What, Why and How of SMO (Social Media Optimization)

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Social Media Optimization or Search Marketing Optimization, SMO is an integrated digital marketing methodology with the inclusion of SEO and social media. It is the utilization of social outlets and communities to increase awareness and publicity of a product or a service. Social media outlets that may be used in SMO include social networking sites like Facebook, Instagram, twitter. SMO is similar to SEO in that the end goal is to encourage users to use and share links to the site across social media outlets. SMO increases the online presence of a site as well as in the long term, helps build a robust brand image.

When used effectively, SMO can be one of the greatest assets for improving the site’s organic search results. By connecting with people in various online venues, the reach of the business will expand and increase opportunities for people to link to the main business page. Social media optimization helps connect all of the social media accounts in a cohesive, consistently branded network that points potential customers where you want them to go.

Why SMO?

SMO involves finding out what content performs well for your company on social platforms and repeating that success.. Gone are the days of optimizing a website only for SEO for better user reach, customer interaction and user engagement. Social media Optimization has come to the fore, at times converging with SEO and in some instances replacing it as the most effective way to strengthen a brand, conduct lead generation, increase a company’s visibility in the online space, and connect to an audience. Few things that make SMO stand out are:

1. If Social Media of a site is organized and strategic, it is likely to perform better in search as well.
2. SMM helps a company get direct feedback from customers (and potential customers) while making the company seem more personable.
3. If a business is promoted via content marketing, content can be distributed effectively as people always share useful, exciting, and entertaining information with their friends on social networks.
4. On hashtag-driven networks like Instagram and Twitter, social media optimization involves identifying hashtags that will increase the likelihood of a user seeing a specific piece of content increasing the likelihood of the site being seen by users.
5. Utilizing viral marketing strategy, a business can achieve a broader reach by getting engaged users of social media platforms to share content rather than relying on users to find the content on their own.
6. Social media Optimization gives you a great opportunity to monitor not only your customer satisfaction but also the latest industry trends and your competitors’ activities. With the last industry news, you get the additional content — you can use them as topics to discuss with your followers.
7. The goal of SMO is to strategically create interesting online content, ranging from well-written text to eye-catching digital photos or video clips that encourages and entices people to engage with a website and then share this content, via its weblink, with their social media contacts and friends.

How to SMO?

For a business to optimize its social media channels, it must come up with a robust SMO plan and execute on it. The strategies differ from business to business. We, at PrismaSoft, will take care of that hassle. We have a five-step SMO strategy that has proven to be a game-changer in the industry:

Step 1: Analyze Target Audience

The right platform should be chosen such that the chosen social platform is the one that most of the target audiences use. The primary goal of this step is to figure out what social media platform your audiences use and where they want you to be. For this, data from user engagement analytics can be used.

Step 2: Perform Competitive Analysis

In this step, we analyze the ongoing competition in the market and figure out how to stack up against the competition. We use content exploration tools and compare engagement metrics for contents to better analyze the trend.

Step 3: Build a Strategy

After we understand the target audience, we build a clearly defined strategy to help reach the stated goals for the business.

Step 4: Execute the Strategy

A strategy is nothing without execution. A strategy is executed by a team, and SEO leaders and content marketers need to work closely beside social media and community managers to make the vision a reality. Because social media optimization is so closely aligned with search engine optimization, these teams need to work together towards the same goals, and make sure the message is similar on every channel.

Step 5: Analyze and Adjust

Once the strategy has been executed on, results will be analyzed and adjustments shall be made. In the initial strategy, it will be outlined how often we will check in on the results. That way, we won’t find ourselves guessing when the right time is to weigh in.

Social Media Optimization is an essential pillar of any sound marketing strategy and is not a separate, siloed area. SMO creates an online compliance of customers and thus helps in augmenting sales and increasing profits. It helps in creating awareness of the brand by exploring endless opportunities in the market. The power of SMO combined with SEO will tremendously help businesses thrive in the digital world.