by Marelise da Silva | Jul 12, 2010 | Social Media Optimization
Social this, social that. The whole world is talking about new strategies and recommendations on social media marketing and how it is at the forefront of the internet marketing world. Did you know that you can increase the visibility of your online profile by correctly optimizing it? Have you ever heard of social media optimization (SMO)? Do you want to know what it means?
Social media optimization is the process of optimizing your online presence to be more visible in social media searches, sites and popular search engines. It is also the process of making your profile more easily linked by other sites, and more frequently discussed online in blog posts and other social media mediums.
Is Social Media Optimization new?
Even though it has been around for a long time, SMO is a new concept in the online marketing battlefield. With social media optimization, you can reach every corner of the globe both as an individual and a company. This can help you to broadcast your message to targeted users and businesses at the right time.
Every business participating in social media activities should also focus on social media optimization to enhance their profile and to become more visible. The greatest benefit to SMO is the instant exposure and influx of inbound links that it creates. Find below a couple of reasons why your business should explore SMO strategies:
- Everyone can be a content creator;
- It can increase your linkability;
- It can increase your visibility;
- It can increase your credibility;
- Get your message instantly in front of the right audience;
- Reach every corner of the globe as an individual and a company;
Google search returns millions of results. People are getting more clever by the day with their searches. They are not searching any more, but filtering the results to find exactly what they are looking for.
In this first part of social media optimization fundamentals I will be discussing blogs. I will cover other social media mediums in follow-up posts.
Blogging
Whether your goal is professional or personal, blogging builds credibility and creates a readership if your content is unique and informative.
Unique Content
Popular search engines loves unique relevant content. Create subject specific blog posts and categorise the content in a way that will deliver a boost to your keyword strategy. If you invest in unique content you are building a valuable intellectual property asset that will benefit other areas of the business as well as improve your search rankings.
Increase your linkability
Find below a couple of tips to increase the linkability of your blog so that people can find it fast or the information that you are broadcasting on it.
- Update your content often;
- Create sticky content features (downloads, lists);
- Use catchy headlines;
- Use the permalink conventions;
Increase your visibility
To increase the visibility of your blog, add bookmark quick buttons to your posts so that people can save your content to their favourite social bookmarking websites. Add relevant tags to each post in your blog so that these can appear in blog aggregation websites like Technorati , Afrigator or myScoop. Claim your blog posts first by bookmarking them on del.icio.us.
Reward the inbound links of your blog
Display pingbacks, trackbacks and comments on your blog. Add a list of blogs that links to yours and a recent comments section to feature contributors. You can also offer thanks to your contributors by adding a comment to a linking blog post.
Make your content travel
Syndicate your blog RSS feeds and provide links for users to subscribe. Also offer email subscriptions to your content. You can submit your own content to Digg and other popular content websites if your content is relevant and unique. Inform other bloggers you admire about your posts.
Sharing is caring
Find blog networks that can help you distribute your content. Pursue guest authors or contributor arrangements with blogs in your industry to spread the word about your own blog.
Marketing your blog
Even though the normal SEO rules also applies to your blog, other measures can be made to make sure your blog posts are more visible.
- Send trackbacks and pingbacks;
- Always add keyword driven tags in your posts;
- Use relevant categories;
- Distribute to social bookmarking websites and relevant social media news websites;
Final Notes
One of the greatest benefits of optimizing an active blog is that it will boost your search engine rankings. You can generate substantial amounts of traffic to your blog via RSS feed aggregation websites like Technorati and Afrigator (there’s hundreds of them) as soon as you publish a new blog post.
In the upcoming posts in this series, I will be discussing social media optimization fundamentals on other popular social media mediums.
Sources: Rohit Bhargava | Social Media Optimization: An Easy Guide to Marketing and Promoting Your Blog
Watch this space for the next part of this series.
by Marelise da Silva | Jul 8, 2010 | Social Media Optimization
With all the new social networks, social media channels, blogs, social bookmarking sites and other related Web tools channels, search engines aren’t the only source for valuable traffic to your website or online profile any more.
