Let The Web Point At You
How about using SMO?
I am going to say right off the bat that just about everyone has heard of or at least knows the basics of SEO ( search engine optimization), but there is a term that we all need to start paying attention to and in fact we talk about it all the time and that is SMO which means Social Media Optimization. By the way the term SMO was coined by a fellow ( very smart person by the way) Rohit Bhargava back in 2006.
We actually need a combination of SEO and SMO to fully utilize SEM ( lol, love the s's and O's - SEM is simply Search Engine Marketing)
So what is SMO really and why is it so important?
According to Rhit Bhargava, SMO is the "implementing of changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs."
While times have changed in terms of marketing the basics are still the same - Creating visibility to your blog, your website or your affiliate business in a way that people will want to come to you and become your next customer.
How does one create a SMO strategy?
Number one, be organized in your methodology on how you are going to do your SMO. Too often people will jump all over the place without thought or worse through impulse postings, linkings etc.
There is quite a science to creating a good SMO, but for those of you who are in the beginning stages of using social media as one of the ways to create a good SMO here are a few thoughts
1.Participate - Join the conversation! Social Media is a two way street. you talk to people and they talk to you. By conversing with the community you are creating awareness and prolonging your visibility. You are keeping it going and this often results in a snowball effect. The fact is participating helps your message spread further and faster.
2. Define who your target audience is and get to know them. Everyone would love to have people use and buy their products, but reality check, not everyone is going to want to buy from you. There is always going to be a certain audience you can appeal to and others that you can't. So know your audience and who it is appealing to.
3 Create content - Yes you heard it right here. CREATE CONTENT! Everyone thinks of content in just one way, but that's just not the way it is. Remember you are talking to real people and the fact is, certain kinds of content just naturally spread socially. It does not matter what business you are in and what "boring" products ( oops did I say that?) you sell, there is always some kind of content that can be created that will work. Whether it is talking about the news, making people laugh, or writing an article, it can be done. Find out what content will work for you and then create it!
4 BE REAL! If there is anything that communities hate it is people who are phony! There is an adage that I will pass along - Speak to what you know and know to what you speak . If you are affiliating with anything, get to know your product inside and out. If you are blogging on a targeted niche, learn everything there is to know about your niche. I am always surprised by those who would talk loud and say buy me and not know what they are selling. I don't want to be sold to but I do want a good conversation and maybe who knows after I get to know you, see that you are REAL then maybe I will even listen to you if you are offering an idea to help me with my business.
We actually need a combination of SEO and SMO to fully utilize SEM ( lol, love the s's and O's - SEM is simply Search Engine Marketing)
So what is SMO really and why is it so important?
According to Rhit Bhargava, SMO is the "implementing of changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs."
While times have changed in terms of marketing the basics are still the same - Creating visibility to your blog, your website or your affiliate business in a way that people will want to come to you and become your next customer.
How does one create a SMO strategy?
Number one, be organized in your methodology on how you are going to do your SMO. Too often people will jump all over the place without thought or worse through impulse postings, linkings etc.
There is quite a science to creating a good SMO, but for those of you who are in the beginning stages of using social media as one of the ways to create a good SMO here are a few thoughts
1.Participate - Join the conversation! Social Media is a two way street. you talk to people and they talk to you. By conversing with the community you are creating awareness and prolonging your visibility. You are keeping it going and this often results in a snowball effect. The fact is participating helps your message spread further and faster.
2. Define who your target audience is and get to know them. Everyone would love to have people use and buy their products, but reality check, not everyone is going to want to buy from you. There is always going to be a certain audience you can appeal to and others that you can't. So know your audience and who it is appealing to.
3 Create content - Yes you heard it right here. CREATE CONTENT! Everyone thinks of content in just one way, but that's just not the way it is. Remember you are talking to real people and the fact is, certain kinds of content just naturally spread socially. It does not matter what business you are in and what "boring" products ( oops did I say that?) you sell, there is always some kind of content that can be created that will work. Whether it is talking about the news, making people laugh, or writing an article, it can be done. Find out what content will work for you and then create it!
4 BE REAL! If there is anything that communities hate it is people who are phony! There is an adage that I will pass along - Speak to what you know and know to what you speak . If you are affiliating with anything, get to know your product inside and out. If you are blogging on a targeted niche, learn everything there is to know about your niche. I am always surprised by those who would talk loud and say buy me and not know what they are selling. I don't want to be sold to but I do want a good conversation and maybe who knows after I get to know you, see that you are REAL then maybe I will even listen to you if you are offering an idea to help me with my business.
