Social media optimization (SMO) is a social activity which was aimed to drive traffic to particular site using social media platforms. However, SMO has gained the huge popularity amongst online marketers not simply because social networking has grown but, because SMO also enhances SEO performance. Quality and effective SMO will drive traffic from both social site referrals as well as from search engines.
The origin of SMO
The term Social media optimization was first used by Rohit Bhargava in 2006 in his article. The core focus was to drive traffic to websites from social networking sites. Basically, SMO is a method of optimizing a website and its content using social media and networking websites.
If you are planning your SMO activity, follow these seven simple steps and reap the benefits of this simple technique to enhance your business.
1) Reputation
Your reputation improves by ensuring your viewers that you are an expert. In order to do so, you should perform thorough research and produce original content and share it on different social media sites. This will establish your reputation as a respected and qualified source. Your reputation is also get affected how you support and engage people. Being simply friendly and helpful to audience will also influence your reputation.
2) Authority
There are different aspects to authority. Search engines show their interest in determining what individuals, businesses and brands are seen as trustworthy and reliable by people on the web. The most noticeable example of a important step in this route is Google Authorship. Establishing Google Authorship can aid you develop as a specialist. This will also display your profile outstandingly in search results.
3) Engagement
To attain quality results from social media optimization, you should actively engage with your audience. By spending time in commenting, shares, likes etc., you can achieve so. You can share someone else content to provide a better user experience to readers by giving feedback and responding to comments. You need to decide the network using which you can interact with maximum people. You can also motivate people to engage with a call to action. For instance,” if you find this content helpful, please share it”. Or you can also use, “If you think I have missed anything, please give your comments”.
4) Leadership
High quality research, creative thinking and original content formation all contribute to leadership. What is social media optimization(SMO)? When you are trying to understand this, you need to understand the importance of leadership in social media optimization effort. A leader will perform a profound research on their critical areas. He/she will share insights which are relevant to your viewers. Poor quality content or spammed content will be perceived as a consequence which will not be shared by your audience.
5) Right media platforms
It is critical for you to focus on the right platforms as well as on social communities. Where does your most of the audience hang out? Discover and focus on the social media platforms, groups and communities where your target users hang out. Some platforms are quite helpful in improving the SEO efforts than others. Google Plus is the most effective social media platform for many reasons.
6) Try to be more social
In order to obtain better results from social media optimization, you also need to build high quality networks. Keep in mind quality matters more than quantity. Find out the experts in your field, form a community or group of such experts. Read and understand what they say, engage them in discussions and also share your ideas with them.
7) Optimization
Some practical and technical aspects of optimizing your SMO are mentioned below. What is social media optimization (SMO)? These aspects are quite helpful to understand this.
- Social Icons – You can display your social icons on your site. Choose a prominent place so that it is easily noticeable.
- Share buttons – Adding buttons in your content makes it easy for users to share it with others. You can also display the numbers of shares to give social evidence.
- Subscription options – You can combine together subscription options like email, newsletter RSS etc.
- Social login – You can use social login options in your site to make it easy for users to comment and share.
- Shareable content – Some content such as infographics is more easily shareable because this is short and can be scanned. However, longer but well-written content can also be shared on social media sites.
- Images – Images really say more clearly than words. You should include images that add value. You can also include an image as a thumbnail for your content.
- Title tags – Optimizing your title tags for sharing, especially on Twitter could be better option. Include your name where there is a character limit.