A top story on a highly ranked social media channel can drive much more traffic to your website than a top search engine ranking. All this has created a new process called Social Media Optimization (SMO).
Word of mouth marketing
SMO (Social Media Optimization) is a form of word of mouth marketing through the use of social bookmarking, social networking and media sharing (video, photo, presentations,etc) websites. The essence of Social Media Optimization is giving people a reason to visit and link to your website because of great interesting and original content.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is totally different from Social Media Optimization. With Social Media you are marketing directly to your targeted audience while with Search Engine Optimization you are marketing to the search engines. Search Engine Optimization is all about building rankings on the search engines while SMO is all about building lasting relationships and communities.
Basic rules of Social Media Optimization
From: Rohit Bhargava (he coined the term “Social Media Optimization”)
- Increase your likability: Increase the likability by adding new, original and interesting content that others will want to use as a resource. Look at adding a blog, white papers, statistics, and lists key information.
- Make tagging and bookmarking easy: Include “Quick Add” buttons or links making it easy to del.cio.us, dig, etc.
- Reward inbound links: To encourage more of them, we need to make it easy and provide clear rewards. From using Permalinks to listing recent linking blogs on your site provides the reward of visibility for those who link to you.
- Help your content travel: When you have content that can be portable (such as PDFs, video files and audio files), submitting them to relevant sites will help your content travel further, and ultimately drive links back to your site.
- Encourage the mashup: In a world of co-creation, it pays to be more open about letting others use your content (within reason).
by Marianna Muscat | Apr 23, 2010 | Social Media Optimization
To have an optimized Twitter profile page can allow you to attract more followers. It is effectively your “home” page on Twitter. Treat it the same way as the home page of your website as well. It is also the first impression many people will have of you. Your branding should always be consistent across all your social networking profiles and pages. This is where social media optimization comes into place.
The focus of Twitter and using it is to say a lot with very little. You will be surprised by how much information you can cram into 140 characters, including a link.
On your Twitter “home” page, include an informative intriguing bio about you in just a few words. Customize your profile page so potential followers will be convinced they don’t want to miss your next Tweet.
Find below a couple of tips on how you can optimize your Twitter profile page.
What can you do?
On your Twitter profile page, Twitter controls the header area, the bio area and the tweet area. You can customize the background image and your profile image. You can also control your username, the content of your bio and the best of all…your tweet content.
Your name
Twitter only allows you to use up to 15 characters for your username. If you can, include your company name, brand or domain name.
Profile image
Always use a consistent profile picture across all the social media tools that you use. This is also part of your branding strategy to be recognizable and to build familiarity with your brand.
Bio
Provide a short informative description that quickly summarized who you are and what you do. You only have 160 characters to do this, so write carefully. A good bio is to tell visitors what benefits do your followers get from following you.
Background
Design the background image that you will be using to give the maximum visual impact. Branding should always match your colors. Design for seamless repeat. Many users includes their company image together with contact information regarding them on their design.
If you are using social media to increase your company brand awareness and to build trust and credibility, social media optimization is absolutely vital for this.
Leave a comment below if you require additional information regarding social media optimization.
by Francois Muscat | Apr 8, 2010 | Social Media Optimization
Found a blog post on Social Media Optimization by Adam Singer where five members of the digital marketing community discussed 16 rules for social media optimization.
Find the rules regarding “social media optimization” they discussed with a short description of each one below. Be sure to check the Adam Singer’s post here: Social Media Optimization Redux
Increase your linkability
People need to know about your blog. Increase your blog or website’s from quality relevant resources.
Make tagging and bookmarking easy
Add bookmarking information on your pages. A retweet button is excellent for twitter tweets. If your content is good, people will share it.
Reward inbound Links
Inbound links has always been a good way to promote similar categories on your web pages and blogs.
Help your content travel
This is an excellent way to promote your business. This envolves portable music files, videos, PDF documents, etc.
Encourage the mashup
Syndicate your content through RSS will make it easy for others to create mashups that can drive traffic to your website. YouTube has been doing it for a while now where you can embed their videos on your website and blog.
Be a user resource, even if it doesn’t help you
Add value to users, including outbound links to areas that could help them with their goals and purposes.
