06.7.2023 Katie Hughes
In days gone by, B2B SEO and B2C SEO were clearly defined and often mutually exclusive. But today, the line has blurred between what constitutes appropriate, effective marketing for B2B and B2C businesses, and those marketers who can exploit these non-traditional avenues are likely to benefit greatly. Here, we take a look at two perhaps unlikely sites which have much to offer B2B SEO.
Since launching two years ago, Pinterest has gone from strength to strength, as demonstrated by its ranking in the top 60 visited websites in the world (Alexa), and the top 20 in the US.
The concept is simple – users can ‘pin’ images they want to share onto virtual ‘pinboards’ organised by category (Technology, Architecture, Products, Sports etc), or onto their own personal pinboard. They can also ‘re-pin’ other users’ images and videos to their own or public boards – offering much potential for viral marketing success.
Teena Gomez over at LeadFormix offers a variety of reasons why B2B marketers need to pay attention to Pinterest to get a competitive advantage. She says that B2B firms can “use Pinterest to humanise [their] brand”, “demonstrate practical use of [their] products”, and utilise it “as a repository for [their] visual assets.”
Pinterest is also a highly practical and effective way to market your services to busy buyers, in a way that requires little time for you, or for them. Once you’ve piqued their interest, they may then head over to your website to find out more when it is convenient to them.
As Gomez says: “A picture is worth a thousand words - Pinterest’s phenomenal growth is testimony to the power of visuals. It is up to us B2B marketers to harness that power and use it to tell our stories and increase engagement.”
StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon is another ‘social bookmarking’ site where web users share pages that they have found interesting or useful with the wider online community. According to statistics from StatCounter, StumbleUpon was the second most utilised social media site globally (Facebook was the first), between March 2011 and March 2012.
Again, the way it works is simple – users share pages that they’ve ‘stumbled upon’, which other users can then discover, randomly but sorted by category. Users choose what categories interest them, and this determines what content they are likely to see when they press the ‘Stumble’ button. Amongst the many categories available are ones which are bound to be of interest to B2B buyers, such as Investing, Business, Techonology, Financial Planning and Entrepreneurship.
By adding a button to share on StumbleUpon to all of the content you publish online – on your site, blog etc – you can easily drive extra traffic to your site, and extend the reach of your content marketing strategies. The white paper or report you released a year ago may well continue to be ‘stumbled upon’ by decision makers for some time.
