6 Tips for Effective Social Media Optimization

The digital marketing conversation is often dominated by SEO and SEM – two of the most important aspects of any successful digital marketing strategy. However, in recent years, a third aspect has entered the conversation, i.e. SMO – also known as Social Media Optimization.

SMO, as the name suggests and much like SEO and SEM, involves a business optimizing its social media presence in order to increase brand awareness, generate leads and strengthen brand loyalty.

The conversation around social media optimization has increased in recent years because the influence of social media in building a brand’s online presence and increasing awareness has grown exponentially. So much so that Google now factors social media in its organic ranking on the search engine results page (SERP). So how can your business effectively optimize its social media presence? Keep reading for a few tips.

• Have Clearly Defined Goals & Objectives – Unfortunately, many businesses still make the mistake of approaching social media as simply an add on in their digital marketing strategy. As such, many still do not have a well-structured and designed social media marketing plan and most importantly, clearly defined goals and objectives for what they want to achieve with their social media platforms. This is a very big mistake. In order to have a successful social media presence, there must be a plan in place that specifically says what it is the business wants to achieve with the platforms and how specifically they will do so.

• Conduct Active Social Media Listening – This is important to help your business accurately identify the right keywords, hashtags, etc. to use in its social media content. Because active social media listening will help your business successfully identify what it is your customers are talking about, what it is they’re upset about, what they think of your brand and more. And identifying these elements will better help guide your social media content so that it gets the attention and interest you would like it to.

• Optimize Social Media Profiles – Much like the rule of SEO, which dictates that your website be optimized for the SERP with the right content, keywords, links, etc. the same applies for social media profiles. It is crucial to ensure that all your business’ social media profiles are complete. This includes having a proper link to your company website, telephone number, contact email, etc. Optimizing your social media profiles also includes ensuring the look and feel matches that of your brand and its vision.

• Optimize Content – Ensure the content created for and posted on all social media platforms is optimized for search engines. This includes using the right keywords and hashtags in captions, having the right links to direct traffic to the company website or to whatever specific landing page you need customers and potential customers to go to, in order to take a specific action. Optimizing social media content also includes having a healthy mix of original and curated content. This includes original high-quality images, videos, etc. as well as user-generated content, partnering with key influencers, etc.

• Optimize Website for Social Media – It’s important to always remember that your business’ various marketing platforms don’t work in isolation or at least they should not. With that said, another very important tip for effective SMO is to guarantee that your company website is optimized for social media. This means having social sharing options available and highly visible on your website, including direct links to your various social media platforms, aligning the SEO keywords you use to both the website and social media content, shortening blog article titles to make it easier to post and share on social media platforms and more.

• Optimize Posting Schedule – It is essential to find the right balance with regard to the posting on your social media platforms. Too much and you run the risk of turning followers off. Too little and your followers forget about you. Research suggests that to be most effective on social media, most businesses should post on all platforms at least once a day. In terms of weekly activity, research suggests a total of 3-10 times for Facebook and 2-5 times for LinkedIn. The key is to keep your followers engaged with consistent, freshly updated content.

Need more tips and suggestions for your digital marketing strategy, let Yello point you in the right direction. Contact us today.