Internet is no more a luxury once it used to be; it has become the means for many people on this planet to earn their bread and living. Some are even making handsome money by working from home and being their own boss. With the increase in web users’ population, internet has seen many revolutionary changes.

First came the revolution of search engines thanks to daddy ‘Google’! Then came the social media and social networking sites, thanks to ‘Facebook’(the biggest of them all!). Now, there is no more a definite distinction between offline and online businesses as the two have been merged by many small and big brands; all thanks to social media.

It has become important for everybody on web to make their presence felt by beating others in the same genre. Thus came the concept of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and everybody were in the battle field trying to optimize their sites, content and products sources so that they were ranked better by search engines. To this date, SEO best practices are being followed by webmasters and companies.

Promotion is always a necessary evil to businesses. Promoting products and stuff by paying for advertising or by word of mouth i.e. the free publicity is all good for business. This means you want people to spread the word and social sites are here to make it happen. As always you need to do your bit to make that happen, tada- SMO (Social Media Optimization) jumps into the picture.

What is SMO?

Social Media Optimization is the process of making your content reach as many people by means of social media. This process of publicity or advertising on social media is done by two ways:

1. Making your content easily sharable by giving the right options to share in the right places of your business sites. For example: Adding Twitter share button to your content will make it possible for people to easily share your content to their followers.
2. By providing number of options on your site to connect with you on various social media so as to easily reach your followers and people directly with your content. For example: Your facebook fans get your updates directly in their timeline so must be able to allow people to easily like your fan page by giving them a visible link on your site.

To make it precise, SMO is nothing but making your content easily sharable!

Types of social media that many businesses are making part of their marketing campaign

•     Social Networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, etc.
•     Social News and bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit, etc.
•     Blogs like wordpress, blogspot or dot com, etc.
•     Wikis, Magazines and Article submission sites like WikiHow, WikiPedia, EZine, etc.
•     Videos
•     Content creations through sideshows, etc.
•     Podcasts
•     Forums
•     RSS Feeds
•     Email and Instant messaging
•     Photo sharing sites like Flicker, Picassa Web, etc.

Why is SMO important for businesses?

Assuming you know the importance of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), I begin to share my views on how important it is to start SMO for better business.

SMO is different from SEO and yet it is an integral part of SEO.

As search engines are increasingly utilizing the information (recommendations by users which is believed to be non-profit and honest recommendation!) on social media like Google Plus, Facebook, etc to rank the site and pages. The more you reach your audience through social media the better SEO advantage you get by the way of social search.

Not to mention other advantages like:

1.      increase in your sales as you reach more potential audience,
2.      increase in traffic to your blogs or sites by which you can make more money,
3.     increase in social networking and contacts which may open up more business in future,
4.     it has great marketing and brand building advantages,
5.     builds live customer relationships and allows to address any issues thereby gaining the reputation for customer satisfaction,
6.     an excellent way to make any announcements directly to your customers and followers,
7.     the stronger the fan base for you the better social influencer you are considered,
8.     the huge fan following you build, the more likes and votes you get it implies the more trusted you are on web!
9.     your strong online presence means more business offline.

With so many advantages at hand there is no doubt why big brands and individuals are buying sponsored reviews for their products, sponsored tweets to spread the word, etc. SMO is also an important part and strategy for Online Reputation Management (ORM) and also you can to some extent measure Return On Engagement (ROI). Therefore, make your content easily sharable and also make your presence on social media so people can connect with you for more content.

Just a Tip: There is no way out to beat the great content people always want to share. Content is king and it will always be so no matter what. So create great content and amazing products so that your prospects and potential customers are instigated not only to buy or invest in you but also recommend the same to their friends and followers by sharing it.

Are you Social Media Optimized? Share more tips with us.