New terminology is always being dropped in digital marketing. When I first came across the job title “Social Media Architect” I was like WTF is that? Is that even a real thing? Granted, Social Media Optimization, or SMO for short, isn’t a new term, but it has been increasingly more and more popular lately.
Similar to how Search Engine Optimization (SEO) optimizes websites for search engines, the same thing applies to SMO… Literally optimizing your website for social media marketing.
End blog post.
Just kidding, let’s dive into a bit deeper than the literal term!
Exactly what is Social Media Optimization / SMO?
If you use social media to grow your company’s presence online, that’s SMO. Some businesses (and I wouldn’t recommend this) don’t have websites, they use platforms like Facebook or Instagram for their web presence. But SMO is more strategic, it’s using your social media plan to successfully connect with your audience and grow awareness of products or services.
It’s an important factor in your search rankings as well and helps drive more traffic to your website, and as I always say, if they’re landing on your website, there’s a better chance of you controlling where your audience will click next instead of them scrolling past your post in their feed to your competitor’s.
Basically, use SMO to improve your website, particularly the content.
Some basic SMO tips you can implement today
Connect social media and your website
I actually wrote a blog post on how to make your website social media friendly, go read it! In addition to the four easy tips you’ll find in that post, the point is to integrate your website and social media… That means:
- If you allow users to sign into your site, make it easy and allow them to sign in via their social media accounts
- Make use of the authority sites like Facebook and link back directly to your website in posts
- Have links to your social media on your website (this should already be a thing!)
- Have a link to your website on your social media profiles (again, this should already be done!)
Create content with quality and share-ability in mind
I always, always, always feel like a robot when I say this, but focus on quality NOT quantity of content. The more relevant and useful a piece of content on your site is to your audience, the more likely they’ll share it. So while you might be focusing on wishing that your social media posts went “viral” or more realistically, were popular, you should be thinking about the content on your website as well.
When you have amazing content, the more likely people will link to it on their own websites, writers will reference it in an article or blog post, and in return you’ll get a backlink, which is sometimes worth more than gold depending on what site it’s coming from.
Take advantage of robots… aka machine learning
Be selective with which posts on social media you’re putting some money behind! Don’t simply boost each and every post you make, that’s not strategic, and will most likely be a total waste of money. I know, social media is very “pay to play” and you’ll reach more of your audience if you give your content a bit of a paid boost, but it’s not effective.
Did you know machine learning can actually predict the success (or failure) of a post? Creepy, right? That’s why it’s so important to be selective when putting funds behind your content! Don’t tarnish your relevance score and ruin your brand image!
Know your audience
You’ve heard it from other marketers, so I don’t think I need to explain this one… But develop content and be on platforms that are relevant to your audience. You can use tools to help you understand your audience better. Here’s a couple tools to check out:
If you’re having difficulty with the above tips or still don’t know what the eff SMO is, reach out.
