Introduction to Social Media Optimization (SMO)
Also, social media can be considered anything that can help build a community to rally around. Companies/websites such as Digg, Delicious, Facebook, and Revver all fit the bill. These are all websites that can now be used as places to put out your marketing message. Spreading messages through blog posts and blog search engines also fits the bill. It is all about making something easy to spread, which, by the way, used to be called word-of-mouth. Buyer beware though, you can’t force SMO. This is pull marketing; it is not “push your message onto someone marketing”.
With SEO the goals are clearly defined, you’re trying to make a website visible in the search engines. Is SMO really as simple to define as making your site visible in the social media? Does that entail anyway possible and include buying banner ads on MySpace?
The concept behind SMO is simple: implement changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs.
… and then he lays out 5 rules for SMO…
1. Increase Your Link ability
2. Make Tagging and Bookmarking easy
3. Reward Inbound Links
4. Help Your Content Travel
5. Encourage the Mashup
a couple more rules…
1. Be a User Resource, Even if it Doesn’t Help You
2. Reward Helpful and Valuable Users
In way it sounds a whole lot like Marketing 2.0. It is pretty much includes all the new marketing techniques that are becoming popular rolled into one, techniques such as; Linkbaiting, Usability Design, Buzz Marketing, Community Building, and anything that can be considered “pull marketing”.
Here’s a few more possible rules…
8. Participate – Join the conversation. Social Media is a two way street, lets not forget that. By conversing with the community you are creating awareness and prolonging your buzz. You are keeping it going and this often results in a snowball effect. Participating helps your message spread further and faster.
9. Know how to target your audience – If you don’t even know your target audience you are in trouble. I would love to have everyone using my product too, but you need to be realistic. There is always going to be a certain audience you can appeal to and others that you can’t. So know your appeal and who it is appealing to.
10. Create content – There are certain kinds of content that just naturally spread socially. It does not matter what industry you are in and what boring products you sell, there is always some kind of content that can be created that will work. Whether it is creating widgets, making people laugh, or writing a whitepaper, it can be done. Know what type of content can work for you and create it.
11. Be real – The community does not reward fakers.
While social media optimization is becoming very important you can’t forget about good old SEO either. Google and Yahoo still drive mass amounts of traffic and you ca not ignore them. It is all about leveraging new mediums and riding these waves. Even though you might be getting dirt on the white glove you still have to take advantage of these powerful channels.