What is SMO (Social Media Optimization)?

Social media optimization (SMO) is the process of increasing the awareness of a product, brand or event by using a number of social media outlets and communities to generate viral publicity.

When used effectively social media can be one of your greatest assets for improving your site’s organic search results. By connecting with people in various online venues, you extend the reach of your business and increase opportunities for people to link to your main business page.

The Fives Rules of SMO -

1. Create Shareable Content - This is fundamental to social media marketing, so in SMO it's about determining the content that your audience prefers to share across different social media platforms. In Rohit's original post, this activity was about encouraging links: the two go together.

2. Make Sharing Easy - This is the embedding of buttons and other widgets to encourage sharing, recommending or bookmarking within your site and blog. SMO analyses the best placements, formats and messages to do this.

3. Reward Engagement - It's commonplace now to reward "Liking" or "Tweeting" through a promotional or content offer, so this can look at the best offers to do this. Rohit also says this should look at a longer-term of encouraging deeper engagement and conversations.

4. Proactively Share Content - This covers the process and format for sharing beyond your central hub. This can include syndicating articles to other partners or platforms like Slideshare or Scribd. Some also create their own widgets for embedding or sharing on other sites (atomization).

5. Encourage The “Mashup”- Rohit says that this is encouraging folks to take and remix your content, so it becomes user generated content. This activity can effectively be built into campaigns.