What is Social Media Optimization All About

Social media optimization (SMO) is used to attract particular types of visitors to particular websites through the methodisation of social media interactivity across the internet. SMO works in conjunction with search engine optimization (SEO) to optimize websites for their particular purposes and organize resources to maximize their effectiveness.

Social media optimization can be broken down into two broad components. In the majority of serious websites these days the features for social media are embedded in the content of the web page. These components include the likes of images and videos, as well as RSS feeds, user polling tools and social news items. Another form of SMO is the addition of promotional content above and beyond the actual primary content promoted by the page or site. This includes discussion groups, blogs, comments on other related blogs and the posting of updates on a range of other networking sites.

Search engine marketing (SEM) does the same sort of thing in that it seeks to drive traffic to particular websites, but whereas SEM uses primarily search engines as its source SMO deals with traffic from a disparate range of other origins. SMO does however also benefit from an enhanced rating with search engines, so to that extent the two are related.

With SMO, the types of activity prevalent on social networking sites, such as video and photo sharing, are harnessed to create a sort of virtual word-of-mouth network that can use blogging activity and the like to help drive traffic to where it is most relevant. There are blog search engines to complement this process and RSS feeds to facilitate the sharing of content.

As the internet matures and users proliferate to create an ever more complex virtual interactive environment, SMO is emerging as an important consideration for companies and individuals seeking to build a reliable reputation online, and construct a base of trust and confidence for future enterprises, whether commercial or social. To that extent, SMO is intimately connected to online and search engine reputation management (ORM and SERM).

Social media optimization however has a much wider application than merely optimizing conditions for selling products in the online market and establishing trusted brands. Knowledge management is increasingly important for businesses of all shapes and sizes, and SMO is being increasingly used in the areas of recruitment and customer relations to complement the more traditional methodologies and help create a more holistic approach to business in ways that might seem to have little to do with primary marketing concerns.