7 Social Media Optimization Tips You Can Use Right Now
Published June 3, 2022
Have you ever wondered why some brands seem to take social media by storm so effortlessly? And yet, here you are, still struggling to break the proverbial ceiling despite your best efforts.
The answer, my friend, lies in three words: social media optimization.
More commonly known as SMO, social media optimization is the social media marketer’s answer to SEO.
By definition, SMO is about using techniques and strategies to effectively promote a brand, product, or whatever using social media platforms.
In layman’s terms, social media optimization is taking full advantage of social media to promote awareness about something.
Contrary to popular belief, SMO is not really a social media marketing strategy. Rather, it’s about improving your existing social media strategy. It’s also not a digital marketing technique but it can be used to boost your online marketing efforts.
To fully understand what SMO is, you first need to understand why it’s necessary for businesses.
What Should You Care About Social Media Optimization?
One of the most common yet biggest mistakes you can make is not to take social media marketing seriously.
According to statistics, there are about 4.62 billion people using social media every single day. That’s about half the world’s population. It’s a small wonder why the competition on these platforms is gladiatorial.
This is also why you need to optimize your social media marketing efforts.
Some of the benefits you can get from SMO are:
- a stronger online presence
- wider reach
- increased brand awareness on social media
- get more leads that are more likely to turn into paying customers
- direct more traffic to your website
- better customer relations
- more targeted and cost-effective advertising
- quicker information dissemination (brand updates, events, promotions, etc.)
With all the above, we need not repeat how important social media optimization is for your business.
Top Social Media Optimization Tips
If you’re ready to take your social media game to the next level, here are some effective social media optimization tips:
1. Define Your Goals
Just like with any business move, planning is essential to any successful social media optimization strategy. But you can’t properly plan your route if you don’t even know your destination. That’s why the first step to social media optimization is defining your social media goals.
Do you want to have more followers? better brand visibility? increase engagement?
Figuring out what you want out of social media will help you formulate the best strategy for conquering it. Make sure to break down your goals into quantifiable objectives so it’s easier for you to measure and keep track of your progress.
2. Optimize Your Account
Each social media platform has unique algorithms. So like most tools that rely on algorithms, you need to optimize your account for it to be more visible to the users.
Some of the things you can do to ensure your account is optimized are:
- Make sure you’re using a business account. This is a common mistake most businesses make when creating a social media account. When building a brand on social media, it’s important to have a separate account for your personal use and for your business. It not only helps you avoid oversharing personal information with people you don’t know in person. It also keeps your brand personality separate from your personal life.
- Complete all information fields. Providing accurate and complete information about your business helps social media algorithms find the right audience for you. It also adds credibility to your business which, in turn, help you gain customer trust.
- Use high-quality photos. This is especially important for your primary photos. Make sure it looks good and is the right size and orientation for a profile photo. Otherwise, it can get pixelized or cropped out in the wrong places.
- Include Keywords. Like search engines, social media algorithms also rely on keywords. So make sure to do some keyword research beforehand and incorporate those in your profile.
3. Keep a Consistent Brand Look and Voice
One of the key elements to the success of a brand is consistency. Being consistent in all your social media platforms helps create a personality for your brand.
Take Disney, for example. They use the same profile picture (and banners) on virtually all of their social media accounts. This creates a unified look and encourages trust from their audience.
4. Post Regularly
It’s not enough to be consistent in your posts. You also need to post consistently. It not only helps you appear at the top of social media search results. It also helps you be more visible in your audience’s feed.
Many social media experts recommend posting at least once per day. If you’re too busy to keep to this schedule, you can also use social media post schedulers. Create all your posts at the start of the week and schedule them to one post a day.
5. Use Hashtags
You may not like using them personally but if you want to conquer social media, hashtags are your best friend. They not only help you send a powerful message. It also helps categorize your post which, in turn, increases your engagement and attracts the right audience for your niche.
Be careful not to overdo it, though. As per statistics, you should only use a maximum of 3 hashtags on Instagram. Anything more than that and your engagement actually drops off.
6. Post Awesome Content
This goes without saying. No matter how optimized your profile is, at the end of the day, it still boils down to the kind of content you post. So make sure you post only awesome ones.
By “awesome”, we mean that it must be timely, relevant to your niche, and be interesting enough to convince your audience to hit that like button or express their thoughts in the comments.
The best way to do this is to put yourself in your audience’s shoes. Think about what they like, can make them laugh, tickle their fancy, or arouse their curiosity. If you can figure these out, the higher your chances are of getting them to engage with your brand.
7. Use Videos and Reels
According to a survey, 93% of companies have gained new followers through social media videos. While another statistic suggests that people are twice as likely to share a video with friends over any other type of content. About 50% of social media users also prefer video over any other type of content. Needless to say, videos are very effective whether you want to gain more followers or increase your engagement. So make sure to include it in your strategies.
Final Thoughts
The world of social media marketing is very competitive. But with the right social media optimization strategies, it’s not impossible to conquer it. You may need to put in a lot of work today but think of it as an investment. In time, you will eventually reap its rewards.
(Related: 50+ Engaging Social Media Questions to Ask Your Audience?)
Hire The Digital Marketing Experts
We take online businesses and turn them into online empires by employing smart digital marketing strategies. Our team of experts are trained in a myriad of marketing skill including SEO to help you rank higher in search results, and ad management to ensure your message gets seen by the people you want. Need a business website that attracts business? We also specialize in website design and online sales optimization to help your business grow like never before.
About The Author
Judy Ponio is a professional writer and SEO specialist based in the Philippines. She works hard to cross check reputable sources to ensure her work uses accurate facts. She is the lead author for several prominent websites covering a variety of topics including law, health, nutrition, and more.
