Social Media Optimization

Optimize Your Online Presnce
Make Your Content Travel & Leverage the Wisdom of the Crowds

Social Media Optimization (SMO) is about making a web site’s content travel beyond the scope of the site on which it is published. Today’s young internet users maintain several different individual profiles across multiple platforms--and they want to share content that interests them via social media tools. This is evident in the huge popularity of social bookmarking sites, media-sharing utilities, and the 70 million personal blogs on the internet. Young, online consumers have an independent spirit with regards to media consumption. They want to create, aggregate, and share content important to them. This is because for Generation Y, the media and products they consume are direct reflections of their personal identity, and indeed actually create their personal identities. Leveraging this desire by utilizing the proper social technologies will make your content travel beyond the borders of your site.

A second aspect of SMO is leveraging the “wisdom of the crowds.” Today’s consumers have a vast amount of choice when it comes to media consumption--where, how, what and when they consume. The internet provides near limitless choice and self-epxression. As internet analytics have shown (Coremetrics), this vast amount of choice has created an online culture in which users more often listen to each other, instead of advertising messaging, when making choices. Examples of this can be seen on Amazon.com where when a user browses or purchases a particular product, they are offered other products based on the purchasing habits of other consumers who bought the similar products. Wisdom of the crowds is also evident in the hugely popular Wikipedia, where all articles are contributed and edited by anyone who wishes to submit one. Wikipedia is now the number one trafficked online encyclopedia. The tools and technologies of social media help a publisher or advertiser leverage the power of these behaviors to the benefit of both themselves and the consumer.