What is Social Media Optimization (SMO)?

Social media optimization (SMO) is the activity or process of promoting products, services and content through social media platforms. Social media optimization is a digital marketing strategy that can be used to increase awareness of new products and services, build relationships with consumers, and mitigate potentially damaging news.

Understanding Social Media Optimization (SMO)

For quite some time, digital marketing initiatives were driven by search engine optimization (SEO). This is about increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to a website by improving its visibility in a web search engine, such as Google Search.

Social media marketing has become a viable alternative to SEO in recent years as a means to strengthen a brand, generate leads, increase a company’s online visibility, and build a relationship with an audience. We’ve noticed that there is no dearth of social media platforms for digital marketing, such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Pinterest, and TikTok, among others.

Social media optimization frequently directs the public from these social media platforms to the company’s website, where they can get more information. For example, a social media campaign to raise awareness of a new vehicle model might direct the visitor to a company webpage with information about local dealerships.

Why should you invest in social media optimization?

In the past, it was easy to tell the difference between marketing that was meant to optimize search engines (SEM) and marketing that was focused on social networks (SMO). Today, this boundary is almost non-existent. The two strategies are not only allies; they are also fundamentally complementary.

Therefore, the most obvious and most important reason for using SMO strategies is that they are essential to your SEO strategy. The findings of this study further emphasize this, as 50% of companies that don’t achieve SEO success don’t incorporate both strategies.

In other words, we will assume that your organization has a higher level of Twitter engagement. This fact does not guarantee a high ranking on Google, but if you incorporate it into a well-designed SEO strategy, the results will be better. Simply put, your digital marketing strategy will only be successful if SEO and SMO are balanced.

Social media also indirectly affects your search engine ranking. And that’s why more and more organizations are embracing social media optimization (SMO). That is also the reason why SMO trends often change as companies gain the ability to meet Google’s requirements and consumer expectations.

Why is SMO important?

• Social media platforms are used by nearly 5 billion people.
• 90% of social media users follow at least one brand.
• 76 per cent of social media users bought something they saw on social media.

What is the main goal of social media optimization?

The use of social media platforms by companies is to increase website traffic or to sell products directly through the platform. They do both of these things often.

There are numerous organizations that have a presence on multiple websites to target different demographics. One of the social media platforms that lends itself naturally to visually presenting products is Pinterest. The broadest demographic uses Facebook, among others.

Lowering the cost of social media marketing

In the present day, social media usage should be a distinct category in any budget that accounts for a company’s marketing and advertising expenditures. In the end, the platform’s ad platforms like Facebook and Instagram are paid, but they allow the launch of effective campaigns.

Research on consumer behaviour, demographic characteristics, and interests has been found to be the only way to achieve this efficacy. The reason for this is that the advertisements are meant to work with a targeting tool that allows you to identify an extremely specific audience.

However, if your page does not meet the expected quality, it is futile to draw the audience to your page. The compensation of advertising platforms is based on the achievement of objectives. If an individual views the advertisement and interacts with it as expected but then is not interested in the content, the investment is considered wasted. We know it is imperative to establish a favourable conversion rate.

This is why SMO techniques are applied to increase the probability that the page content will be of interest to the person who accesses it, whether organically or through advertisements. Therefore, the more return on investment in social media, the lower the total expense of marketing aimed at social media.

Six Social Media Optimization Strategies

1. Content Strategy

Keep the uniqueness and personality of your social media presence. Using our ingenuity and innovative concepts. Choose a unique and attention-grabbing tone to help your organization stand out. Generate content that elicits emotional responses and reactions from consumers through unconventional thinking. Whether you are a brand or not, it is easy to capture people when you create content that resonates with them.

Adding a more human element will make your brand more relatable. Anecdotes and narratives are best used in your posts. User engagement is facilitated by story-based content that often generates millions of followers. Use authentic, optimistic content that’s unique.

2. Profiling Optimization

The addition of incentives as and when needed increases the potential for your social media profiles to be viewed and shared. To increase the number of views and shares, make your content profile visually alluring. The text and colours must be harmonious with the profile and create an emotional environment. Create visually attractive content with the help of an image creation tool. It draws people from all demographics and ages. Colours can breathe life into information and do wonders in content marketing. Once they see it, they immediately grab the viewer’s attention while even the most mundane post becomes distinct. Colours in your social media platforms will make your content more likely to get more views and engagement.

3. Social Media Badge on Your Website

The importance of link building is to increase the number of visitors and the audience on social media platforms and the internet. The establishment of high-quality inbound and external connections enhances your social media presence. It helps boost your social media account visibility and enables you to gain more subscribers, followers and likes.

When you add external links to your social media content on your website, search engines are much more likely to find out more about your website. Write high-quality content and associate it with external links with high page rank. Choose themes that inspire people to share your content faster.

It lets users easily push your content through several platforms. Most people are on their social media platforms. This allows people to click the social networking icon on your website and spread the content more easily. Additionally, you are told how many people have shared your content on various social media platforms.

Sharing your content with others is made easier if you establish a public profile for your social media platform that includes all social networking connections.

4. Establishing a relationship with the influencers is the next thing.

Try to get contacts who are powerful in the industry. Get your brand in front of social media influencers. Posting your content through social media influencers will increase your brand’s visibility and the number of visitors to your social media profiles. Sharing with social media influencers has increased traffic and followers by 90%. Cultivating Influencer relationships helps get your company more visibility.

5. Relevant Social Media Platforms you subscribe to.

The content that does well there may not do very well on the other. You can pick from a number of social media platforms and set content goals for each. Find an approach that is based on the people you want to influence and the industry you want to grow. You need to develop strategies to create a brand that will help your business expand. When you evaluate and organize your social media content, you are more likely to get the response you want. You can use tools to get a full idea of how your content is performed on multiple social media platforms. This will help you know which platform needs what content.

6. Social media optimization is the key.

In order to help you with your social media optimization efforts, you will need the right tools. The following are a few resources that may be beneficial:

• Salesforce, Hubspot and Marketo are examples of marketing automation technologies
• Social media scheduling services include Sprout Social, Buffer, MeetEdgar, and Later Search Social media.
• Image creation tools are Canva and PicMonkey.
• Alexa Marketing and other audience research tools
• Sales force automation (Salesforce, HubSpot, Marketore)