SMO or Social Media Optimization is the latest trend in the field of online marketing. From hindsight SMO seems like an inevitable consequence of the rapid growth of social sites on the net as well as the recent bursts in popularity of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SMM (Social Media Marketing) but it differs from them in many ways. SEO as the name suggests involves more publicity on the organic searches of the various search engines but SMO involves more publicity on all the other sources. The term Social Media Optimization is attributed to a certain Mr. Rohit Bhargava.
Let us breakdown what SMO actually means. This requires us to understand what social media is. Social media is different from traditional media in the sense that it is much more interactive basically involving open discussions and dialogues about the relevant content which in turn can be anything and everything. Social media includes all the various social networking sites, internet forums, blogs as well as audio/video sharing. So now SMO can be taken to be an optimizing technique involving such online communities.
Your main aim in SMO is to promote yourself on the afore mentioned forums. But this does not mean blatant and mindless plugging. This process must be done very intelligently but don't get scared off, anybody can do it.
If I put it in one line all then you have to modify your content so as to make it more promotion friendly. You want to be more visible on the internet as a whole excluding the search engines but the two are not mutually exclusive because if you are more visible throughout the web then your organic search ranks will automatically go up. You can easily publicize your site by making bookmarking and tagging easy. Just like anywhere else, a catchy title goes a long way in SMO. Your content should be concise and focused. Try to go for the top user status. The key here is to create link bait. It is kind of a word of mouth thing for the digital age. You want your link to be distributed as much as possible. For that you have to participate very fervently and regularly, and keep in mind that this is a two way process so be open and reply and comment on other peoples' blogs etc.
Because it is still in its nascent stage, everyday new benefits and uses of SMO are being discovered. The single most important benefit of SMO is the targeted nature of its approach. Your links are promoted only and exactly where people might be interested or would sooner or later require your services. This ensures quality traffic i.e. traffic only from prospective clients. It can also generate quantity. SMO has been known to attract large amounts of traffic in a very short span of time but this does not mean that its effects are only short term. It guarantees steady traffic for a long time. Content sharing can be done in both audio and video formats, which is always an added advantage.
Looking at so many advantages you might be tempted in indulging in practices like spamming or distribution of biased information or violation of community rules or even paying for votes. But in accordance with online ethics such acts must be avoided at all.