Tags: SEM, SEO, SMO, affiliate, blogging, blogs, engine, marketing, media, optimization
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Scott Reynolds on -
Awesome advise Diane!
If you don't have all aspects of optimization in operation, you are missing out on traffic.
SEO brings traffic direct from search's on the search engines. Really the best way to get online customers, but way to hard for most people to do with huge companies and marketing firms dominating the best search terms creating massive competition.
Marketing guru's quickly learned this and moved on to the fast growing social networks that were popping up everywhere, thus the birth of SMO. It was easy to target their audience because the social networks were already targeted to certain demographics. SMO has grown to almost the height of SEO because of the sheer size of some social communities and the competition from so many marketers.
I had never gone as far to separate SEO from SMO because they are part of my total marketing and basics of both are so much the same. Diane's thoughts on building a solid SMO strategy also hold very true when building the nuts and blots of your SEO strategy.
I call the entire works my "web presence". It contains the information (content) which all needs to be part of my SEO and SMO to draw the most readers or visitors which are your potential customers.
A written plan of attack to your "web presence" will save you time and work, as well as net you truckloads more visitors and readers.
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Permalink Reply by Diane Bjorling on -
:-) i know a person who uses "foot prints" to help him think in terms of all the S's and O's...lol
While i will agree that there are similarities between SEO and SMO, i have to also say there are differences and unless one understands them, then you could be missing out on very important aspects.
Taking just one example and there are so many:
Content:
SEO – The content needs to be easily readable by the search engines. This means that the quality content should have relevant keywords which are important for the page to rank well.
SMO – The content has to be in easy language for easy insight of the human readers. Moreover, it should also contain attractive statements that can hold the readers’ attention and make them convinced about what you are trying to say.
To the untrained eye, they may read the same, but the reality is that they are quite different...am i splitting hairs Scott....lol... no not really.
When there are so many blogs being created every single day and so many websites free and otherwise being created every single day, one needs to really understand the similarities and the differences so that one can fully utilize and create their own Search Engine Marketing Plan.
I guess the bottom line in terms of understanding the differences between SEO and SMO comes down to this:
SEO is telling search engine spiders about a website, its product and services. SMO is informing people all about a website its product and services and sharing content of their interests as well.
SEO is a monologue whilst SMO is nothing less than an dialogue. SMO is about engaging more and more people.
SEO is coming down to the level of programmed spiders, SMO is standing up to the expectations of people from all walks of life.
They do work well together, but only if you understand their components.
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Permalink Reply by Scott Reynolds on
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Very good points, but the way search engines are evolving your SEO must be an easy read, more like SMO. Plus, your SMO should be easily found by the search engines in order to build your web presence. As you see here, and I am sure in other communities, SMO is not engaging others as much recently taking a lot of the dialogue away.
Like you said Diane, you should understand the components of both. In the future I believe they will merge into one. In the mean time posting well researched blogs and discussions here at Mega T will work well using either approach as it is set up more for SEO and pulling traffic from search engines and has a small very quiet membership...
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Permalink Reply by Diane Bjorling on
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lol..sorry just laughing...was thinking..well...better to have two people talking rather than listening to one hand talking... a dialogue is a dialogue...
You have made a good point though and one that deserves a good question...
Bloggers need readers, communities need active participation by people ..right? what is the one problem for bloggers...people who will comment on their postst. smaller communities also suffer from a similar problem, people not taking part in discussions.
From the few things i have said on here how would you as a site owner and very knowledgeable in different tactics, design a plan to get people to comment or be more active ? :-)
handing the mike over to you......
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Permalink Reply by Scott Reynolds on
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Well ya! I have had more fun in the last week sense you joined Mega traffic than I have in a very long time and with a few tricks and conversations with you the Mega Traffic Alexia Traffic Rank rose about 100,000.
Read the site info. MegaTraffic is here to generate traffic for its members. We have just shown it will with even small effort from only a few people by the Alexia Traffic Ranking. Members I hope joined to gain traffic to their businesses. If they want that traffic that is waiting and free, all they have to do is start some discussions........
I have learned I can not change people, and find no need to. I offer honest hard work, opinions, and only build tools that will work. If people do not have the time to participate and make those tools work for them. They probably will never succeed with their online business anyway. It is mainly a trust issue, people trust the big names that take their money. I do not do that yet, but am working on it!
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