Effective social media optimization (SMO) strategies:(selected overview of 10 SMO activities)

Technical SMO Activities

A. Increase site linkability

• Update your content as often as possible.

• Create sticky content features

- Downloads
- Lists/Rules

• Use catchy headlines and branding

• Follow the permalink conventions

• Many sites are "static" - meaning they are rarely updated and used simply for a storefront. To optimize a site for social media there is a need to increase the linkability of the content - for example, to create a blog, whitepapers, guides, aggregate other content, etc.

B. Easy tagging and bookmarking

• Use quick buttons to let people save your blog to any social bookmarking tool they use.

• Add relevant tags to each blog post so these posts can appear in aggregations listed by ketword on sites like Technorati.

• "Claim' your posts first by bookmarking them in de.l.icio.us

C. Reward inbound links

• Inbound links are very important to a site visibility.

• Creating permalinks, making the comments on the site that links the observed website, linking sites with the inbound links to the observed website, these are very good tactics to increase the number of the inbound links.D. Enable the travel of the content

• It is a paramount to use syndication technology like RSS and ATOM, but the real benefits can be also achieved by submitting the relevant content on niche social media sites (like .avi files on YouTube.com, .ppt files on SlideShare.net, etc.)

E. Encourage the mashup

• Mashup is the term that describes the mixture of different content on the observed Website, using social media technologies (Web 2.0) such as Google Earth, embedded YouTube video, etc.

• The idea is to create the Web site content on the way to be easily mashed up with other content on other Web sites.

• Let others use your content or tools to produce something a bit different or outside of the box with your stuff, even RSS.

Communication SMO Activities

A. Participate (Conversations)

• "Join the conversation. Social Media is a two way street, lets not forget that. By conversing with the community you are creating awareness and prolonging your buzz. You are keeping it going and this often results in a snowball effect.Participating helps your message spread further and faster."

B. Create the usable content

• It does not matter what industry it is about, and what boring products have to be publicized, there is always some kind of content that can be created that will work.

C. Transparency

• It is very easy in online environment to find out who has a real knowledge, and who fakes. For the developing the positive online reputation development of an organization, there is a need to focus on the core competencies, and not to magnify the properties of the products and services that is sold. There is always someone who knows more.

D. Targeted audience

• It is the waste of time to engage in the social media outlet where target audience of observed organization is not present.

• Understand your appeal and those people you wish to attract.

E. SMO in business processes

• To achieve the best results in SMO activities, it is paramount to translate current SMO activities in organization's business processes (related to marketing and/or PR departments of an organization).