Know Social Media Optimization

July 3, 2009 – 1:24 am

In today’s competitive world, you need to advertise belligerently to stand out and promote your services on the internet. We have loads of marketing tools available on the internet but the one that is used popularly these days is Social Media Optimization. SMO can be described as simple online tools that people use to share their experiences,reviews,insights etc. The main objective of social media is to increase the visibility and presence of a site online. This all can be achieved by focusing on some popular channels like :-

• Discussion Forums
• Message Boards
• Blogs
• Wikis
• Viral Marketing

  (*We would be learning about these channels in forthcoming blog posts)

There are some rules which one must keep in mind when using social media for promotion :

Initial research and study: Know the requirements of your client and study it carefully so that you can leverage only the specified channels based on demography,profession,lingo etc.

Profile Creation: Create a profile on the basis of your client’s requirements. Know the right social media community that would be suitable for your profile. For e.g. Indian’s generally participate in networking sites like-Orkut, Bharatstudent, Bigadda etc; Faceparty,Friend Reunited are popular networking sites in UK…

Conversations and Participation: An important rule to keep in mind is that you have to look “real” and not “fake”.Why would someone check a link you posted in his/her profile ,when you did not even bother to converse with that person after becoming friends. Start conversations ,share a simple joke ,build a rapport with that person so that he can trust you.

Correct pitching in discussion sites:Forums are the most critical part of SMO. You have to be very careful while posting threads in forums. Never give you link in the first post. The moderator will surely ban you. Try participating in ongoing conversations and reply something informative so that the trust factor builds up.

Create educative content: If you are creating your blog on wordpress or other blog sites,you have to be sure of the content contained in that post. People will visit your blog only if they see value in your post.

Popularize your site: Creating your content is not enough. You can populate it using different social bookmarking sites like Delicious,Stumble Upon or even creating your page on wikipedia. This would surely boost up your sales.