak dollar has adversely affected the purchase of components and raw materials overseas it has had a positive impact on exports, which experienced a growth percentage point change of +0.5% with a PMI of 62.5%. Right alongside that of the overall economy, exports have experienced continued month-over-month growth at a faster rate of change for the past twenty months. Both Production and New Orders are up as well. Production experienced an increase of 2.8 percentage points from the January reading of 63.5%, registering a Production Index of 66.3% and continued growth for the 21^st consecutive month. Demonstrating a 20 month growth trend at a faster rate of change, New Orders were up 0.2 percentage points from January.  Thirteen industries reported growth in New Orders, including Apparel, Leather & Allied Products; Petroleum & Coal Products; Electrical Equipment, Appliances & Components; Wood Products; Printing & Related Support Activities; Machinery; Transportation Equipment; Chemical Products; Paper Products; Fabricated Metal Products; Food, Beverage & Tobacco Products; Computer & Electronic Products; and Miscellaneous Manufacturing, while Primary Metals; Nonmetallic Mineral Products; Furniture & Related Products; and Plastics & Rubber Products reported decreases.

Despite a +0.5 percentage point rise in Prices, and increases for the past 20 months at a faster rate of change, manufacturing and the overall economy continue to expand. And that is good news. Companies are challenged to find cost saving ways to attract new business to offset any decreases in orders from existing customers that may occur as a result of rising Prices. To manage marketing budgets set aside for new business development, industrial marketers must consider the changing landscape of search, social media, and lead/sales generation that occurs online and offline. Content presented on blogs, websites, text ads, emails, industrial directories, map sites, search engines, relevant 3^rd party sites, Twitter, Facebook and other social media websites, as well as all direct mail letters and brochures, must be current and highly focused on the specific interests of your target audience groups. Market research may need to be done to understand those interests and to uncover the specific language used by your target audiences to search for what you offer. Through careful research, planning, and implementation budgets can be intelligently and carefully managed to nurture leads, sales, and overall business growth, particularly as you strategize to offset the impact of increased prices.

For help with your marketing research, planning, creation and implementation speak with an Industrial Web Solutions marketing expert. Call (800) 399-9859.

Our industrial clients at Industrial Web Solutions are starting to approach us, instead of the other way around, about ways to build their brand and hopefully generate leads using social media. The first place we begin with clients is to uncover and define their goals, both long term and short term, objectives, and metrics for success. Understanding why you are doing something helps you to effectively design the ways in which you are going to achieve your objectives and exactly what metrics reveal your progress. Sounds simple but it is a step that is often avoided because clients get stuck on the bigger picture – make sales. Of course we all want to make sales but there are so many goals that have to be achieved that affect our sales success. And a well-thought out strategy makes sure all of the goals are accounted and planned for.

In addition to all the ideas offered by Della Penna, I would add a reminder to be consistent. Remember, you are concurrently trying to build your perceived authority for the products and/or services represented by your web content. Referred to in search engine optimization as your ‘authority score,’ which is in addition to your ‘link authority’ (hyperlinks that identify your content as relevant to and an authority of the products and/or services represented), your brand name or company representative is associated by the search engines with the content discussed in the Twitter post, for example. Pick your areas of expertise and stick to them and you will build your authority score, which affects indexing and rankings in the search engines. After a comprehensive research and development to identify the keywords used by your target audience groups to refer to what you offer, use those keywords strategically in the posts and other web content you present on the various social media channels you have decided to focus on. Create strong and compelling content that accurately reflects the interests of your readers. The more your content is referenced the stronger your authority score will be and the more likely it is that your content will rise to the top in the search engine results.

An oxymoron perhaps, but social media means business. Use it with intelligence and planning and it can be an effective way for you to build your brand and increase your lead acquisition online.

Contact Industrial Web Solutions with your questions 1-800-399-9859.

Given the changes to Google’s indexing system and the introduction of the ‘authority score,’ which seeks to determine the level of authority of a content source for the keywords and phrases relevant to the content by evaluating the number of links and references to the content from off-site sources, industrial businesses could potentially increase their web ranking results by creating highly focused, search engine optimized content and placing it on social media sites where they have uncovered their target audiences are spending time.

