10 Social Media Optimization Tips You Can Use Right Now
Published September 26, 2023
If you can’t seem to wrap your head around how the biggest brands effortlessly dominate social media while you’re here trying out every method imaginable and yet not getting any traction in your social media efforts, then read on.
If your business isn’t online, and if you aren’t tapping on social media yet, then you have to ride the big wave now – or miss it.
Giant brands can turn heads and amplify sales with so much ease using social media optimization.
Yes, if you’ve heard of SEO for blogs, then SMO works pretty much the same way in making sure a brand is discoverable but on the social media landscape. Social media marketers tap on SMO to boost the existing social media marketing strategy of a business.
To completely understand how social media optimization does its magic, you need to deep dive into how exactly SMO can turn your social media presence from meh to mesmerizing – and before you know it, strategically turn your stories into shares, gaps into gasps, and followers into raving and loyal fans that echo your brand name.
What is Social Media Optimization?
SMO supports and supercharges your existing social media marketing initiatives so it works on hyperdrive.
So, what is SMO? According to Wikipedia, “Social media optimization (SMO) is the use of a number of outlets and communities to generate publicity to increase the awareness of a product, service brand, or event.”
Similar to search engine optimization (SEO), SMO’s goal is to fine-tune existing social media marketing strategies or content to increase brand reach, visibility, and engagement so people will be enticed to check out the brand’s website and discover their products and services.
In other words, SMO aims to be intentional in content creation using data and analytics. It further seeks to assess, validate, and change or redesign social media content to fit social media best practices and what works best for its target audience.
Why Should You Care About Social Media Optimization?
If you think social media optimization is just one of the many hyped-up strategies or flash-in-the-pan trends, you’re missing the mark.
According to July 2023 statistics by Kepios team, there are about 4.88 billion social media users, equivalent to roughly 60.6% or more than half of the world’s total population, which explains why competition on social media has been tougher now more than ever.
SMO is a staple in marketing a business on social media and isn’t going anywhere. With over 75% of B2B buyers saying social media influences their buying decisions, it’s crucial to pump up your social media optimization efforts and get the most out of social selling.
And if you are not optimizing your brand’s social media, you may not see any improvement despite rigorous marketing efforts.
Customers buy from businesses they know, like, and trust. In that sense, businesses that have high accountability scores are more likely to soar than competitors who are unreliable or don’t keep their word, with 81% of social media users believing that social media has ramped up business accountability. Clearly, people are now trying to screen businesses in terms of authenticity, social impact or relevance, and transparency.
Here’s why you should care about social media optimization right now:
- Tough Competition. It’s an overly saturated market. Many businesses are trying to fight for consumer attention on varied social media platforms. And with so much competition around, SMO helps you cut through the noise with a clear and compelling brand voice, so you stand out, especially to the market that needs your products and services.
- Constant Algorithm Updates. Social media platforms have changing algorithms that directly impact how your content appears to users. With SMO, you can easily keep up with these rapid changes and optimize content to maximize reach and visibility.
- High User Expectations. With many brands to choose from, social media users now have rising expectations from businesses. They are looking for authentic, highly relevant, valuable, and engaging content. Buyers are also now looking for brands that are involved in social or ecological causes, and SMO can help you understand and meet these rising expectations by customizing the content that will fit the preferences of your target audience.
- Drive Customer Engagements. Many social media users are observant of interactions with brands on social media and marketing, and social media optimization can help you strategize on how you can respond quickly to comments and inquiries, as well as how you can establish memorable and enjoyable customer connections.
- Mobile-Driven Audience. More than 91% of individuals use their mobile devices for social media browsing. In line with that, SMO ensures your content is tailored for mobile and must load quickly.
- Global Brand Reach. At most, 52% of brand discovery happens right on social media. You practically get to squash limitations in terms of reach when you dip into social media. With SMO, you get to connect and optimally expand your reach to many people worldwide, which opens up unparalleled opportunities for business growth.
- Valuable Insights. Data is everything. And with the right SMO tools, you get valuable insights or data that will help you understand and respond depending on your audience’s behavior. The data derived from this will help you curate a content strategy that resonates deeply with your target audience so you can build rapport.
- Build Brand Reputation. Your social media presence greatly impacts your reputation or how users perceive your brand. With 85% of men and 86% of women saying that social media influences their buying decisions, effective SMO allows you to curate a content strategy that helps strengthen your credibility and trustworthiness through the lens of your consumers.
- Drive Sales and Conversions. While likes, follows, and shares are important, businesses are always targeting revenue. Around 90% of social media marketers attest that social media has pumped up their brand exposure, with customers saying that they spend 20% to 40% of their money purchasing from brands they have interacted with over social media. Optimizing your social media content can help increase conversions and drive sales for your business.
With SMO, businesses are able to navigate with clarity and thrive in a highly competitive digital environment.
Top Social Media Optimization Tips
According to Social Media Today, “ Nine out of 10 consumers will buy from brands they follow on social, while 86% will choose that brand over a competitor.”
