Like search engine optimization (SEO), social media optimization (SMO) is all about getting your website and content found online. Instead of targeting any search engines, you’re going after social media networking and bookmarking sites. Closely allied with viral marketing, SMO aims to spread the word about your brand, your ideas and your products and services by word of mouth,

Social media marketing is the process of promoting your site or business through social media channels and it is a powerful strategy that will get you links, attention and massive amounts of traffic.

No matter how great your product, service or business is, if your prospective customer can’t find you on the web, it’s like you don’t exist.

There is no other low-cost promotional method out there that will easily give you large numbers of visitors, some of whom may come back to your website again and again.

Some points about why to use social media sites:

  • your website is exposed to large groups of people in a spontaneous fashion. This differs from paid advertising which has overt commercial overtones.
  • costs are limited to only time and perhaps the expenses involved in hiring a freelance programmer/designer. The benefits will often exceed the cost. It would take you thousands of dollars to buy many links; social media has the ability to give you that for free.
  • While you can’t easily increase your search engine traffic, social media traffic can be very easily controlled through strategic marketing.

key tools and best strategies for social media optimization:

Blogs – You want to get found online? Get busy with your blog. Blog early and often. Target your niche audience and wow them with interesting and helpful content. Blend your blog with SEO by using keywords relevent to your business and strengths in the blog title, headings, content, images and tags.

Social Networks – Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn along with any and all niche community sites that make sense for your business.

Social Bookmarking Sites - Digg, Delicious, Stumbleupon, Reddit and many more.

Blog Directories

Video, Photo and Slide Sharing Sites - YouTube, Flickr, SlideShare, the list goes on. This is a rapidly growing segment, so don’t ignore it

Stratagies:

  • Keep the content fresh and updated. There is no question about it. You must supply fresh content and new ideas to your audience. Stole content is a turnoff in today’s non-stop news and information cycles. Fresh content will also fuel viral conversations. The fresher, more relevant, and up-to-date the content is, the more likely it is that your audience will share it or retweet to their friends and followers.
  • Bookmark only high-quality relevant content that’s genuinely worth sharing with other site members.
  • Don’t bookmark only your own content, since doing so is spammy.

sources:

http://www.kunocreative.com/

http://www.doshdosh.com/

http://online-social-networking.com/