Social Media Optimisation (SMO) has, over the last couple of years, become a significant discipline in its own right and we will be covering the subject in ever greater depth here at Lammo over the coming weeks and months. In simple terms, Social Media sites are, as the name suggests, sites that are designed to house and encourage interaction between users and the creation of one or more communities with a common theme or purpose.

Whilst many social media sites started life with non-commercial aspirations, the power of the approach has steadily attracted individuals and firms with commercial objectives. It has become a form of relationship marketing but of course entirely online, where website owners can interact and increase traffic to their sites. Social Media thus helps in having an effective ‘conversation’ with a site’s target audience.

Perhaps most significantly of all, SMO extends the “real estate” available to online marketers. There are only so many search engine first pages for given search terms. No matter how hard you may work at search engine optimisation (SEO), in many highly competitive categories and search terms it is becoming all but impossible to attain first page positions. SMO completely changes the game, with immediate access to a potentially targeted audience. No waiting for many months to see if your hard work in SEO will ultimately bear fruit – you can start conversations today!

We are not for a minute suggesting that you replace SEO with SMO. Rather that you do both! SMO completely compliments the foundation work covered in SEO and indeed is a valuable input into the ongoing refinement of your SEO strategy.

Why is Social Media effective in this economy?
Research already shows that recession boosts Social Media marketing spending as this is the time for brands and websites to differentiate themselves from competitors and truly engage with their customers in a personal (and cost-effective) way. SMO is therefore increasingly important in many established firms’ online marketing mix as it attracts a large number of users exposed to and entering into dialogues around information that is sometimes not accessible via search engines.

What can Social Media aim to achieve?

1. Brand Building
From an affiliate perspective, SMO personalisation allows more effective creation of a brand than via SEO where, as we all know, there is precious little in the way of loyalty and everything is driven by optimisation for terms, price and functionality.

2. Reputation management
Brand reputation management has become a necessity when dealing with consumers especially in a competitive market. Whilst the search engines help in a great way to drive traffic, forums, social media, networking sites and blogs are all relevant to companies’ and products’ reputation. It is critical in this environment to know what people are saying about your brand / products / services offered.

3. Reach
Social media technologies provide scale and enable anyone to reach a global audience.

4. Low Cost Accessibility
Although there are time and resource costs associated with maintaining effective dialogues via SMO (much of which can of course be outsourced to SMO specialists if time is an issue), the costs and barriers to entry are far lower than with paid search or indeed a sustained SEO strategy.

5. Immediacy
With the best SEO strategy in the world, your visibility is only as good as the latest search engine index. As we all know, the time lag between SEO work and the results can be significant. This is a particular issue with fast-moving sectors such as vouchers and offers, cash back, finance, travel, electronics and so forth where offers come and go and products change daily. SMO provides a real time communication mechanism with your target market place although it is important to recognise that SMO presence takes time to build and the effects of your efforts will also take time to bear fruit in many cases.

6. Targeting Accuracy
You may have a very strong handle on the relevant keywords to drive targeted traffic to your affiliate sites. However, what you may not have is any level of real understanding of the motivation of the consumers entering those keywords. The more generic or competitive your keywords, the worse this is. The dialogues possible with a targeted audience via social media address this head on. Your consumers will TELL you what they are looking for. And what they are not looking for as well.

7. Money!
Simply stated, given the above factors an effective SMO strategy should drive highly targeted traffic to your site on a real time basis which should in turn result in increased conversions and commissions.

SMO Strategies
Specific strategies and tactics will be determined by your sector and target audience. Different social media sites have different target audiences and demographics and it is vital that you invest time in identifying the right venues – we will explore this in other posts here at Lammo. In general terms there are a number of effective strategies that can be put in place.

On-Page SMO
This includes on-page tactics through which a site owner can add content and links to services such as Digg, Reddit and Del.icio.us so that their pages can be easily ‘saved and submitted’ to and for these services. These services use a rating and interactive system, so its very easy to know what consumers are saying about your site, products and services. You will now also see “follow us on Twitter links” on an ever increasing number of sites.

Off-Page SMO
This involves selecting the most targeted social media venues and creating a presence and opening dialogues with your target audience. It may include writing content that is unique, and newsworthy. This content can then be marketed by popularising it via other sites and getting involved in blogs, forums, and niche communities.

Social Media Venues
Social media real estate grows by the day. The following is a (very) generalised classification of social media venues:-

1. Internet forums
2. Weblogs (blogs)
3. Wikis
4. Podcasts/Pictures Video
5. Social Networks – LinkedIn, Facebook, Blogger, mySpace, Second Life, Flickr, YouTube, Digg, Del.icio.us, BeBo etc.
6. Twitter – as covered elsewhere here at Lammo – this micro blogging site is almost in a class of its own!

Social Media tactics:
Plan bespoke content-based campaigns to introduce your site and brand to each relevant social media venue. The difference here is that the content is aimed and targeted directly to the consumer/user and not for search engines. It is therefore critical to create relevant, unique and useful content for the consumer. As with most things, first impressions count so ensure that you think through the approach in detail: word spreads fast – good or bad! Make sure that you have the resources lined up to respond to the dialogues that you open: obvious as this may sound, many fail at this early stage.

Planning a Social Media campaign
Again we will explore the key elements of SMO in greater detail here at Lammo. In essence, you need to:-

1. Ensure you have as much information as possible more information on your target audience – who are they, what are they looking for and where are they hanging out on the web.
2. Identify and prioritise the most relevant Social Media venues on this basis
3. Plan and create the initial content, focus and keyword strategy
4. Allocate resource to handle the dialogues
5. Create the necessary profiles
6. Post content and start the dialogue
7. Manage responses
8. Use responses as input to further SMO (and indeed SEO) strategy
9. Constantly measure the results including the reaction of your audience together with visitor and click-through / commission stats and add this as input to further strategy

Social Media takes time
Despite the immediacy of SMO in many ways, it is vital that you recognise that although cycles are far shorter than with most SEO activities, SMO also takes time to show positive results. Plan strategies and techniques that will raise awareness, engagement and satisfaction amongst your users. Utilise the information and feed back to your advantage to reap benefits in the longer term. Many of the Social Media venues are also continuing to grow in stature as audiences recognise their benefits and, as such, the overall SMO target audience continues to grow by the day.

Is SMO for Me?
Social media gives you an option to listen to your consumer and offer them exactly what they want. This facilitates lead generation and increased conversions. It also raises the feeling of community, sharing and connecting. Social media if used correctly can almost certainly work to your advantage. If you are willing to put (or pay for) the time and effort into identifying the right venues; creating the right content; managing responses and using the results to fine tune your SMO strategy then the rewards are there for the taking.

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