Time to get to know SMO. Sure, I know what you’re thinking: Yet another annoying Web acronym I’m supposed to master. Just when small-business owners were gaining confidence and traction with search-engine optimization, or SEO, along comes this new thing that’s making it all even more complicated than it was before.
SEO remains a vital tactic for business owners who want to show up in search engine results. SMO – or “social media optimization” – is vital if you want your business and your business website to show up on social media radar.
Basically, SMO is the process of making changes to your business website in order to make it more visible in social media and in social media searches that take place on specialized social media sites and search engines.
Here are four things you should know about social media optimization:
• Make your business website your own social media and brand central. This requires thinking about your website and your overall online presence in different ways. Instead of merely conveying basics about your business products and services, turn your site into the Internet hub for everything related to your business or brand. For example, make it easy for customers to connect to your site from Facebook.
• Create content that’s shareable, and make it easy for people to share. Shareable content means good content. The better, more useful or entertaining it is, the more people will want to share it with others. Unique content is a valuable currency that you can use to promote your business. Top shareable content includes tips, lists and how-to guides (with great headlines!), as well as eye-grabbing photos. Tweet about your content. Blog about it too.
• Offer participation rewards. In the world of social media, “engagement” is the one thing that matters the most. Customers and prospects that visit your site, leave comments, “friend” you on Facebook, follow your tweets and share your content are the gold standard. Engagement is behavior you want to reward. You can do this by responding quickly to engaged customers, and offering special deals, information or perks.
• Focus and magnify your efforts with a social media dashboard. Part of optimizing your own website for social media includes participating in social media sites yourself which means you need, at a minimum, a Facebook page, Twitter account and probably a blog as well. To avoid social media overload, and make managing all this simple, try using a social media dashboard such as Hootsuite.com. This easy-to-use service lets you update multiple networks in one step, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, WordPress (a free blogging platform) and others. •
Daniel Kehrer can be reached at editor@business.com.
Beyond Cash Donations: How New Forms of Giving Are Transforming Not-for-Profit Accounting
Evolving Funding Landscape for Not-for-Profits Not-for-profit organizations are being asked to do more with less,…
Learn More
