Social media optimization (SMO) is the use of a number of outlets and groups to create advertising to enhance product, service brand or event awareness. Social media types include RSS feeds, social news and bookmarking sites, as well as social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, websites for video sharing and blogging sites.
SMO is comparable to search engine optimization in that web traffic generation and website awareness is the objective. Social media optimization generally relates to optimizing a website and its content to encourage more consumers to use and share connections across social media and networking sites to the website. SMO also relates to software instruments that automate this process, or website professionals that perform this process for customers.
SMO’s objective is to produce strategically interesting online content, ranging from well-written text to eye-catching digital photographs or video clips that encourage and encourage individuals to engage with a website and then share it with their social media contacts and friends via their web link. Common examples of social media involvement are “posting and commenting, retweeting, embedding, sharing, and content promotion.”
Social media optimization is also an efficient way to implement online reputation management (ORM), meaning that an SMO approach can guarantee that the negative feedback is not the first link to appear in a search engine results list if someone posts poor reviews of a company.
Search engine optimization relationship
Optimization of social media is becoming an increasingly significant factor in search engine optimization, which is the method of developing a website in a manner that has the highest possible ranking on search engines. As search engines progressively use the suggestions of social network users such as Reddit, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram to rank websites in the resulting search engine pages. The implication is that if a web page on a social network is shared or “liked” by a user, it counts as a “vote” for the quality of that web page.
Search engines can, therefore, use such votes in search engine results pages to correctly ranked websites. Moreover, since it is harder to top the scales or thus impact the search engines, search engines put more inventory into social search. This, combined with progressively personalized interest-and location-based search, has greatly improved the significance of social media involvement in search engine optimization. Because of personalized search outcomes, websites such as Yelp, Google Places, Foursquare, and Yahoo! Local location-based social media presences have become increasingly crucial.
While optimization of social media is connected to marketing of search engines, it varies in various respects. SMO focuses primarily on driving web traffic from sources other than search engines, although enhanced ranking of search engines also benefits from effective optimization of social media. In addition, SMO is useful in targeting specific geographic areas to target prospective clients and reach them. This enables the generation of leads (discovering fresh clients) and adds to elevated conversion rates (i.e. converting earlier uninterested people into people interested in a brand or organization).
Relationship of Social media optimization and viral marketing
Social media optimization is linked in many respects to the viral marketing or “viral seeding” method where word of mouth is generated by using networking in social bookmarking, video and picture sharing websites. An efficient SMO campaign can harness the strength of viral advertising; for instance, 80% of Pinterest activity is produced by “repinning.” In addition, websites can maintain current supporters while attracting fresh ones by pursuing social trends and using alternative social networks. This enables companies to create a follow-up and presence online, all connecting back to the company’s website for enhanced traffic.
For example, not only can website traffic be increased with an effective social bookmarking campaign, but the rankings of a site can also be increased. Similarly, by exchanging content through the use of RSS in the blogosphere and unique blog search engines, involvement with blogs produces a comparable outcome. Social media optimization for organizations or people who care about their internet presence is regarded as an essential part of an online reputation management (ORM) or search engine reputation management (SERM) approach.
Optimizing social media is not restricted to marketing and constructing brands.
As part of their knowledge management approach includes:
- product/service development
- recruitment
- employee engagement and turnover
- brand building
- client satisfaction and relationships
- company growth and more
Intelligent companies are increasingly incorporating social media involvement. Additionally, optimization of social media can be introduced to promote a related site community, enabling a good business-to-consumer (B2C) connection.
See also Facebook Optimization and Marketing / Social Media Optimization Origins and Implementation
