Social Media Optimization or SMO for short, is quickly becoming the most effective tool in any company’s marketing toolbox. The intrinsic value of connecting with your new and existing customers using different social media networks is obvious. From promoting new and existing products to effectively expanding your current client base, Social Media Optimization has changed the way business owners spend their marketing budgets. If this is not true for your business I’d like to point out a few key facts about Social Media Optimization.
As I said, SMO can help you to gain a deeper connection with your new and existing customers. “But how?” you might ask. Well it is a simple concept really. Most people around the world are on Facebook or Twitter or both or at the very least have heard of them and know what they are for. Creating a Facebook page for your business is a great way to reach out to your customers as there is a good chance that a majority of them are using the service. So you have a Facebook page, you tell all your existing customers to “like” your page which many of them will do, and then everyone in your customers’ networks see that they are using your company to get their products and services! Great! Now what?
Twitter is a bit trickier. Regular twitter users are very active and are usually posting or at least checking on their twitter accounts several times a day. This pretty much goes for Facebook as well. Therefore it is vital to not only get your customers to “like” your Facebook page and “follow” your Twitter account, you have to continually create new and enticing content for your customers and the people on their networks to see without coming off as spammy.
Youtube is a great resource as well. Using video-blogging you can put a face to your business which will only enhance the connection you are building with your customers. Promotional videos for your products and services can be produced and posted on Youtube to further engage customers in your marketplace.
Facebook, Twitter, Youtube. These are the big three. There are many other social networks out there that provide a wealth of customer gold that is ripe for the mining. LinkedIn, Foursquare, Pinterest, Tumblr, Stumbleupon, Delicious, Quora, the list goes on.
When used in conjunction with one another, you will not only be creating content that allows your customers insight into your new and existing products and services, you are also creating relevant content that is being viewed by hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or possibly even millions of people! “Why is this so great?” you might ask. Well, what you are doing is creating tons of relevant content which is in turn viewed by tons of people, which in turn is getting indexed by search engines, which in turn is increasing your organic results in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)!
Okay, you have to admit, it is pretty exciting. You are connecting with new and existing customers by simply promoting your products and services and at the same time you are actually doing Search Engine Optimization (SEO)!
This is why SMO is now the most effective SEO technique. A while ago, Google rolled out its “Panda” algorithm which took the focal point of the search engine crawlers away from metrics such as PageRank (PR) and focuses more on the amount of content out there and how many people are viewing it. This is why Social Networks saw such a huge ranking increase after Panda was rolled out.
Traditional SEO techniques are still viable, but it is obvious that SMO can be used according to “White Hat” standards and arguably much more effectively.
Is Social Media Optimization right for your business?
The answer is always yes!