Although it’ll be a while before we all have an IBM Watson supercomputer sitting on our desktops, there are a number of artificial intelligence business tools truckers can use right now that will help you run smarter, faster and ahead of the competition. Essentially, these next-generation wonders tap into the ability of artificial intelligence to do a lot of the thinking and strategizing for you.

While some trucking firms may be guilty of chasing the latest digital marketing craze, good old e-mail marketing still is the app to beat when it comes to connecting with customers. Indeed, a 2016 study released by marketing consulting firm Clutch found that e-mail still has the highest return on investment of any marketing channel.

Fans of Facebook — and there are more than 1.7 billion of them — now have a near-mirror image of the social network they can use for their businesses. Dubbed Workplace by Facebook, the new application offers all the familiar features that have made Facebook the world’s most popular digital meeting place. The primary difference: Workplace enables businesses to use the Facebook environment to create an entirely private social network for their employees and trusted trading partners.

While video marketing already is on the radar of many fleets, recent indications are that the medium will continue to explosively transform the web for years to come. Video- and photo-sharing social media startup Instagram — a mere blip on the web’s radar a few years ago — now boasts 500 million users. Snapchat, another social media network that incorporates video, is growing nearly as ferociously.

With trucking firms devoting more time to content marketing — the publishing of articles, videos, images and more to reinforce brand image — it’s becoming increasingly important to ensure that content is search-engine optimized.

Geri Lofthouse, owner of Lofthouse Transport, a trucking firm based in Hyrun, Utah, made a pleasant discovery earlier this year when she decided to put a 1995 Freightliner up for sale.

While the Internet’s World Wide Web works great as a fancy display device, its real power lies in interactivity.

Some Web site owners pay for each mouse click that sends a potential customer their way. It's called Web affiliate marketing.

Here are some useful tips on how to use hyperlinks to spread your company name far and wide on the Web.

While brazen e-mail spammers have been rightfully relegated to the status of Web pariahs, a number of businesses have quietly discovered a powerful fact about the medium. When leveraged artfully, an ethical e-mail marketing strategy can run circles around the most stunning of Web sites.