SMO Basics

SMO as opposed to SEO

While traditional SEO measures often focus on so called Google-bombs (High-traffic terms like the name of German topmodel-contestant Gina Lisa, which was resonsible for about 5% of the overall search volume in Germany for a short period of time!) or look out for various ways of leveraging the SERP positions via a set of measures that primarily adreses bot scripts, SMO is targetted directly at the human user.

What are social networks

SMO arose with the major success of so called social networks: huge user-centered communities like Facebook or Myspace started a trend towards UGC (user generated content). Besides the huge market movers a lot of topic-centered and specialized communities have launched there services: some of them are centered around a special mode of real-time communication (micro-blogging services like Twitter), others focus on a topical field. (travelling communities, sports communities etc.)

All of these sites allow their user to set up so called profiles: the user profile serves as a hub for all kinds of services the network offers: from privated messages to rss feeds, and, most important of all, the friend management as most of these networks operate as contact enablers.

How to use social networks for leveraging brands

As opposed to traditional online advertising, not costs are associated with registering a brand with one or more of these networks: a great of sites offer great free possibilities for giving brands an extended visibility inside the network - and they enable users of this network to directly interact with brands. In the long run, this situation will completely re-structure the field of pr and market communications: communicating to a "disperse crowd" is a huge difference from directly getting in touch with ones customers. Social media optimization aims at integrating brands into such social networks - an effort which requires constant activity.

Social Media Optimization strategies

There is no exact definition of social media campaigning, as the targetted communities are strongly dependent on the brand: social media optimization for a mountain bike vendor differs a lot from SMO for a music label. Before the start of any SMO campaign, the following questions have to be considered carefully:

• Where do internet users interested in my brand spend time online?
• Which placement possibilities do these communities offer?
• Which type of media can be used to leverage brand awareness?
• How much effort has to be put into daily routine? (there's nothing worse than a "dead" profile

How to keep up to date on current SMO trends?

The best way to stay ahead of the competition is to regularly read blogs that publish news about social media services. Good luck with your own SMO optimization strategies - if you want to know more, don't hesitate to drop me a line.