Social media optimization (SMO) is a key point in your SEO strategy. Here we look at a few steps to make your SMO a success and boost your online visibility!
Nowadays, it is no longer enough to focus on SEO or SEA to succeed in your SEO strategy. Indeed, web referencing can take many forms. To talk about search engine optimization in a way, we often use this little mathematical formula: SEM = SEO + SEA + SMO.
SEM (Search Engine Marketing) refers to the marketing strategy of optimising your presence on search engines. According to the small formula above, SEM is the sum of natural or organic search engine optimization (SEO), paid search engine optimization (SEA), but also social media optimization (SMO). We therefore deduce that SMO is one of the levers for acquiring traffic. This strategy should not be neglected. In this article, we will look at 7 points for a successful SMO strategy in order to improve your SEO.
What is social media optimization (SMO)?
SMO or Social Media Optimization consists of using social networks (SN) in an optimal way to establish your online presence. As we have seen previously, it is one of the 3 pillars of the SEO marketing strategy.
Social networks are an integral part of our daily lives. Producing good content or content that appeals on these platforms can have a major impact on your visibility and e-reputation. However, social media can also have a negative impact on your business if they are misused.
It is therefore necessary to put in place good practices to create a community and thus enable your business to have a strong online presence.
What are the benefits of an SMO strategy?
Having a good SMO strategy has many advantages:
Attracting traffic to your site
Search Engine Optimisation is good, but it is not enough! Optimising social networks allows you to generate traffic from a source other than search engines. There is nothing better to develop the visibility of a website than to diversify its traffic sources. The power of social networks is such that a good presence can boost your daily visitor numbers. An added bonus is that links back to your site (backlinks) give it "juice" for SEO.
Creating a community
Being present on social networks offers the possibility to interact more or less directly with your customers. By optimising your SMO, you can create a group of people who share the same interests, the same values... Thanks to this interaction, you will be able to learn more about the people who follow you and therefore offer them the best service.
Enhance your content
The more your content is shared, the more it is viewed. It's a rather silly/obvious statement, but the fact remains that sharing your content on social networks increases your audience. We will see later in this article how to share your content on social networks.
Expand your audience
This point goes hand in hand with the previous one. SMO is beneficial for making your business known to as many people as possible. The more people who know about your solutions and your added value in the market, the more likely you are to generate leads.
Managing your online reputation
Social networks have one great advantage: they allow you to know what people think of you. On social networks (often thanks to anonymity), there is no restraint, no pretence, users express clearly what they think. Of course, you have to be careful (because of trolls, spam, haters...), but overall you can learn a lot. You can also interact on the networks to have a direct relationship with your target and improve yourself.
Having presented the advantages of SMO, let's now look at how to optimise your SRs to get the most out of them and thus improve your SEO.
How to succeed with your Social Media Optimization (SMO) strategy?
SMO has some similarities with SEO, to be successful:
- You need to analyse and understand the marketwell
- Trendsneed to be analysed
- It is essential to produce quality content
In addition to these three points, as with natural referencing, the results are seen progressively over time (except for buzz).
1 - Study your target
Before starting to publish on social networks, it is important to know who you are going to address. It is important to bear in mind that the audience that you may have on the various networks is not (necessarily) the same as the one you reach via natural or paid referencing.
Creating personas can help you segment your prospects. This way, you have a global idea of who your target is, what their interests are, what their characteristics are, so you can propose relevant content. The goal is to attract qualified prospects to your social networks.
2 - Analysing social networks
Knowing your target(s) is good, but it is not everything! Indeed, each social network has its own codes, its own rules, its own way of working. You can't have the same approach on different networks. You can't talk on Twitter the same way you talk on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook or YouTube.
The main point is to : Understand the functioning of each social network (Atmosphere, type of content, type of people on the platform...)
It would also be interesting to study the question of how the referencing algorithms of each social platform work. What type of content is highlighted and why? What are the hacks and tips to use to improve visibility?
It may seem like a lot of work, but the more you know about the network environment, the better you can handle it.
3 - Define your KPIs
You know who to talk to, you understand the ecosystem bit by bit, but you don't know if your strategy will work.
To do this, it is interesting to define KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). The purpose of these key performance indicators is to give you objectives. But goals for what? For SR, you can measure :
- The number of subscribers
- The rate of engagement (Likes, comments, shares...)
