Social Media Optimization (SMO) is a strategy that companies use to strengthen their brand and grow their business. Leveraging the influence of social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and even the unlikely TikTok that rose to fame during the pandemic, is what SMO is about.
Digital content creators and marketers need to come up with effective strategic plans with measurable results to create content that builds online presence and connects with your intended market.
Social media presence is something that brands know will bring their businesses to another level of increase and revenue. In fact, social selling is a current trend in eCommerce that optimizes the purchasing power of a 3.8 billion-strong market through social media. Indeed, social media has enormous branding and marketing potential.
What is Social Media Optimization?
Other SMO aims to discover which content is hitting it well with your intended audience, and creating more content like it for continued success. It may not be the same content type always, as trends vary from time to time.
For instance, this year, when the pandemic hit, people are either getting sick or a frontliner, losing loved ones or losing jobs, downsizing businesses or closing brick-and-mortar stores, shifting to remote work, or suddenly homeschooling.
Regardless of the niche or industry, social media brands have been releasing content to help spread correct information, or at the very least, give courage and hope. To create campaigns about travel tips or anything contrary to social distancing is quite untimely.
Some trends may not be blatant. For example, user-generated content (UGC) in social media has been around since but took off a great deal in the past few years. UGC is a trend that even big-name brands are taking advantage of.
It is the purpose of SMO. It helps companies pick up on these trends and optimize content for it while it is trending. In context, it is similar to Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Brands should use both SEO and SMO to get their content in front of more people successfully.
Optimizing social media can boost your business in several ways. More than online visibility, you can get leads, drive conversion, and improve revenues. It enables you to build trust and rapport with your intended audience. Referrals through social media marketing also help boost your brand.
Shareaholic says that social media leads everyone else to drive traffic to websites. Here are practical ways that can help you create an effective social media strategy plan to boost SMO.
Social Media Strategy Plan: Strategies to Boost SMO
1. Know your audience
Before you can create a plan, know first whom you are directing your SMO strategies for. Create your consumer avatars to refine audience targeting. You can create three to four consumer avatars, depending on who you are targeting or able to reach the moment. Segment your audience as well according to their interests and behaviors.
When you have precise audience insights, it helps you create content that is according to their interest and present activities. You can also personalize content so that the likelihood of social media engagement goes up, improving lead generation and conversion for your brand.
2. Use the appropriate content for different platforms
Different platforms need different content distribution. You are reaching different demographics with their preferences, behavior, and expectations. Not everyone on Facebook will be on Instagram or Twitter, for instance. Some demographics may prefer all-video content, so they go to YouTube.
For corporate and B2B social media, LinkedIn or Stack Exchange is where users go to. 66% of marketers, according to the Content Marketing Institute, ranked LinkedIn as the most effective social media platform for B2B.
You need to create the right content for the platform you are targeting to use in reaching your audience. Optimize the unique reach of these individual platforms. Here are some tips on the different content delivery based on various social media channels:
- Facebook: curated content of blogs posts, stories, videos, live streaming
- YouTube: video content, stories, live streaming
- Instagram: high-quality images and videos, quotes, stories
- Twitter: blogs, news, and GIFs, live feed
- LinkedIn: job postings, business content, corporate news, B2B content
- Pinterest: instructional photos and videos, infographics
- Google+: For corporate accounts, blogs that you want to rank on Google
When you are creating content that respects the social media culture, and content expectations in every platform, it increases the chances that its audience will accept your content and your social media strategy plan.
When you are optimizing your social media efforts, you must not be on each site. But you must select the right platform for your audience.
3. Create SMART goals
Well-defined goals are more than crucial for your social media strategy plan. Your SMO strategy needs to have a structure within and around it so you can create robust and effective campaigns.
Set goals to start your SMO strategies right. The digital marketing team, along with the creative team, design team, and the like–need to set objectives that are SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
For example, if you aim to get increase revenues from the organic and social media campaigns of your brand, your SMART goals can be:
- Specific: Target the social media platform where your target market is
- Measurable: Use tools like Google Keyword Planner to measure data
- Achievable: Within the year
- Relevant: optimize user-generated content (UGC) to increase social media presence
- Time-bound: Reassess achievements and milestones monthly, quarterly, bi-annually, and annually. The goal is that after a certain period, paid ads will cease, and social media strategies will continue to grow.
