What is Social Media Optimization?

The new Buzz phrase at the moment is Social Media Optimisation or SMO, but what is it and how can it help you promote your website?

Social Media Optimization is a set of methods for generating publicity through social media, online communities and community websites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Blogging, posting industry articles, being active on forums, publishing RSS feeds, posting videos on sites like YouTube, etc, etc.

Social Media Marketing is a very powerful component in your marketing strategy. It is a great way of getting traffic to your website.

SMO is the online version of “word of mouth” marketing. In the old days that was one of your only options, but it’s surprising how many companies and website owners do not take advantage of this free modern marketing strategy.

Unlike traditional search engine marketing, social media optimisation has a dual focus. Not only does it aim to drive traffic to a website through the social media networks themselves, it also aims to boost a site’s ranking by getting mentions all over the web. This is why Social Media Optimization is currently considered a smart way to optimise your website.

What’s the benefit to SMO?

The benefits of social media vary depending on what you want to achieve. For some sites, SMO offers the instant exposure and influx of inbound links. With any luck, a significant portion of your new links will be coming from quality sites. However, you need to capture those first-time visitors and convert them into loyal site community members. To capture those visits you need to have good website content. You should already know that good, frequently updated website content is something which Google loves and helps your page rank higher in search engines. Well, SMO inspires you to create good, interesting content, while gathering inbound links. SMO actually helps you implement SEO techniques by reinforcing what you should be working towards through your search engine optimization campaign.

Starting Your SMO Campaign

As with SEO, most sites can benefit from some form of social media optimization but you need to determine which site/s are right for your SMO Campaign. Think about your target audience and where they are likely to be active on the web. Would they be on Facebook, Twitter or Digg?

Without knowing your audience there’s no way you can offer them a great tool or a compelling piece of content. You need to consider what actions will produce the strongest reaction and use the least amount of resources. You need to choose the best sites for your audience and concentrate on them. Choosing too many sites will become unmanageable and dilute your efforts. Take into account what your desired outcome is. Are you looking for increased conversions, traffic, links, industry credibility, brand recognition, something else?

Once you know your goals you can start deciding which sites are best geared towards helping you meet them. Right now the three sites that seem to be driving the most traffic are Digg, StumbleUpon and del.icio.us, respectively. If you are wondering what on earth those sites are then you really should be checking them put. Here are just some sites which you should investigate. Take time to understand the focus of each individual site.

• Digg: Digg is a user-driven content site where members can vote, bury and comment on stories submitted by other members. Getting onto Digg’s front page often results in thousands of visitors flocking to your site.
• Del.icio.us: Del.icio.us is a Yahoo-owned social bookmarking site. Del.icio.us allows members to publicly save bookmarks using tags. Don’t be afraid to tag your own content. Del.icio.us does not provide link backs to your website but you will get click throughs, then its up to you to make them want to stay and bookmark you.
• YouTube: YouTube videos often appear at the top of Google content. If you could create interesting videos with your websites content it may be worth investigating this tool. Again, it’s simply a way of driving traffic to your website.
• FaceBook: Create a presence that looks and behaves like user profiles to connect and engage with your customers and amplify your voice to their friends.
• Twitter: Twitter is a free social networking service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers.
• Reddit: Reddit is a source for what’s new and popular on the web. Users like you provide all of the content and decide, through voting, what’s good and what’s junk.
• Technorati: Do you publish articles, blogs, etc. Would you like to reach a large and growing audience, and join a community of fellow writers? Technorati publish original content an a wide variety of topics. Your articles will get a huge audience, you just need to take some time to write them.
• MySpace: This was one of the first SMO tools. It’s a bit old fashioned now but is still worth investigating for some marketing strategies.
• StumbleUpon: StumbleUpon acts as a discovery/recommendation engine and match users with Web sites, videos, images, etc. based on their interests that they may have been previously unaware of.

Other social media sites to consider utilizing are Wikipedia, Flickr, Spurl, Blinklist, Shadows, Simply, Yahoo Answers, Ning, 43 Things and Frappr. However keep your eyes open for new sites for your SMO strategy.

Don’t Forget SEO

Social media gives site owners a way to gain visibility to their sites without relying strictly on the search engines. It’s a powerful tool for building brand recognition and increasing visibility, but don’t mistake SMO for a substitute to search engine optimization. Social media optimization just gives site owners another set of tools to add to their marketing toolbox. Together social media optimization and SEO pack a power punch, both for you and your users.

You may also like to read:

• Search Engine Optimization In A Nutshell
• Benefits of Search Engine Optimization for your Website
• Forget SEO, You Need SPO: Search Person Optimization
• 9 Do’s and Don’ts For Building a Social Bookmarking Network
• Six Reasons SEOs Love Blogs

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