photo by Michael Coghlan
Last week, I hosted the webinar “Social Publish: More than a press release” with Jason Kintzler, Founder of PitchEngine. We had a lot of great questions and unfortunately Jason and I couldn’t get to all of them within the hour that we had. So, I decided to answer them here on the blog.
Q. How does it work for B-to-B marketing?
A. That’s the great thing about PitchEngine, whether you are B2B or B-to-C, it really works for anyone that has a network of followers on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. No one knows your audience better than you, and Social Publish is a great way for you to tell your story in your own words while posting all of your content in one place (PitchEngine.com) and sharing that information with your network on your social media fan pages.
Q. Why should we use Pitch Engine then if this is all just material we can compile on our own?
A. The example that Jason likes to use is to think of your website as an island. You have the regular visitors to your website, but if you want to get your content in front of a fresh batch of eyeballs, you need to put it on a website that is already getting hundreds of thousands of unique visitors per month (UVMs). That’s what PitchEngine.com offers. It’s great to put your content on your website, but why not package it in a unique way and put it where the people already are?
Q. Are there tips/guidelines on converting a release to a story?
A. Think of this as brand journalism – instead of waiting for a journalist or blogger to write about your news – tell your story in your own way using your branded content, images and video to support it. There are no set rules for something like this, but I’ve seen when brands think outside of the box, they get more engagement on their story.
Q. Are we moving towards Social Content Optimization rather than SEO?
A. Definitely. The more a piece of content is shared, “liked”, or “retweeted”, the better the chance that piece of content will be found on the search engine results pages (SERPs). PR professionals and“marketers often get in the habit of optimizing strictly for keywords. What marketers should focus on is optimizing for customers and optimizing for outcomes. ”
Q. Would you ever recommend including the link within an email when you are sending out a press release to publications?
A. Absolutely. That is one of the biggest benefits of the partnership between Cision and PitchEngine. You can post your story on PitchEngine.com in hopes of engaging your audience on the social networks and then you can target your custom list of traditional media and journalists through CisionPoint by sending them a link to your story on PitchEngine.com.
Q. What do you mean when you say that Social Publish “includes” influencer database? Are you pushing out to them? Can customers search it?
A. CisionPoint does not automatically push your story out via Social Publish to the contacts within the Digital Influencer database, but your subscription includes access to the database so you can search and/or build a custom list of influencers and email them a link to your story on PitchEngine.com.
For more information on Social Publish and PitchEngine.com, please check out our related posts below.
