Social Media Optimization - Building Social Channels to Increase Website Traffic

Social Media Optimization (SMO) involves the methods to optimize a site so that it is effectively linked to social media networks and becomes visible in social media searches. After reading the statement above, one can easily draw close parallels between SMO and SEO. The only difference is that the former targets the traffic from social media and the latter improves chances of obtaining search engine traffic. Interestingly, SMO has a positive contribution in enhancing the website’s search engine ranking as well.

SMO should be the integral part of a website’s Search Engine Reputation Management. A search engine optimization agency would integrate SMO with SEO to achieve targets like online marketing and brand building. Alongside, there are many other targets that online businesses achieve through SMO:

• Product and service development by receiving customer feedback.
• Building long term customer relationships.
• Getting genuine product reviews from the real customers.
• Building an easy communication channel with customers and so on.

SMO methodology makes use of the following two ways:
• Utilization of tools like RSS feeds, information sharing buttons, polling tools and videos and images to help the content travel through social media.
• Building a strong presence at social networks like Facebook and Twitter and using blogs and social bookmarking.

It is easy to compare social media optimization with viral marketing, though the former has much wider scale than the latter. SMO targets millions of people meeting and interacting at social media networks, making it easy for the website to reach masses and appear in social media searches.

To further understand the importance of SMO, here is an interesting analysis by two companies Syncapse and Hotspex. According to this analysis, the average value of a Facebook fan is $136.38.

A series of attributes have been used to reach this figure:

• Facebooks fans spend on average $71.84 more than the non-fans.
• Facebook fans are expected are 28% more loyal towards a product than the non-fans.
• 68% of the Facebook fans are likely to recommend a product further.
• 81% of Facebook fans develop bonding with a brand.

It is the powerful nature of SMO that keeps social media users worthy customers of various online businesses.

Here are some other interesting facts about SMO that have surfaced in the past few years:
• More than 80% of the B2B (business to business) companies and over 65% of the B2C (business to customer) companies have accounts on social media websites.
• Nearly 75% of B2B companies use Twitter.
• More than 37% of buyers ask questions on social networking websites before purchasing products.

So, SMO achieves great business results when done in the right manner and with complete determination. EXL Interactive offers social media optimization services to create brand value of online businesses in different domains. Apart from being a SEO Company India, the company also deals in SEO, PPC marketing and other online marketing techniques.

Article Source :- http://www.buzzle.com/articles/social-media-optimization-building-social-channels-to-increase-website-traffic.html