Social media optimization (SMO) is the process of increasing the awareness of a product, brand or event by using a number of social media outlets and communities to generate viral publicity.
Social media optimization includes RSS feeds, social news, Bookmarking sites, Social Media sites, video and blogging sites. SMO is similar to SEO (search engine optimization) which primarily creates brand awareness and also aims to drive traffic to your web pages.
The goal of SMO is to strategically create interesting online content, ranging from well-written text to eye-catching digital photos or video clips that encourages and entices people to engage with a website and then share this content with their social media contacts and friends. Common examples of social media engagement are “liking and commenting on posts, retweeting, embedding, sharing, and promoting content”. Social media optimization is also an effective way of implementing online reputation management (ORM). If someone posts bad reviews of a business, an SMO strategy can ensure that the negative feedback is not the first link to come up in a list of search engine results.
Social Media incorporates Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn etc. All of the platforms are now being used as digital advertising platforms, Facebook is the most prominent one.
Facebook had brought a revolution in terms of advertisement. More than 95 per cent of social media managers say Facebook offers the best return, followed by Twitter and Instagram.
A well organised and managed Facebook page can do wonders for you. You can try it organically and as a paid post as well.
What makes a Facebook page different from that of a Facebook profile is its reach. Facebook Page offers you with a tremendous scope of choosing your target audience to increase the success probability of your product\campaign. All you need to have is a distinct picture of who you want to market your product with.
It not only abandoned the very financial constraint but also offers you the opportunity to be in real-time assistance with your audience. With the growing time, customers have changed the way they want themselves to be treated by their clients. Today’s customers want proper attention, they believe in voicing their opinion and want those to be addressed.
In short, customers have become more demanding and vocal. Facebook page facilitates with the very feature that enables you to be in an interactive mode with your audience 24*7. You are also given the platform to analyze your post and calculate the loopholes needs to be bridged if any.
In a gist, Facebook Page caters to all your need to get people talking about your product at a very minimal fraction of money spent.
Another social media platforms that can be used for the advertisement are Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. Twitter gives you a very niche audience mostly used by big wigs of different walks of life. On Twitter, you have the leverage of demonstrating your work amongst the prominent personalities. In the US last year, 80% of marketers used Promoted Tweets, with many taking advantage of Twitter’s new hyper-targeting capability Tailored Audiences, and the very low-cost of using these services.
Instagram offers you to showcase your product in more of a pictorial way. If your product is going to be visually compelling, you can choose the platform for a better response. A picture is worth a thousand words…so make sure you’re displaying the right ones!!
According to comScore’s 2015 mobile trends report, Millennials spend upwards of 420 minutes a month on Instagram alone.
Another report by Forrester Research found Instagram users were 58 times more likely to like, comment on or share a brand’s post than were Facebook users, and 120 times more likely than were Twitter users.
LinkedIn can be another great way of flourishing your business. It is full of professionals, startups that you never know when your product/ campaign might catch eyeballs of these entrepreneurs. According to a report, There are over 65 million business professionals from around the world on LinkedIn. The average LinkedIn member has an average annual household income of $109,000. One person creates a LinkedIn login every second. Nearly 50% of LinkedIn members have decision-making authority for their companies.
The 16 rules of SMO, according to one source, are as follows:
- Increase your linkability
- Make tagging and bookmarking easy
- Reward inbound links
- Help your content to “travel” via sharing
- Encourage the mashup, where users are allowed to remix content
- Be a user resource, even if it doesn’t help you (e.g., provide resources and information for users)
- Reward helpful and valuable users
- Participate (join the online conversation)
- Know how to target your audience
- Create new, quality content
- Be “real” in the tone and style of the posts
- Don’t forget your roots; be humble
- Don’t be afraid to experiment, innovate, try new things and “stay fresh”
- Develop an SMO strategy
- Choose your SMO tactics wisely
- Make SMO a key part of your marketing process and develop company best Practices.
Conclusion
Following the above steps, you can strive to get the desired results and divert the traffic towards your website, generate more likes etc. Social Media Optimization works as the best tool to help you get the required result.
All the best !!
