Stephanie Donelson

It’s a scary time to be a social media manager. Understanding the social media algorithms is like ghost hunting. You’re sure the ghosts are there but you can’t see them or interact with them or really understand them.

It can be overwhelming to keep up with the changes but one thing that isn’t overwhelming is using Social Media Optimization (SMO) to protect your social media posts. There are plenty of treats you can provide your marketing team to improve your SMO as well as some tricks for implementing them!

What is Social Media Optimization and why do you need to prioritize it? 

SMO is just like SEO where you’re optimizing your social media profiles, posts, and even the content you plan to share on social media.

You’ll focus on using keywords or hashtags, alt text, searchability, and where your content is hosted to improve your brand’s visibility on social media.

Benefits of SMO

• Right audience = engaged audience: By optimizing your social media content you get your content in front of the right people which will only improve your engagement rate which in turn will amplify your content! Talk about a win-win!
• Brand reach: Optimizing your profiles and content improves your brand awareness and helps prospects find your brand online and interact on social media.
• Improves referral traffic: By optimizing your content and getting it in front of the right people it’ll increase your website’s traffic as people follow the links back to your site.
• Bumps up your brand in the SERPs: By having more citations pointing back to your website and your consistent brand name across the world wide web, it can only assist your SEO efforts and get your brand a better position in the SERPs.

SMO content optimization

How can you add SMO tactics to your website content so it performs well when shared on social media?

Focus on social content

Create more videos, eBooks, infographics, or webinars that are engaging or semi-interactive content that people will want to click on.

Don’t forget OG markup

You need to focus on your meta data and add the right Open Graph tags and information so your website’s content looks great no matter if you’re sharing it or a happy customer is. Tell the social media networks what image to pull from your site, tell the networks what the title of your content is, tell the networks what the teaser text should be!

Add social sharing buttons

Lastly, make it super easy, barely an inconvenience for website visitors to quickly share the content they’re enjoying by adding social sharing buttons to your site.

SMO on the social media networks

Now that you know how to optimize your content for social media, what about optimizing the actual social media channel? Here are some tricks to SMO on the networks.

Fill in your profiles

Not only should your brand name be consistent across each social media channel, but you should also have the SEO keyword terms in your bio to match your messaging on your website.

Add links in your profile

Either add a simple link back to your website’s homepage or utilize a tool like linktr.ee to provide different journeys people can follow from your social media accounts.

Use keywords in post copy

Not everything has to be a hashtag! I know, I know, I have hashtags listed right below this but hashtags should be used strategically. They should not exhaust or undermine your message. It’s okay to simply use keyword terms, without hashtags, to tell your social media followers what your content is about.

Use hashtags

But do work in relevant hashtags into your posts. Depending on the network you can add more as you see fit, like on Instagram, but a good rule of thumb is no more than 5 in a post on networks like LinkedIn or Twitter.

I also use hashtags to better track campaigns instead of just appending them to specific keywords to make the analysis of my campaigns easier.

Add CTA buttons

Like filling in your profile, take advantage of all the resources the networks give you and add CTA buttons, like signing up for emails or registering for a webinar.

Engage with other brands

One easy way to optimize your account is to engage and join conversations around topics you want associated with your brand. Use your keywords, hashtags, and drop links to your content or profiles – where appropriate! No one likes the person joining the conversation just to talk about themselves or share links no one asked for. Use your best judgment to determine if it’s okay to share a link, like when the original poster asks for links or if it fits well enough in the conversation to help illustrate your point.

Tag employees and other brands

Finally, be sure to improve the reach of others’ brands or your own employees by tagging them when appropriate in your content. Sharing a blog article from another brand? Tag them! Did your employee write a great blog post on your website? Tag them! All of these elements add up to one core principle of SEO which is EAT – Expertise, Authority, and Trust. By tagging the right authors you’re proving the content is credible and providing the right attribution.

Have you thought about SMO in your marketing efforts before? Tell me if I missed anything when it comes to optimizing social media in the comments below!