WordWrite Social Media Tool of the Month: Effective Social Bookmarking to Leverage Expertise in the B2B Space

When it comes to business-to-business public relations, the social space can get a bit tricky. If you have a very specific, niche product or service, it can be a challenge to find a valuable and relevant audiencee and really get that return on your investment of talking to prospects, gaining leads and sealing deals.

If Twitter or Facebook isn’t the right fit because your prospects are not using these social media channels, you may want to consider social bookmarking instead.

Sites like Digg and Delicious may be “old news” on the social front, but they can provide value by leveraging your expertise on certain subjects.

Think of the last time you used Delicious. Was it for saving important links? What if you took it to the next level? If environmental remediation is your forte, bookmark articles about effective or not so effective efforts in the BP Gulf oil crisis. When something timely is happening in the news such as the creation of the fake Twitter ID for British Petroleum, utilize your tags to include “oil spill” and “BP” so you are increasing your own visibility on search engines and people are linking back to you and seeing this expertise.

At WordWrite, one of the things we like to do in social media is share relevant industry news. Those following our Twitter account know we are constantly tweeting about public relations, social media, client news and corporate storytelling, among other topics. We also have a Twitter account specifically for health care since that’s a big part of our practice. On our Facebook page, we share news as well. We also share content we’ve created such as new blog posts and web updates. So what’s the point of sharing all of this relevant news if your prospects aren’t on those sites? Enter social bookmarking.

We have a button right on the homepage of our website that links to our Delicious page. Your prospects may not be on Facebook, but they are online and will most likely check out your website. So when they see those social icons as soon as they enter your site, chances are they will click on them. From there, they will see all that great content you’re sharing – great client work you’ve done, relevant industry news, and most importantly, content you’ve created such as blog posts, which help you market your expertise.

A new practice we’ve begun at WordWrite is that every time we share something online, we make sure to bookmark it on Delicious with appropriate tags. That way, all of that important content is all in one place, and we as an agency are reaffirming our expertise as a PR shop with knowledge of our business, our clients’ businesses, and the social space – something a prospect might want to learn more about.

Social media tool of the month is a regular feature on the WordWrite Storytelling Blog that appears monthly.

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Deanna Ferrari is an account executive for WordWrite Communications