Reward helpful and valuable users
Most often valuable users will be influencers and champions within your social site, devise ways to elevate them by promoting their works on the homepage, or develop a rating system.
Participate
Join in on the conversation. That is what Social Media is all about. Participating will mean your content will travel faster and usually with a snowball effect.
Know how to target your audience
Be always aware of your targeted audience. Be sure you understand the subject matter and the community living and breathing it.
Create content
Content is king!!! The social web requires you to create content. With so few who actually create content and stick with it, this is a tremendous opportunity if you have the persistence and passion to go the distance.
Be real
In simpler terms, don’t be fake.
Don’t forget your roots, be humble
Remember those who helped you on your way.
Don’t be afraid to try new things, stay fresh
Social media is changing by the minute. Keep your style fresh and clean.
Develop a SMO strategy
Set goals and objectives for your strategy. Reputation, sales, influence, credibility, charity, traffic/page views, etc.
Choose your SMO tactics wisely
Choose your SMO tactics wisely. Be cognizant of what actions will influence the desired outcome with the most impact.
Make SMO part of your process and best practises
Make SMO part of your process and best practices. As with good SEO, SMO tactics should become part of your organization’s best practices.
You can read the full article here: Social Media Optimization Redux
Website/Online marketing is not about the platform but the idea surrounding it. The platform is an enabler, helping you to utilize it effectively. Social media is gaining in popularity. By becoming involved in this dynamic communication environment yourself you are opening up to another marketing channel.
Browse to our website if you want more information regarding our social media marketing services.
by Marianna Muscat | Mar 6, 2010 | Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization, Social Networking
Social networking on the web is like contained versions of the blogosphere. People join social networks and create profiles on them to build a network and community by connecting with friends and business contacts. They can also invite their personal friends to join their community.
Social network communities retains the interests of their members by being useful to them. Some of the popular social networks provides services that’s entertaining as well. These services can also help you expand your network and business services. Facebook, for instance, allows members to create and customize (HTML customization with the addition of FBML) personal or business fan pages on a specific topic or niche. You can link blog posts, videos, information and even music to these fan pages. Have a look at our fan page, it is very new but you will get the idea – Facebook Fan Page
To get back to the topic – why would you use a social network?
- To keep in touch with friends and family;
- Professional networking services;
- The sharing of knowledge and information;
- Socializing with colleagues;
- Sales and business leads;
- Recruitment;
The social networking tools available online can be great business influencers and they can help to establish yourself as an expert in your field and niche. With correct social media optimization, you can increase your visibility and gain trust and credibility that can ultimately provide you with sales and business leads. The main focus point of using social networks shouldn’t be to increase sales but to build good relationships. The sales will follow if done correctly.
Find below some information on a few popular social networks you can join to start building your communities.
Facebook
Who doesn’t know what Facebook is? Facebook was started in 2007 by US colleges and became available for public use in the UK. The popularity of Facebook quickly rocketed. A big part of Facebook’s success is its creators decision to “open up” and allow anyone to develop applications to run on Facebook – without charging them.
This has seen Facebook users able to play each other at Scrabble and Chess, compare each others tastes and send “virtual gifts” to your friends. Everyday new applications springs up on Facebook and many are developed for entertainment purposes only.
URL: http://www.facebook.com
Membership: free
MySpace
MySpace gained a lot of its popularity around its music services. There’s over three million bands and musicians registered on it to attract a fan base from the 200 million registered accounts. According to Hitwise, in September 2006 MySpace was the 8th largest traffic source to HMV.co.uk – more even than the MSN search engine.
URL: http://www.myspace.com
Membership: free
LinkedIn
The most grown up of the popular social networks is LinkedIn which allows users to build there business and professional contacts into an online network. It has been criticised for not being open enough and for charging for too many of its services – but next to Facebook it is still the most popular online social network among people aged 25 and over.
The great success of Facebook could be a challenge to LinkedIn’s closed approach in the future.
URL: http://www.linkedin.com
membership: free and paid
Social networking is another form of social media and if optimized correctly as stated above, could result in huge benefits personally and for your business.
