Nearly 4.5 billion people are active on social media worldwide. As a business, it’s hard to miss the potential of tapping into such a large audience. Using social media platforms is one of the quickest ways to boost your brand’s visibility and success. That’s why it’s critical for companies to embrace social media optimization strategies.
In this article, we’ll explore how social media optimization can help you reach more potential customers, attract more leads, and boost your digital marketing efforts.
Table of contents
What is social media optimization?
Social media optimization (SMO) is the process of optimizing your brand’s social media presence and performance on social media platforms. This involves creating strategic social content that resonates with the target audience and encourages them to interact with or share it. SMO also entails using targeted advertising campaigns to gain visibility and create a more positive brand identity.
What are the benefits of social media optimization?
The primary benefit of social media optimization is increased visibility both on social media platforms and search engines. By optimizing your social media sites, content, and campaigns, you can reach more potential customers, attract more leads, and build better relationships with them.
Additionally, SMO helps to boost brand awareness and recognition as well as strengthen your reputation. Finally, it provides an effective way to track customer preferences and trends, allowing you to better tailor your content and campaigns for maximum return on investment.
Below, we’ve put together a list of more benefits of social media optimization with a focus on the big picture.
Increased brand awareness and reach
As we mentioned earlier, social media have billions of active users. And all those people can potentially see your brand, that’s if you take the steps to optimize your social media presence. By creating engaging content and posting at optimal times, you can reach an even wider audience and create a strong online presence.
Higher conversion rates
Increasing sales is the fuel for your company’s growth. And making the most of your social media presence will help you reach your financial goals. By post content that speaks to your target audience, interacting with followers, and taking advantage of targeted ads you can increase conversion rates to boost your bottom line.
Improved customer satisfaction
Social media lets you connect direct with followers. This means your customers won’t need to visit your store or wait on the phone to get an answer to the pressing questions. Being accessible to followers when it’s convenient for them will go a long way toward improving customer satisfaction. After all, social media is where it’s at. And by “it,” we mean the conversations, the feedback, and the back-and-forth that translates into social selling.
Cost-effective marketing
Social media marketing is a bargain compared to traditional advertising methods like print, radio, or TV. Keep in mind that a TV show has never reached billions of people. Plus, social media is much cheaper than designing and printing flyers for a direct mail campaign or reworking your website every time search engines change their algorithm.
The best thing about Birdeye is that it links all of our social media accounts into one place. That saves lots of time for our social media director answering questions.
Todd Wilson, Local business owner & Birdeye customer
Insightful analytics
Social media platforms offer a treasure chest of data that can help you make informed decisions about your marketing strategies. You’ll be able to parse through data such as engagement numbers, audience demographics, and content performance. This information can help you tailor your social media marketing efforts to be more effective. And with the right social media management tools, you can even keep tabs on your competitors and brand sentiment.
How do social media optimization and search engine rankings connect?
There’s a definite correlation between a thriving social media presence and better search engine results for your website. However, the impact is more indirect than direct. That’s because, according to Google, social signals aren’t ranking factors for search engine optimization (SEO).
But, having a large following on social media can indirectly improve SEO by creating more social media content for search engines to crawl. More content leads to more opportunities for people to find your website through backlinks and organic searches, and that in turn means better rankings.
Here are social activities you can do to help indirectly increase your search engine ranking:
Increased brand visibility
It’s simple. More followers mean more people you and drive to your website and landing pages. Search engines perk up when they see this increased web traffic and will reward your site with a higher ranking when people search for your product or service. A flourishing social media presence has a ripple effect that can be felt across the Web.
Here’s another way to think of this, the brand awareness you get from social media marketing translates into increased brand awareness across the internet. Search engines take notice of the activity surrounding your social media content. Users sharing and commenting tell the search engine that you have content that people are interested in. When your social media optimization strategy is rock-solid, engaging social content translates into better search rankings for your website.
Link building
When users share your social media content, you create backlinks for your website. Search engines take these backlinks into account when determining your site’s credibility and authority. The more reputable backlinks your site has, the more likely it is to rank higher in search engine results pages.
Think of your social media campaign as the Viewers Vote episode on American Idol. The more organic shares you earn from actual users, tell the search engines that your content is helpful.
User engagement
High engagement rates signal to search engines that your content is valuable and relevant to users. That’s why consistent social media management is important for social media optimization. Users are much more likely to engage with your content when you consistently reply to follower comments or ‘like’ it when someone shares your work with their network.
Social signals
You might think social signals are just for people on blind dates. In fact, the bots that crawl the internet use them to identify appealing and interesting content. Social signals (likes, shares, comments) offer up clues to your content’s popularity and authority. Compiling social signals indicates to search engines the inherent value and shareability of your social media content, thus potentially boosting your search engine rankings indirectly.
5 essential social media optimization strategies
Now that you know what social media optimization is and how it can help you improve search engine rankings and your overall online reputation, here are five ways to get started with your own SMO initiative so that you get the best ROI for your social media strategy.
Create high-quality, engaging content
If you haven’t realized it yet, content is king on social platforms. So develop content that authentically resonates with your target audience and encourages them to directly engage, share, and interact. Create a mix tape of content. Articles, images, videos, and infographics keep your audience coming back for more.
Your search engine optimization isn’t worth a nickel if your digital marketing efforts don’t include a solid content strategy. And we’re not just talking about content that tics all the grammar boxes, although getting those commas right is important. You need outstanding content that makes users want to linger on your page and share it with their friends.
Optimize profile and page information
Make sure your social media profiles are consistent and have all of your updated information. If you’re still listing that defunct address you had ten years ago or missing the phone number for your newest location, then your online reputation will take a hit. And don’t forget to include keywords in your profile and page description.
Post consistently and at optimal times
Maintain a consistent posting schedule and pay attention to when they’re most active on social media. You’ll want to be there at the same time they are. Remember, the bullseye is a moving target that depends on a lot of things. Your industry, your customers, and your social media platform all play a role. You might need to experiment to discover the best posting times for your brand.
Run targeted ads
Use social media advertising to run targeted ads that reach your desired audience based on demographics, interests, and behaviors. This helps drive more relevant traffic to your website and additionally increases the likelihood of conversions.
Monitor and respond to comments and messages
Actively monitor and respond to comments, messages, and mentions on your social media channels. Engaging with your audience helps build trust and loyalty and can help to generate more leads. Interacting with social media users pulls away the veil, allowing customers to know you’re more than a logo and there are real people at work.
FAQs about social media optimization
Examples of social media optimization are creating content that is shareable, crafting a social media presence that resonates with your audience, and providing customer service on social media channels.
Social media optimization is necessary to help improve the visibility of your content, drive more traffic to your website, and boost conversions. Additionally, social media optimization helps you stay on top of customer feedback so that you can better understand their needs and how you can improve your services or products.
SMO (social media optimization) is the process of optimizing content to make it more shareable and engaging, while SMM (social media marketing) focuses on using social media channels to promote a business or product.
Optimize your social networks with Birdeye Social
If all you’re doing is counting followers and likes, then you’re missing the forest for the trees. Social media platforms influence search rankings and your brand across the internet. With Birdeye Social, we’ll have access to high-quality content templates that make creating and sharing posts easier than ever before. Click the banner below to learn more.
About the Author
Birdeye Staff Writer
Originally published
