Most people wonder – what is SMO, or rather what is social media optimization?
Social media optimization (SMO) is an on-going process that is never completely done. Those who provide SMO services to clients know that it’s a journey to a destination; not a destination in itself.Social media optimization has to be cleverly integrated with your overall branding strategy to achieve four main purposes –
- Brand-Building
- Lead generation
- Giving you more online visibility, and
- Connect you with your audience, directly
There are four tricks of the trade that if tried can never fail you in your social media optimization efforts. Let’s discuss each in this blog today.
Hot Tip 1: Optimize Your Business Profile
A recent survey by a research-based marketing outfit, Ascend2 found that 50% of companies that aren’t succeeding with SEO aren’t integrating social media marketing. This is a kind of a wasted opportunity as, done correctly, social media has so much potential to optimise your business profile, or your positioning in the market. The way to succeed in the online space is to have a healthy balance of SEO and SMO.
Dominique Jackson in Social Media Optimization: 6 Tips to Steal from SEOs, writing for Sprout Social says, “Think of your company’s profile page as your foundation. If it’s weak, it’s hard to build anything on top of it. Here’s what it takes to build a strong foundation.”
Jackson considers three things important in optimizing your business profile on various social media channels:
- Your Profile photo: This is your company logo.
- Username: Use your company name. You can use a tool like Knowem to check if your company’s name is available on different social media channels, in which case, you may have to use another name.
- Bio: Clearly state what your company does. Use relevant keywords and link it to your website.
Take the example of Litmus Branding – and how we describe our brand on Facebook.
Hot Tip 2: Use Nothing But Original Content
Nowadays, authenticity matters the most. If your social media post content and creative is original, it is likely to benefit the business more. When the content is plagiarized from elsewhere, it tends to lose its charm as well as effectiveness.
Jackson is Okay with the strategy of using a balance mix of original and curated content, so long as you are careful with the attributions in case of the curated content.
See how Litmus Branding made use of Surf Excel’s celebrated DaagAccheHai to link it to Asian Paints value proposition in the following campaign. This is a fine example of popular curated content attributed to the right source to drive home a different communication:
You can use Sprout Social’s sent messages report to see exactly which content of yours gets the most engagement across all of your channels. Once you’ve identified them, you can start sharing similar content.
Another thing that you need to do with both original and curated content is ‘Test your Headline.”
Using a question or a statistic is an excellent strategy to grab attention at the first go. Try also to use a keyword in the headline for full optimization.
Last but not the least, Jackson recommends the use of Relevant #Hashtags. As content aggregators, hashtags work particularly well on Instagram. However Jackson recommends that although it’s okay to create and use your own hashtags, it’s equally important to search for trending hashtags on social media, especially Instagram and Twitter and use those to optimise your social media content.
Sprout Social’s Trends Report analyzes all of your incoming messages and shows which hashtags are trending with your personal brand – you may want to give it a free try.
Hot Tip 3: YourPosting Schedule Matters
What time and day do you post your content is equally important in optimising your social media content. The real question here is not how much, but when you post your content.
Don’t ask us why, but research from Constant Contact reveals the following maths on the frequency of posting:
- Facebook: 3-10 times per week
- Twitter: 5+ times per day
- LinkedIn: 2-5 times per week
- Pinterest: 5-10 times per day
Even then don’t aim for an overkill, as “On social media, consistency typically matters more than frequency,” says Samantha Rupert in How Often Should Businesses Post on Social Media? (2019).
Since LinkedIn is a serious business platform, its own research suggests that you should ideally post 20 times per month, or about once per business day to be able to reach 60% of your audience on the platform.
With Twitter the case is different. You can easily post 5-10 times a day, but do try to spread your posts out across the day and remember that Twitter users are most active between 8am and 4pm.
If you need more help, log in to Coschedule to find out The Best Times to Post on Social Media in 2019 According to 25 Studies.
You may also find it relevant to refer to the cheat sheet on Constant Constant for more on this subject.
But whatever frequency you may use, remember always that “Quality and consistency are key to social media success”, says
Louise Myers in How Often To Post On Social Media: 2019 Success Guide.
Hot Tip 4: Track & Improve With Social Media Analytics
Finally, what cannot be measured, cannot be managed. Just like with SEO, you need to measure your SMO efforts with social media analytics, says Jackson. Some people bank on Google Analytics using UTM codes, which are nothing but shortened URL’s that enable you to see how much traffic your website gets from social media from a specific channel or campaign. Some prefer social media marketing tool, such as Buffer to get a full picture of the impact of a social media campaign.
A great place to start, according to Jackson is AvinashKaushik’s four social media metrics that is based on four parameters:
Conversation Rate: The average number of comments and replies your posts get
Amplification: The average number of shares and retweets your posts get
Applause: The average number of “votes” your posts get (+1, favorites, likes), and finally
Economic Value: You social media ROI.
We hope these four social media optimization tips would have answered your question – what is social media optimization, or what is SMO?
At LitmusBranding, we provide all kind of help with a RoI-driven SMO service. Please share your feedback on this post. We eagerly look forward to your comments and suggestions.