SMO – (Social media optimization)

is a set of methods for attracting visitors to website content by promoting and publicizing it through social media. Social media optimization / SMO is a subset of social media marketing, which is promoting and publicizing products and services in general through social media. Social media optimization / SMO is one of two online methods of optimizing (attracting visitors to) website content, the other method is search engine optimization (SEO).

Social Media optimization is considered an integral part of an Online Reputation Management (ORM) or Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM) strategy for organizations or individuals who care about their online presence.

There are two categories of SMO methods:

(A) Promotional activities in social media aside from the content being promoted, including blogging, commenting on other blogs, participating in discussion groups, and posting status updates on social networking profiles.

(B) Social media features added to the content itself, including, RSS feeds, social news and sharing buttons, user rating and polling tools, and incorporating third-party community functionalities like images and videos Social media optimization is related to search engine marketing, but differs in several ways, primarily the focus on driving traffic from sources other than search engines, though improved search ranking is also a benefit of successful SMO.

Social media optimization is in many ways connected as a technique to viral marketing where word of mouth is created not through friends or family but through the use of networking in social book marking, video and photo sharing websites. In a similar way the engagement with blogs achieves the same by sharing content through the use of RSS in the blogosphere and special blog search engines.

Social Media Optimization (SMO), is not limited to marketing and brand building. Increasingly smart businesses are integrating social media participation as part of their knowledge management strategy (i.e. product/service development, recruiting, employee engagement and turnover, brand building, customer satisfaction and relations, business development and more).