Social Media B2B

In the world of B2B social media one of the items our readers are constantly asking for are examples of what others in the B2B space are doing. Yesterday, Cisco, a huge player in the B2B technology marketplace, used a social media release to talk about new product offerings that included social tools for the enterprise.

The social media release is a tactic that is still not widely used by most B2B companies. It combines the text content of a traditional news release that is reformatted into short snippets to make it more web friendly. Additionally, relevant video, audio and images are embed with the text to help tell a more complete story.

The Public Relations Implications Of B2B Social Media Releases

From an earned media standpoint, social media news releases provide the quick information and sound bites needed to get an article up quickly on a trade publication Web site, while providing the high quality images and depth to allow for a more detailed print story. Having executive interviews on video with the text allows for quotes to be pulled and can help reduce the time key executives send interviewing.

Social media releases aren’t right for all situations. You have to have someone internally who can set up the page on your own Web site or use an external service such as PR Newswire or Pitch Engine to create and distribute your social media news release. Both of these options have a cost associated with them, so it is important to think about the applications of your news to this new format. Know your journalists and influencers. If they are online (yes most are now, even in B2B), then you may want to consider shifting your release format to a social media release or hybrid format.

Cisco used a wire service to distribute their release, but a quick search can help demonstrate its pick up.

Search Engine Optimization: The Real Value Of Social Media News Releases

While the media coverage generated by the social media release will be what gets the attention of senior management, the savvy B2B online marketers knows that the long tail or organic search is the more important long-term value of social media news releases. Remember that keys for organic search rankings are relevant content and building inbound links. Social media releases can help this especially when it comes to link building.

In the Cisco release that was the example of this post, there are 18 links that use good anchor text (keywords in the linking text) to link to Cisco pages on the web. Cisco used a distribution service to send out the release and as a result created inbound links to all of these 18 pages from more than 30 news Web sites which have strong Page Ranks. That is a large number a links created from just one release. Think about the implications of sending 20 releases out in a year that were strategic, not only from a earned media perspective but also from an SEO perspective. The long term search ranking improvements and organic search traffic would be worth thousands and could support your existing sales funnel.

The social media release like other B2B Social Media Marketing tactics can work in the right situations. However, they can be more effective when planned strategically and aligned with organizational earned media, as well as organic search goals.

Related posts:

1. 6 Earned Media Benefits Of B2B Social Media Do you spend much time thinking about the difference between...
2. Optimizing B2B Facebook Content For The New Facebook News Feed B2B companies are now using Facebook as part of...
3. 4 Reasons Vlogging Isn’t Better Than Blogging For B2B Reminder: Take The 2010 B2B Social Media Marketing Survey! I...
4. B2B Social Media Newsroom Example: Scania Note: I don’t like using the term “social media newsroom”. ...
5. Research: Organic Search Traffic Drives More Qualified B2B Leads The folks over at Marketing Sherpa have released some...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.