Social media (SM) has gone beyond being where we post about our everyday lives, connect with friends, and meet new people. It has become a substitute for traditional marketing and a tool for showcasing businesses to billions of people worldwide.Companies capitalize on the wide-reach of the available social media options to promote their goods and services; hence, the need for social media optimization (SMO). It has led brands to ask questions like: why is SMO important? How do you use SMO posts?Knowing how to optimize social media content and create SMO posts for professional growth would increase your online presence. It would also drive more leads and conversions for your business.This article will explain what social media optimization means, its importance in digital marketing, and give a list of ten facts and tips to help you streamline your SMO strategy. In the end, you will know different ways of increasing and directing traffic to your website.What Is Social Media Optimization?Social media optimization means using social media to expand your company’s online presence. It is about strengthening your brand, generating leads, increasing visibility, and connecting more with your audience.When you optimize your social media presence, you hold your audience’s attention for a long time. For this to happen, you have to make SMO analysis regularly, as it will become the source to generate strictly targeted content.Unlike search engine optimization texts tailored for specific engine spiders and top rankings, SMO uses readable and understandable content to connect with people. It helps you capture the attention of your audience with relatable posts.Also, when it comes to SMO, you have to create a new experience with every post. Your audience might differ from one social media platform to the next, so produce content that speaks to the people you’re communicating with at the time.What this means is that what you post on Facebook will differ from LinkedIn because they are both tailored for different classes of people. Social media optimization makes this possible and ensures that you strategically create, build, and maximize your social media plan.Importance Of Social Media Optimization:One of the fundamental reasons for social media optimization is to create content that encourages sharing and engagement of your services. A perfect example of this is a Facebook or Twitter sharing button on your website or an RSS feed on your blog.When you optimize your social media content and balance it with search engine optimization, you achieve the following:Create a strong internet presence for your business; it introduces people to your product and improves brand visibility.You reach your niche audience faster, and you get to position your brand to your customers on their terms as they can contact you anytime from anywhere.Generate more traffic worldwide without further investments or physical presence in countries outside your base.Significantly grow your lead generation by tapping into the buzz from social media channels.Increase your search engine ranking as you create more content on social media platforms.Facts And Tips To Streamline Your SMO Strategy:Streamlining your SMO strategy to a specific audience would serve your company better than casting a wide net with no target. Here are some facts and tips to help you with your social media optimization strategy:1.) Use Infographics:An infographic is a visual representation of information or data as a graph or diagram. When it comes to streamlining your SMO, use one that offers point-to-point content and simplifies data processing by the human mind.Infographic contents are what you see on Pinterest, and they are educational, entertaining, and appealing to the psyche. They usually grab the readers’ attention and most people who view infographics generally open at least one of them.Note that today’s content consumers can tell the difference between a promotional post and one with value. Thus, it is vital to use infographics to hold a person’s attention for more than eight seconds.For your SMO strategy, choose an infographic based on information (facts, statistics, and words), a timeline of events or idea development, or charts for data comparison. The key is knowing what your audience will respond to and sticking with it.2.) Create Native Videos:A native video is a video uploaded to or created on social media and played-in-feed. They are different from links to videos hosted on other sites, and the formats are specific to the SM platform you are posting on.When you create native videos, you maximize engagement: the number of views, discovery, and distribution. It increases your organic reach, and it is less intrusive than promotional commercials. Also, native videos are always on your feed, and visitors can look at it whenever they want.3.) Take Advantage Of Memes:A meme is an image, video, or piece of text humorous in nature and rapidly spread by social media users. Memes are a constant on different social media platforms, and you should take advantage of them in streamlining your SMO strategy.Most people believe memes appeal more to the younger audience, but that is not the case as different age groups on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, have embraced the meme culture. Therefore, fix them in your posting schedule.Ensure your memes are original and creative, funny, and elicit a response from anyone who