What is Social Media Optimization? Social media optimization (SMO) is the use of a number of outlets and communities to generate publicity to increase the awareness of a product, service brand or event. Types of social media involved include RSS feeds, social news, bookmarking sites, and social networking sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, video sharing websites, and blogging sites.
Develop A Plan
Begin by developing a plan for a month. Focus on a day to day approach with specific themes in mind; such as, Motivation Monday or Throw Back Thursday. These themes also have accompanying hashtags (#MotivationMonday, #TGIF, et cetera).
Apply the same approach to each month. Develop an overall idea you want to reiterate throughout those four and a half weeks. Once you get into a good momentum you can move onto quarterly and yearly themes for your platforms.
Visibility
Your visibility on the web is directly proportionate to your activity. Your platforms need to receive posts daily, and these posts require interaction to boost your presence. This is why we chase shares and likes so much. The content of the posts should be relevant to your business and brand, and stay away from taboo subjects.
You don’t want negative articles clogging your feed. The most important qualities are your posts being likable and shareable. Your posts need to engage people and make them want to interact. So, you will need to be creative when choosing the subject and writing the content. The best content for your business is content about your business.
Any pictures, videos or articles containing you and your brand should be posted as much as possible. Use the days of the week, holidays, events and popular yet related trends on the web to also help guide your content.
Organic Growth
Your friends and followers should be obtained organically. This means DO NOT purchase a friends list or anything like it. Google measures how much interaction takes place between your posts and your friends compared to how many friends you have.
Meaning, if you have 3,000 friends or followers and two of them like or share your posts, then that is bad compared to 300 friends or followers with 200 of them interacting. You see? Organic impact is best. This also increases your chances of reaching more people.
Time Your Posts
Tweriod and companies like it offer a way to track your friends and followers to see when they are online. This gives you good information for posting at a time when they will most likely see it. By doing this, you maximize your reach, likes, shares and views.
Most of our content is published between noon and 3:30pm, with some exceptions. Everyone has a time frame during the day in which they use their devices more, so all you need to do is get your content on their feeds during those segments.
All About You
As stated earlier, posts about you and your business are the most important. Use social media to highlight your website and features about your business. It’s a great avenue to advertise down, and since you have an audience the results can be measured.
Grammar and Spelling
Some basic advice but very important is to use proper grammar and correct spelling. Write well but write correctly. You have some latitude with this rule, but leave your shorthand, acronyms and weird initials in your texts. You are promoting a professional business, so all reflections need to be consistent.
Persistence
The last advice to leave you with is persistence. Stay on top of your social media chores each and every day. Spend time considering new ways to strengthen your posts. It’s easy to get into a steady drone of just sharing curated content, but you need to be creative. There are too many other businesses competing for the same foothold to be lazy.
Don’t just take my advice, but also seek the help of others. I read Googleopoly by Sean V. Bradley, and based most of my initial approaches on his words. The Art of SEO by Eric Enge is also full of useful material. Once you gain some experience, you’ll have your own advice to impart. And then maybe we will all read your article.
