There is a much different approach to Social Media Optimization (SMO) than there is to SEO.
When you think of the term “optimization” in digital marketing, the first thing that comes to mind is probably Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which can sometimes be intimidating. However, there is more to optimize than your website. You can also optimize your social media posts. Here, we will look at SMO, how to do it, and why you need it.
Why You Should Optimize Your Social Media
SMO will help your business make adjustments to your social media content to help you increase engagement. It works similarly to SEO; it requires you to tweak it and test it to see what works and what does not for your audience. As with every other aspect of the digital marketing world, SMO takes time and patience; a big brand might seem like their social media is effortless, but they even give SMO attention to keep their engagement up.
If a social media profile is optimized, you can increase your clicks and traffic, boost your brand awareness and sales, and develop a process for your social media content that will speak to your target audience.
Now that you have a better idea of why you should invest in SMO, let’s take a look at some of the ways you can optimize your social media.
Optimize Your Account
One of the most important parts of your SMO is making sure that your social media accounts are aligned with your brand’s voice and business goals. Conduct an audit of your social media profiles, looking at your messaging and branding.
Some of the things to look at include:
- Is your branding — logo, font, hashtags, colors, etc. — consistent?
- Do you have good links and calls to action? Do they lead to the right landing pages?
- Does your messaging and language match your current promotions?
Many members of your audience will find you on your social media, so your profiles must match the rest of your brand identity. If you were to find a brand on social media, and their website did not match the branding on their social media at all, you would see red flags and think the site was phishing. Your audience will see it that way too. Consistency is a crucial part of your branding and SMO in general.
Social Searchability
These days, it is common to see a brand’s social media profile pop up in Google searches, usually right underneath their website. As this trend continues to grow, it is important to keep the most critical keywords in mind when you put together your social media copy. This does not mean you should start cramming keywords into your social media posts — remember, search engines do not like keyword stuffing — but you should keep some of those keywords in mind.
If you have performed keyword research, you have a list of your major industry-specific keywords you can include in your posts. Include keywords and related hashtags in your social media bios, and make sure you fill out everything in the bio section of any social media network you are on. You should also be mindful of what your usernames are on each account, as you want them to be consistent. As we said before, you do not want to confuse your customers.
Content Strategy
Part of your SMO should include a content strategy for your social media. You do not want to just post things at random and hope your audience likes them; that does not help your SMO at all. Take the time to come up with an optimized strategy for your social media posts; in addition to optimizing your social media, this strategy can make it easier for you to come up with new content to share on your social media.
Come up with a consistent publishing schedule and determine the volume of posts — what days and times to post and how many posts per day, per network. Decide what types of content to post, videos, images, infographics, text only, etc. Then, decide what posts need to be on multiple networks and what posts should be on only one single platform.
You will need to revisit your content strategy to ensure that everything is still optimized; that is where your analytics will come in. Those will give you a great idea of what does and does not work.
Once your overall content strategy is worked out, it is time to work on optimizing your posts individually.
Optimize Individual Posts
Now that your content strategy is hammered out, you can begin working on optimizing every post individually. You will have some posts that need more optimization than others, so there are some things to keep in mind for those more important posts that require extra attention.
Write copy that reflects any current promotions you are running, and include the appropriate keywords, hashtags, and calls to action.
Optimize Links
Link optimization is a part of SMO that often gets overlooked, but it is essential. If you optimize your links, you will be able to track your customers’ behavior and determine what your top social media content is. You can set UTM parameters to better track where your clicks are coming from on social media.
Assess what links get the most clicks and look for the patterns between them. Are they tied to the same campaigns? What are the topics? What was the social media copy in those posts? What was your call to action?
Once you find the common threads there, you can get a better idea of what your customers are looking for and give that content a little more attention. However, it is important to make sure that you do not only focus on that content. If you overwhelm your audience with this popular content, it will eventually stop being popular, and your audience will start to get bored.
Conclusion
Social Media Optimization is a vital part of a Digital Marketing Strategy, but if you are not optimizing your social media, then you are not getting enough value out of your accounts. Contact Oregon Advertising today for a social media consultation.