Crispin Sheridan made a recent Clickz post about SEO and Integration with Social Media that offers some great ideas. I would add that social media is now part of the search engine optimization process. Not only is it beneficial for branding and expanding your audience, but frequently and regularly creating and posting off-site content according to a set schedule is essential if you plan on establishing or maintaining your competitive edge in the search engines for the keywords and phrases relevant to your content.

Audience engagement is key so try to be topical. You want your content to be read, commented on, and to be shared. Be sure to follow a cross-linking strategy so you get the most mileage possible from your content. Include links to your blog posts on Facebook and Twitter, for example. And submit blog posts to Digg and Reddit. Also, be sure to include links on your website to your Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn accounts, and any other social networking sites where you post content.

If you need help developing your social media strategy or content, give Industrial Web Solutions a call at (800) 399-9859.

We’re two weeks into 2011 and manufacturing continues to grow, the overall economy continues to grow, the stock market is up – so where are you in all this? What are you doing differently now to take advantage of all this growth that’s going on?

If you still think you can go back to business as usual then you will miss a great opportunity to set your own growth in motion. Find out what your existing and potential buyers are up to? Have they started a new project you can help them with? Are they opening up into new markets? Can you join them?

Stimulate your own growth by being informed about what others are doing so that you can help them. A great way to connect with your target audience is to find out where they are spending time online. Read their posts, comments and queries on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, and blogs, to get insight into their current interests. Share your own comments and questions to start a dialogue.

 The idea is uncover interests so that you can develop your own opportunities. Don’t just wait for sales to pick up, stimulate them but demonstrating your value to your target buyers. Update all your sales and marketing content for online and offline so you are sure to present targeted solutions that are relevant to what’s going on for your buyers right now. Demonstrate to buyers how your solution is the missing piece of the puzzle that helps them to do what they want to do.

3^rd Party Application Authorization: OAuth

OAuth Secure API Application Protocol

There are now more than 250,000 applications built using the Twitter API. They are designed to provide you with enhanced features for your Twitter account. Some are desktop applications like TweetDeck, Seesmic, or EchoFon. Others are websites such as TweetMeme, fflick, or Topsy. And there are also mobile applications such as Twitter for iPhone, Twitter for Blackberry, or Foursquare.

Basically speaking, there are a lot of 3^rd party applications to choose from to enhance your Twitter experience. But in order to use any of these tools you must authorize each application to have access to your Twitter account. And that’s where “OAuth” comes in.

To safeguard your password, the OAuth protocol is a way for 3^rd party applications to get access to your Twitter account with your approval without you having to supply your password. It is used by many online services for API authorization including Facebook. OAuth is “an open protocol to allow secure API authorization in a simple and standard method from desktop and web applications.” Some mobile applications still require you enter your password at least once but after that they must use OAuth to access your timeline or allow you to tweet. Bottom line, the applications are no longer allowed to store your password. This is for your own protection. It also allows the applications to keep working even if you’ve changed your password, relieving you of the task of having to reset your password with each plug-in application you are using.

As I recently experienced with WordPress, some applications stopped functioning when this change took place on August 31^st of this year. Instructions are usually provided to help get your applications running again, although they may not be as straightforward as you would hope. Once you have logged into your Twitter account, you can view a list of all applications you have authorized by clicking this link: http://twitter.com/settings/connections. If you wish to stop an application integrating with your Twitter account, simply locate it in your list and click the ‘Revoke Access’ link.

Unfortunately I was unable to find an authoritative or exhaustive list identifying all the available Twitter apps. The Twitstat site lists over 200 of them along with client usage stats. There’s a pretty good list with explanations of each app available at Squidoo.com.

Link Wrapping

Link wrapping is a bit of a misnomer. It really is an enhancement that removes the obscurity of a shortened link so that it will make more sense to the reader. For example, instead of a long link such as http://www.amazon.com/Delivering-Happiness-Profits-Passion-Purpose/dp/0446563048 being shortened to the undecipherable http://t.co/DRo0trj, the link title may appear as amazon.com/Delivering- or as the whole url (which would be link wrapping since the long title would have to wrap to fit the space provided) or it may just appear as the page title. What exactly Twitter will adopt was not made clear; however, bottom line is the company wants its client users to understand exactly what they are linking to. This could also work out very well for account holders for whom the words that appear in the link are just as important as the link itself.