views it. Please, don’t make them prevalent, but inject them so that they represent your brand image.4.) Optimize Your Strategy:For your social media optimization to succeed, you must continually optimize your strategy. Social media today is not the same as what it was five years ago or at its inception.SM platforms keep evolving, and your strategy must grow with them. To achieve this, have a clear goal and objective; know what you want to accomplish with each post, stick with it, and create content for that purpose.Most strategies focus on growing business presence and translating it to increase sales. So, create content tailored to achieve that. When optimizing, you can choose not to be on every platform but pick the one best suited to your business and audience.Furthermore, when optimizing your strategy, ensure that your goals can solve challenges, add value, are engaging, and reach throughout your organization. Engage your audience instead of ignoring them, track, improve, and manage your efforts.5.) Carry Out Keyword Research:Although most people associate keywords with search engine optimization, it plays an essential role in optimizing your social media. Know the topics, keywords, and hashtags that your audience uses to source information about your industry.The latter’s knowledge would help you optimize the strategy you have to drive people to your page. Use social media-specific keyword tools, as they differ from what your customers’ use on search engines like Google.6.) Optimize Your Profile:Your profile tells a lot about you, but many businesses do not put in the effort and time to optimize their profile. Doing the latter is an excellent way for SMO and drives more high-value users on your page.Any building without a strong foundation is likely to fall in turbulent times, and your profile is the foundation of your social media page. To optimize it, use a profile picture that displays your company’s logo, a username consistent across all SM platforms you are on, a bio that tells your business story, contains keywords, and has a trackable link to your website.7.) Optimize Your Content:When it comes to social media optimization, there are two types of content: original and curated. The saying “Content is king” is valid for SM as it is the driving force. The richer your content is, the more value you create.Your posts should be a mixture of original and curated content. Original content is what you create solely for your page, and most times, they are part of a campaign. When it is curated, it means content from various sources around the web.However, curated content is more than just sharing a link and expecting people to follow it. It should have a short description of what the link leads to and be relevant to your business and audience.Quality content is always more vital than quantity, so determine what is relevant to your audience by measuring each post’s engagement. Additionally, in optimizing your content, test headlines, use images and hashtags and keep it short and straightforward.8.) Optimize Your Posting Schedule:Your optimal posting time depends on your audience and the social media platform you are operating from. The more people view your posts, the more impact you make, but take care not to overflood your timeline.Focus on the time when your audience is mostly online. For example, if professional adults make up your audience, the times they will be online will differ from teenagers. The preceding also determines the number of times you will post in a day.On Facebook, you can post about three to ten times per week, on Twitter, five times per day, and on LinkedIn, two to five times per week. Optimizing your posting schedule allows you to reach your audience at their less busy and relaxing times.9.) Track Your Post And Improve With Social Media Analytics:You can’t hope to streamline your social media optimization strategy without monitoring your activities. You can do this with social media analytics tools, which will, in turn, show your conversion rates, that is, the average number and comments and replies your post gets.Post tracking also shows how amplified your contents are, the average number of shares and retweets you get. It reveals whether your audience likes, favorites, or dislikes your posts, and its economic value (social media ROI).10.) Capitalize On Hashtags:Hashtags are one of the unique parts of content creation on social media. It takes your post not only to your audience but to people outside your reach. It means that even those who do not follow your business page would be able to see your post.Sometimes people use hashtags without purpose and end up defeating the intent of their post. Therefore, use hashtags that relate to your business, and find out the ones common among industry influencers. Rightly optimizing hashtags drives traffic to your page.Start Streamlining Your Social Media Optimization Strategy:Social media optimization is a trusted way to expand your reach, increase traffic, and sales. If you think you have not been getting enough from your social media marketing, follow the tips mentioned in this article, and watch as your results amplify.About the Author:Carola Richter is a professional esports journalist who reviews esports events and trends in the industry. Recently, she’s decided to create the blog csgo-bets.org where she could share her passion with the readers interested in the topic.Find Me On Twitter
