What is Social Media Optimization or SMO

Social Media Optimization

What is SMO

The term SMO means Social Media Optimization which is an important part of online marketing used to enhance publicity of a website to increase the awareness of a product, brand or an event. The term Social media optimization (SMO) was first used in 2006 by Rohit Bhargava in his article “the 5 rules of social media optimization”. The core focus was driving traffic to websites from social sites. Social Media sites like Facebook, Google+, twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube or Pinterest are being used by millions of user worldwide every day. Blogging, photo and video sharing, rss feeds, bookmarking sites, link sharing are other options of SMO. It has become an increasingly powerful tool for reaching new clients, as well as building rapport with current ones.

What is the objective of SMO

SMO is very similar to SEO. The main goal is to drive traffic for your site. Social media optimization is in many ways connected as a technique to viral marketing where word of mouth is created not through friends or family but through the use of networking in social bookmarking, video and photo sharing websites. In a similar way the engagement with blogs achieves the same by sharing content through the use of RSS in the blogosphere and special blog search engines.  Good SMO will drive traffic from both direct social site referrals and from search engines. Promoting your site on Social Medias on regular basis drives high traffic to your site. The more traffic you generate the more revenue option for you. This trick is being used by all the famous and popular websites now-a-days. Wikipedia says "social media optimization is becoming increasingly important for search engine optimization, as search engines are increasingly utilizing the recommendations of users of social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ to rank pages in the search engine result pages." You would probably seen that in search engine results, these social media sites with referral links to their inside pages ranks higher than the normal SEO process. This technique pushes your page above all other sites in search results thus, you get more clicks on your page link available with the above said social media pages and more traffic is through.

Methods of SMO

The methods of SMO is based on publishing, sharing, discussion, social networking, micro blogging, Live Streaming, Live casting, Virtual Worlds and not limiting but including Social Gaming.

Here are some SMO tips to rank higher:

1.    Reputation building: maintain your good reputation on social media sites. Reputation is the key to build trust with the viewers and subscribers. Openly sharing your content and expertly comments in discussion with the users will help your enhance your reputation.

2.    Engagement: This means encourage customer interaction. The more you interact with your subscribers the more you engage people return to your site. Thus increase average visit duration as well as low bounce rate for your site. That means more return visitor for your site with longer stay. This will also helps your site to rank higher in alexa rating. This option will also helpful to increase chances of goal completion.

3.    Leadership: With your trustworthy engagement with your site users you act as a guide to them do the things right way and in proper manner. This way you act as a leader and therefore your reputation stands higher.

4.    Positivity: Do not discourage an option of future possibilities. Listen carefully what your commenter wish to say and reply accordingly even tactfully and positively.

5.    Use of Disques: it helps you build a community of active readers and commenters.

Conclusion: As per Wikipedia, “smart businesses are integrating social media participation as part of their knowledge management strategy i.e. product/service development, recruiting, employee engagement and turnover, brand building, customer satisfaction and relations, business development and more”. Therefore, create your own social media pages now if not already created and start blogging, sharing, commenting, gaming, photo & video sharing. Today SMO is the key of your success.

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