Social Media Optimization 101

Published on 02 October 2009 by Jorge in Social Media

Comments

It’s been almost 4 years since the word social media started being thrown around, it’s now become part of our daily talk that’s it’s just referred to as ‘social’. Still many businesses large and small don’t quite get it and most importantly are not ready for it.

How do you get started?

First let me explain what social media optimization is.

Where search engine optimization (SEO) is about making sure your website can rank in search results, social media optimization (SMO) is about making sure visitors to your website can share your content with their colleagues, friends or family.

Bottom line SMO is about making it easy for people to share your stuff.

 

See all those delicious, Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed icons on websites around the internet, even on popular news sites and wondered why they’re there for? Now you know.

 

Now let’s be clear, just putting those icons around your site is NOT going to make your visitors share your content (we’ll leave this for another post), you’ll just make it easier for them if they get the ‘itch to share’.

On we go.

3 Things you can do right now to make it easy for people to share your content.

 

  • Put a in every page of your website. It can be a form with fields or a plugin with the words ‘Tell a friend’ that when clicked gives the user an array of options to share.
  • Add a plugin to your blog. Like the one we use here, educated audiences know that when they see this icon it means share. If you’re audience is not that educated we recommend you get creative and add social icons below the post, a good example of a site that does this is . They use BIG icons at the end of each post!
  • Create a spread page. If you have a product with an established fan base, create a page that contains the things you’ve like them to share with their friends. Ex. Glue has such a that does just this.

 

In what other ways are you making it easier for people to share your content? Share in the comments.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

blog comments powered by Disqus