What is Social Media Optimization?

Social Media Optimization – An Overview

What is Social Media Optimization?
Social media optimization (SMO) consists of a set of methods for generating traffic on any website through social networking websites, business networking websites, online communities and blogs (macro blogging as well as micro blogging). These methods exploit the customer base that the target social media / business networking website already have and belong to common interest group with the website that is being promoted.

We all are aware of the social networking websites like orkut, facebook etc. These websites provides platform to interact with other users, create groups for common interest, share ideas, share profiles and many more.

How can SMO benefit me?

• SMO is a great tool due to its penetration in the target markets.
• It does not cost money to run a SMO campaign.
• SMO is a good tool for branding
• SMO can do wonders for direct sales, direct marketing of products and services
• What are various methods for SMO?
• Creating RSS feeds
• Placing Social News buttons
• Setting up a blog (Macro Blogging-e.g. blogger.com , wordpress.com)
• Micro blogging through twitter
• Incorporating functionality to add third party community tools like videos, images (youtube.com)
• Active participation in community forums and discussions with meaningful inputs
  

List of websites which can be helpful in Social Media Optimization

• http://www.orkut.com
• http://www.facebook.com
• http://www.linkedin.com
• http://www.blogger.com
• http://www.myspace.com
• http://www.digg.com
• http://www.stumbleupon.com
• http://www.xing.com

Measuring ROI for Social Media Optimization (SMO)
Measuring ROI is important in any marketing campaign / advertising campaign you undertake. Similarly in SMO too it is important as based on this one can allocate efforts and invest time in sustaining the efforts.
Again, the goals matter in computing ROI for SMO campaign. The goals can be

• Generating direct sales
• Brand Building
• Generating Leads etc.

For generating direct sales, one can incorporate small software code to detect the source of traffic and associate it with sales if any comes from the visits.

For brand building, one needs to follow the depth of penetration in business / social networking website.

Summary: SMO can be a very useful tool to generate the traffic for any website if used effectively. There is no cost associated with SMO methods but it requires sustained efforts for generating quality leads.

Himanshu Singh is the owner and founder of Bangalore based Internet Marketing Firm Himshilp