Social media optimization (SMO) is a subset of search engine optimization (SEO). SMO optimizes your business site by advertising through social medial sites, blog sites, online communities, podcasts, and message boards.
SMO is accomplished through really simple syndication (RSS) feeds, video and photo sharing, social bookmarking, blogging, and social news buttons. The concept is to drive traffic without spending money on search engine advertising. SMO creates links to a site by creating more visibility through Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Squidoo, Blogger, Hubpages, Digg, or Delicious, etc.
There are two categories of SMO methods:
(1) Social media features added to the content itself, including: RSS feeds, social news and sharing buttons, and incorporating third-party community functionalities, such as images and videos.
(2) Promotional activities in social media, aside from the content being promoted, including: blogging, commenting on other blogs, participating in discussion groups, and posting status updates on social networking profiles.
SMO is related to search engine marketing. However, it differs in several ways. Primarily, the focus on driving traffic from sources other than search engines, although it improves search ranking, is also a benefit of successful SMO.
As a technique, SMO is connected to viral marketing. In other words, word-of-mouth is created not through friends or family but through the use of networking in social bookmarking, video, and photo sharing websites. Similarly, the use of blogs achieves the same result by sharing content through the use of RSS feeds in the blogosphere and special blog search engines.
There are several ways in which to achieve SMO.
Allowing others to make use of your content
YouTube is a perfect example of this. YouTube allows you to download videos to your site(s) in order to jazz up your content. Another way is by syndicating your content through RSS feeds so that other people can use it to their own advantage. The positive result of this for you is that it will drive increased traffic to your website.
Making your content travel
Within your niche area, you can make changes to your site that will allow it to drive your content all over the place. You can accomplish this by including PDFs and audio and video files so that you can submit them to your list of members and also to sites that are related to your niche market. This will help you to create back links to your site so that your website traffic is increased.
Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.