- The number of publications
- The number of visits to your site
These goals will allow you to monitor your progress. Of course, you should not set goals that are too high (unattainable) or too low (easily achieved). As with any goal you set, the KPIs must be SMART:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Achievable / Realistic
- Temporal (with a delay)
4 - Create or update your social networks
Now that you have a better overview of social networks, you can start to act.
The most important step is to optimise your pages (company profile). You need to fill in as much information as possible about your business without forgetting the codes of the networks and the type of person you want to attract.
You also need to create your own universe and dictate your codes. Users must be able to identify you easily. You have to be a full player on social platforms, so your brand image has to be identifiable.
As soon as a user clicks on your profile or sees any of your content, they should easily understand who you are and what you do. Like your website, your SR profiles are showcases of your offer. They should therefore not be neglected.
5 - Create different types of content
Once your profiles are up to date, you can start sharing your content. The strategy you have put in place so far will tell you what to create. You should try to bring the customer to you through your content(Inbound Marketing). On the Internet, there are all types of Internet users, and you have to participate in the development of each one.
A few tips:
- Adapt your language to your target
- Adapt your language to the social media
- Keep abreast of new developments / trends / news (monitoring)
- Listen to the feedback from your community
- Diversify the types of sharing (Infographics, videos, articles...)
- Publish content on a regular basis (publication schedule)
- Use the right keywords
- Share your blog posts
If your content doesn't appeal or doesn't work, don't panic! First of all, it is over time that you improve and it takes time to create your community. The quality you need for SMO is adaptability. Challenging yourself and bouncing back will allow you to keep improving.
6 - Building a relationship with your community
As the months go by, you will see a community emerge and grow. It is important to create a link with it. Having a relationship with your community will allow you to get feedback on what you are doing. The community also aims to improve and increase your reputation. It is an actor who will talk about you and recommend you. It is therefore necessary to succeed in creating commitment.
To stay close to your community, don't hesitate to reply to comments or private messages. Avoid "cold" sharing, the community must feel that you are listening.
The rate of engagement is a real factor of referencing of social networks, it is thus necessary to be vigilant with this point of the SMO. Be careful, communication is one of the main points in social referencing.
7 - Analyse the figures
Finally, in order to remain consistent with the objectives you have set, you need to analyse the figures. The KPIs you set earlier will help you to know if you are on the right track or not.
With this data, you can gain insight into what worked and what didn't. You can then decide to readjust your SMO strategy to improve your visibility. This information is necessary to be able to adapt and reposition yourself.
Bonus - Pro tip
The more information you give Google, the more it will like you. One of the ways you can give relevant information to Google is by using structured data. This structured data is used by the search engine to display your information on its results pages. It's a small hack that is good from an SEO point of view.
Without going into too much technical detail, you can ask Google to display your social network information on its search engine. This will link your SMO to your SEO and SEA and therefore to your SEM.
To indicate your SRs to Google, you need to use a schema.org markup code. If you are a company, you can use the following markup with JSON-LD :
Then simply replace :
- "name" with the name of your organisation
- "url" with the url of your site
- "logo" by the path to your logo
- In "Same Ace", the different links to your SRs
Currently, Google only considers these types of social profiles: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google+, Myspace, Pinterest, SoundCloud and Tumblr.
Don't bet everything on your SMO strategy!
Search engine optimization is one of the three pillars of SEO, but you should not rely on it all. It is true that PR is a great lever for web marketing, but it is not everything. They contribute to your visibility, but they are "only" aids to help you develop your business. The goal is to use SMO in addition to SEO and perhaps SEA. It is not a substitute, but an effective complementary means of getting additional traffic.
It is important to focus on organic search engine optimisation in order to achieve long-term visibility. SEO has many advantages over SEA. It is a way to generate quality traffic compared to SEA and SMO. To do SEO, it is important to follow some basic rules and optimise your site. Being highlighted by Google is a real goldmine for developing your business, but you need to know the right practices. In addition, your site must meet certain standards.
To help you develop your visibility on search engines, Digidop helps you build your SEO strategy. Digidop can also help you develop a fast and optimized website to challenge any competition using nocode tools like Webflow. Finally, our SEO web agency offers you a list of nocode tools(so easy to use) to boost your digital strategy.
