The Thomas Blog

12 Ways To Improve Your Manufacturing Blog

A great blog can serve as the foundation of your industrial content marketing strategy and fuel lead generation. If you don’t have a blog, or if the one you have isn’t up to snuff, it may be helpful to go back to the basics and make sure your blog is set up for success.

Before you start putting together your blog posts, you need to have a solid understanding of exactly what you want those posts to accomplish. For most industrial companies, the primary goal of a blog is to take traffic from search engines, social media, and email marketing campaigns and drive those visitors to landing pages — so make sure you understand the goals of your blog. It will influence the way you craft the content.

8 Reasons Why You Should Use WordPress For Your Industrial Website

Whether it's an update or a full rebuild, you have no shortage of decisions to make when it comes to updating your website. There are plenty of free resources available on optimizing your website, best practices for design, and even how to write engaging copy, but it's crucial to set a strong foundation with your Content Management System.

SEO Basics for Manufacturers and Industrial Companies

You know you want more new customers, and you know your website is key to getting them to your company, so how can you connect the dots? When you do a Google search, you’re likely to click on a link from one of the first five results. Have you ever given any thought to exactly how one of those sites gets to a top slot?  It's a lead generation tactic fueled by organic search and search engine optimization (SEO) to drive your target audience to your website. 

Top 3 U.S. Manufacturing Challenges And How To Overcome Them

Is the glass half empty or half full? It’s an age old question, and there’s no right answer; it’s all about perspective. How about this question: Does the U.S. manufacturing industry have challenges or opportunities?

American manufacturing stands at a critical point in its long history — and how industry leaders view and react to the changing landscape will influence its future. As technology, demographics, and economic climate shift, manufacturers must innovate in order to stay competitive. Manufacturing in particular is positioned for domestic growth and, more than ever, industry leaders must guide their organizations strategically. Let’s take a look at some of the issues facing the industry through the lens of both challenges and opportunities.

4 Reasons Why Manufacturers Use Video Marketing

The most effective content marketing strategies incorporate various types of content, allowing companies to reach users at different stages throughout the buying journey. Offering informative blogs, white papers, eBooks, infographics, case studies, calculators, checklists, and other forms of content not only helps garner new leads, it also establishes you as a knowledgeable thought leader in your field. Developing fresh, new content can also improve your SEO rankings, making it easier for people to find your company.

While you may be providing an ample amount of written content for your site visitors, you might be missing one crucial component — videos. Increasingly important in today’s digital landscape, video content allows for efficient dissemination of complex information while providing an interactive, engaging user experience.

10 Tips For Growing Your CNC Machining Business

Starting a new business can be a challenging endeavor, especially if the entrepreneur is entering a crowded market with large, well-established competitors already in place. Small CNC machine shops face hurdles similar to those of other small businesses, and, like their non-industrial counterparts, have the same potential for securing contracts and growing within the industry despite these obstacles.

Here are some tips and suggestions that may help in establishing or expanding your small CNC shop. 

30 Industrial Lead Generation Tips, Tricks And Ideas

Generating leads is the most important component of marketing.

When you turn a site visitor into a lead, and then that lead becomes a customer, you’ve done your job, but you need to follow up on that accomplishment. As the experts at HubSpot say, “A successful lead generation engine is what keeps the funnel full of sales prospects while you sleep.”

What Does A 404 Error Mean?

At some point in your web browsing life, you’ve undoubtedly come across a 404 error message. You typed in a URL or clicked a link to take you to a new page but suddenly — gasp — “Page Not Found.” 

It’s not uncommon to see these types of errors while you’re surfing the web, but when you find one on your own website, suddenly you’ve got a problem. In this blog post, we’ll go over what a 404 error message means, what it means for your marketing efforts, why websites get them, and what you can do to fix any you may encounter on your industrial website.

Product Sourcing Trends For Q1 2019, As Told By Game Of Thrones

Winter is here (seriously, spring, where are you?), and the first quarter of 2019 is officially over. 

As an industrial company, you are always looking for ways to connect with B2B buyers. But what are those buyers looking for? With less than one week before the final season of Game Of Thrones premieres, we took a look at sourcing activity of some of the most useful elements of Westeros and beyond the wall on the Thomas Network at the end of Q1 to help you answer that question (and possibly win the Game of Thrones).