4. Create your brand’s social media profiles
Just like you created a website before you can conduct SEO strategies and PPC strategies, you need to make your brand’s account on various social media platforms, especially where your target demographic is.
One of the biggest blunders that different brands make is not optimizing their social profiles. Your social profiles on each platform reinforce your SMO strategy. You need strong profiles to see success rates.
Use high-quality, professional-looking images and videos. Make sure your company write-ups are well-written, and you have all pertinent details on your account page, especially your company address, website, and contact information.
Use your logo for your profile pictures for the sake of continuity. This helps people link your pages to your business and makes it easy to build your brand recognition with your supporters.
5. Develop the social media networks of your brand
Start building your social media networks. Be proactive and engage with audiences to connect with as much in your targeted audiences and circles as possible.
You can optimize hashtags to find users with shared interests. Use CTA or call-to-action buttons in your social media sites to guide your audiences on what to do next—either share your post, message or visit your website.
6. Create a social media presence that stands out
Your brand has an identity, personality, and back story that is unique to it. People do not just follow a brand. They follow the people behind the brand and its backstory.
Your campaigns must tell your story. Create unique but relevant ideas that are in line with your branding and goals. Your voice as a brand needs to be consistent, no matter what trends are trending. Your audience must distinctly recognize your brand, whatever platform you use for content distribution.
7. Do keyword research for your campaigns
SMO keyword search is using the same concept as an SEO keyword search.
You must know which keywords your target audience is looking for to decide which ones to put on your website.
Focus on the phrases and topics that not only pops up in your target audience’s search queries but are also trending. Discover what are the current issues of interest and write content that will grab your consumer’s attention and lead to more engagements.
You can use Twitter’s keyword report to track keywords your audience must be using. You can optimize these keywords on different social media content. Your research can include hashtags to organize and search for data on platforms such as Instagram and the like. If you know your audience’s interests, you can tailor your content accordingly.
8. Make your social media posts stand out and share-worthy
Strengthen your social media presence with useful content that is share-worthy. Content that is engaging and valuable, audiences will respond to it more. Use exciting content like tutorial videos, instructional pictures, short stories, and the like grab attention. Video content is more engaging, so you can use more of it to boost your SMO even more.
Videos show the most Use this to your brand’s and use video ads to increase brand awareness and drive leads and conversions.
Also, make sure that you keep posts short and concise so that social media audiences who are usually on-the-go can consume your content fast and easily.
9. Track your social media analytics
Monitor the performance of your social media posts to see which strategies are effective for your brand. Several metric tools help so you can monitor social media campaigns, complete with clicks, impressions, and engagements. You can use this to determine the types of posts that need to be published more often, and which ones need to be discontinued right away.
10. Run Provide User-Generated Content as Social Proof
Be engaging yet relatable. Use social media user-generated content (UGC) to add value to your brand and users’ experience.
Leverage consumer referrals. Boost comments and sharing of pictures and videos from costumers raving about your brand. It is like free advertising.
55% of consumers prefer UGC over other forms of marketing. UGC builds brand loyalty and the trustworthiness of your brand.
Take advantage of your satisfied customer’s experiences with social sharing options at a click of a button. You may include promos and other incentives when users share their experiences.
Google considers your social following when displaying search results on SERP as well. Embed positive comments from Twitter, or view the current number of social shares, and other positive comments and testimonials.
Curate your social proof and refresh at least once to twice a month, so users know that you are actively making customers happy with your product or service. Think of a creative way you can incorporate social proof, like what Keds did with theirs. They used user pictures and included it on their landing page.
Conclusion: Strategize to Optimize for Business Success
You can boost your business through Social Media Optimization. With over 70% of internet users worldwide active on social networks, social media has revolutionized the digital space. Brands need to learn how to communicate the best content that adds value and drive conversions that increase business growth.
More than 90% of marketers utilize social networks, and more than 60% gain new customers through social media optimization. So, grow your business with the right social media strategy plan. Even at a time of pandemic and economic crisis, companies can survive using social media – so get going with your SMO strategies today! 🙂