If you’re ready to take your social media game to the next level, here are some effective social media optimization tips:
Know Your Audience
If you’re selling to everyone, you’re selling to no one. I’m sure you have heard this many times over, and it’s true – you have to be deliberate and define your target audience. Marketing a business on social media needs to focus on who your target audience is and not get excited about selling to everyone.
More than the buyer persona, you also have to dig deep into their pain points, desires, motivations, and what drives or influences their purchase decisions.
Where do they hang out?
Do they have an idea about your business?
What are their challenges?
Who do they buy from?
Why should they buy from you instead?
Perform audience research and ensure your content marketing or social media strategy is aligned with what will push the right buttons on your target customers.
Define Your Goals
Just like with any business move, planning is essential to any successful social media optimization strategy. But you can’t adequately 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.
Make Heads Turn with Your Headlines
Buyers are huge on emotional purchases, so why not take your cue from that? Create emotional headlines that will make their heads turn and even entice them to give you a long, curious stare and a second look. The words you use in your headline must be short, memorable, useful, or valuable, create a sense of urgency, and with searchable relevant keywords. An example would be this: “9 Sexy Ways To Be In Your Buyer’s Radar That You Can Try Right Now”.
While positive headlines are common, you can also shift to injecting negative words into your headlines because interest and engagement spikes and increases when you create an argumentative or even a taboo post such as this one: “The More Customer Complaints – The Better? Here’s Why!”
According to a new study, stories with negative headlines tend to impact or increase click-through rates positively. Use this strategy right, and you can snag the attention and curiosity of your audience.
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 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, helps 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.
Keep a Consistent Brand Look and Voice
One of the critical elements to the success of a brand is consistency. Being consistent in all your social media platforms helps create a personality for your brand. Your brand voice matters, and customers should identify your business in all your social media platforms, so make sure you have a cohesive and consistent brand look and voice.
Take a look at Coca-Cola; its brand voice and personality are synonymous with light and friendly emotions and focus on creating and celebrating happiness and microscopic “feel-good” everyday moments. You can see that consistent brand voice and identity all throughout their social media.
Post Consistently and Regularly
It’s not enough to be consistent in your posts. You also need to post regularly or at least 1 to 2 times daily on your social media channels. According to Hootsuite, “daily posting will grow followers 4x faster than posting less than once a week.”
Posting regularly helps you be on top of mind as your audience will see more of your posts on their feed. If you are so busy, you can schedule your week’s posts ahead of time. Be careful, though, not to overwhelm your audience with your posts and strike a balance with posts they will find entertaining and valuable so they won’t find your brand annoying.
Use Hashtags
In 2023, hashtags on Instagram are on overload, which means “more is more.” Instagram posts that have 11+ hashtags ramp up interactions by 79.5%, even if your account has less than 1,000 followers. Longer hashtags also work optimally compared to shorter hashtags.
On the other hand, with Facebook, “less is more” when it comes to hashtags. You can use only one hashtag, and the engagement shoots to an average of 593 engagements for every post and so overdoing the hashtags can actually hurt your engagement on this platform.
Hashtags are great for branding apart from escalating your brand reach and engagement.
Post Valuable 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. Is it delectable or valuable enough for your audience?
So make sure you post only irresistible ones – the type of content that nobody would dare say no to and, most importantly, content that solves their problems. You should not limit posts to promotional and include posts that actually help your audience overcome their challenges, which could be in the form of infographics, news, or tips and guides.
By “valuable,” we mean it must be timely, relevant to your niche, and 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 or 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.
Use Videos and Reels
In 2023, online video is said to have generated over 91.4% audience reach on a global scale, with 88% of users claiming they were influenced to buy a product or service after watching a brand’s video. Needless to say, videos are very effective whether you want to gain more followers or increase your engagement. Short-form videos are easy to consume and most-watched too, so make sure to include them in your strategies.
Schedule Posts at The Best Times
In a recent original research by CoSchedule, “the best times to post on social media in general are 7:00 pm, 3:15 pm, and 8:41 am on Friday, Wednesday, and Monday.”
Sure, you have high-quality and engaging content, but if you are posting at the wrong times, then it won’t move the needle. It’s mission-critical to know the best times to post or what times your audience is most active online and post at those times for increased brand reach. The best times will differ for each social media platform and brand. The best thing to do is to test posts at different times and then track and measure results. You can adjust and take cues from what works!
Dominate Social Media with SMO!
Social media is not just meant for idle scrolling; it’s a dynamic space businesses can fully utilize to connect with their audience, increase visibility, and attract leads and sales through SMO.
Optimizing your social media content strategy can help boost your website traffic, skyrocket your engagement, and allow your sales to soar. Explore SMO and dive into implementing the tips above. Feel free to test, validate, and refine SMO strategies to fit your unique brand goals and target audience. There is no overnight success with social media marketing, and quality will consistently outperform quantity, but if you can skillfully combine both, you can dominate social media with the power of SMO.
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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.
