Social Media
Optimisation (SMO)

Web 2.0 Social Media Technology

Social Media came about on the Internet in 2006 and offers online technologies that help people to share their opinions and experiences with each other in the form of text, links, images, audio and video. It allows companies to reach their target audience via a whole new channel. Social Media is user-driven, which is both good news and bad news as the user community can have enormous power over the reputation of a company or a brand.

It allows companies to look at their Online Reputation Management to ensure they are in a position to check for negative comments in order to avert potential PR disasters. Social Media is revolutionary and is here to stay with some people calling it the new Web 2. To take advantage of this new technology, companies should be looking to optimise their websites accordingly.

Social Media Optimisation (SMO)

SMO looks at the social aspects of your website helping you to interact better with your visitors and potential customers. The Internet is continually changing and new technologies appear all the time. This new technology includes Social Networking websites (MySpace, Facebook), social video and picture sharing (YouTube, Flickr) and also community-based websites (Digg, FriendsReunited).

SMO is about the strategies to set up Social Media components on your website and adding to your online marketing campaign. The whole point is to make your site more accessible to your visitors by allowing them to interact with your content via the following means.

Tagging and Bookmarking your web pages

The social web is all about sharing information and tagging your web pages allows people to easily bookmark your content and add your web pages to their favourite lists.

Create live content with RSS Feeds

Providing RSS Feeds for your services, products, blogs, etc allows users to know instantly when content has changed on your website without them having to visit. RSS Feeds help to get your content distributed across the web and is a simple way to tap into the Web 2.0 technology.

Create a Blog and interact with your visitors

A blog is simply a means of displaying content, one article after another on your website and allows visitors to interact directly with your content and your comments. It is also a great place for your syndicated articles.

Provide a discussion Forum for your visitors

Allow your visitors to discuss and comment on your services and products. Monitoring the Forum will give you the chance to understand your customers and put you in a position to defend any negative comments made immediately.

Online Videos and Pictures

Creating online videos can be a great way to communicate with your customers and bring life into your website. Share your videos and pictures with popular social network sites for optimisation benefits.