Gary Reid
Gary is Director of Search Performance at The Search Works, the UK's largest search marketing agency. Gary heads the organic search and search integration campaigns for some of the UK's largest brands
Useful SMO Links
- Gary Reid
- My blog where I write about social media optimization and digital marketing
- Rohit Bhargava
- Rohit coined the phrase Social Media Optimization
What is Social Media Optimization?
In this brave new world made up of equal parts wisdom of the crowd and anger of the mob, there is no doubting that if you get it right you can win big. never mind 'I want to be on the first page of Googles search results' getting on the front page of Digg can send a years visitors in a day.
The power of social media is that it works for everyone, small, big, good, bad, it doesn't matter, we all have access. How do you get in on the action? Simple, you need some social media optimization, that's optimization of your company not just your website.
Social Media Optimization (SMO) is all about making changes to your website to make it more easily included in blogs, more easily linked to and bookmark at social media sites such as Digg and Del.icio.us and visible in social media search engines such as Technorati, IceRocket and Sphere.
More than that it's about optimizing your organization in such a way that your whole company can join the conversation safely.
Develop a Social Media Optimization Strategy in 10 Simple Steps
Strategy is about combining opportunity with capability. We saw in the last chapter that SMO offers real opportunities, now you need to discover if your organization already has or can build the capability to exploit that opportunity.
- Build a 'from the top' social media optimization company philosophy
- Identify evangelists and influencers
- Create a voice
- Create content
- Syndicate content internally
- Seed content externally
- Create delivery mechanisms users can adopt, such as widgets or RSS feeds
- Embed yourself in the community
- Track usage and monitor the conversation for opportunities to act
- Rinse and repeat.
Social Media Optimization Benefits
SMO can drive traffic to your site. Getting on the front page of Digg can bring tens of thousands of visitors in a day. Bookmarking your content on Del.icio.us can do the same, so can uploading your photos to Flickr, creating a YouTube channel or building a MySpace profile. Squidoo allows you to become an authority on a particular subject and again drive traffic to your site.
The benefits SMO can bring don't stop there. By creating relevant content, widgets and mashups you can provide the tools evangelists and influencers need to spread the word about you, building buzz and brand equity, while strengthening the bond with those evangelists.
In short SMO can:
The benefits SMO can bring don't stop there. By creating relevant content, widgets and mashups you can provide the tools evangelists and influencers need to spread the word about you, building buzz and brand equity, while strengthening the bond with those evangelists.
In short SMO can:
- Drive traffic to your website
- Help evangelists and influencers spread the word
- Create a buzz around your company or product
- Build brand equity
Latest from Gary's blog
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byDel.icio.us tagged SMO
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Social Media irony
Social Media irony
Social Media irony
engagement in the blogosphere
