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Social media optimization

March 1st, 2007 · No Comments

Social media optimization (SMO) is a set of methods for generating publicity through social media, online communities and community websites. Methods of SMO include adding RSS feeds, adding a “Digg This” button, blogging and incorporating third party community functionalities like Flickr photo slides and galleries or YouTube videos. Social media optimization is a form of search engine marketing.

Social media optimisation is in many ways connected as a technique to viral marketing where word of mouth is created not through friends or family but through the use of networking in social bookmarking, video and photo sharing websites. In a similar way the engagement with blogs achieves the same by sharing content through the use of RSS in the blogsphere and special blog search engines such as Technorati.

Origins

Rohit Bhargava was credited with inventing the term SMO. His original five rules to help guide our thinking with conducting an SMO for a client’s website are:

  1. Increase your linkability
  2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy
  3. Reward inbound links
  4. Help your content travel
  5. Encourage the mashup

Spam in social media

As with to search engines, social media is prone to spamming. However, due to the nature of the medium, where users are active participants, networks such as LinkedIn and Facebook have taken against spam to lessen the occurrence of malicious activity. Some social media sites, such as Digg, empower users to bury content that is considered low quality or spam.

Tags: SEO Basic · social media