Heavenly SEO Practices: Social Media Optimization (SMO)

Social Media Optimization is the strategic counterpart to Search Engine Optimization. While the goal of SEO is to rank well, the goal of SMO is to drive massive traffic by building a community where opinions, insights, and perspectives are shared.

Coined by Rohit Bhargava, SMO is considered “Pull Marketing.” It cannot be forced; it only works if users are naturally drawn to the content. It takes many forms, blogs, podcasts, message boards, vlogs, and wikis, all acting as platforms to amplify a marketing message through human connection.

1. The Core Goals of SMO

Unlike the clear, technical benchmarks of SEO, the success of an SMO campaign is measured by how well your content “travels.”

• Increase in Linkability: Creating content that people want to link to.

• Easy Bookmarking: Making it simple for users to save and share your pages.

• Inbound Links: Generating organic referrals from social conversations.

• Content Casting: Ensuring your message moves from one platform to another effortlessly.

2. The Rules of Engagement

To succeed in the social “Net,” webmasters must move from being broadcasters to being participants.

• Be a Resource: Your primary goal is to be helpful. Reward valuable users who engage with your brand.

• Participate in the Conversation: You cannot manage SMO from a distance. You must be active on the message boards, the blogs, and the feeds.

• Know Your Audience: Not everyone will love your brand. SMO requires knowing exactly who your target group is and what appeals specifically to them.

3. The Power of the “Mashup”

A term borrowed from pop music, a Mashup is a website or application that combines content from more than one source into a single, integrated experience.

• Integrated Feedback: Companies use mashups to gather feedback or create new tools using public APIs (like those from Microsoft, Amazon, or eBay).

• The “Net” Perspective: In the SnipeSearch environment, we encourage “Content Casting”, using XML feeds and social nodes to create an integrated experience where your corporate personality shines through.

4. SMO as a Long-Term Trend

SMO has evolved from a “new trend” into a fundamental pillar of modern marketing. It thrives on:

• Sharing Corporate Personalities: Moving away from faceless logos toward human-to-human interaction.

• Human-Filtered Searches: Using the “votes” of a community to determine what is relevant, a concept we mirror in our Proprietary (.info) index.

• Online Identity Shifting: Adapting your message to fit the unique culture of different social nodes, from the professional atmosphere of LinkedIn to the chronological freedom of TTWrite.

5. A Fun, Social Environment

Ultimately, SMO is about encouraging a social environment. It’s about the “fun” of the Net. When you create content that is easy to share and worth talking about, you aren’t just optimizing for a platform—you are building a loyal community.

As we discuss in the Social Media Marketing Essentials course, the most successful brands are those that treat their users as partners in the journey.

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