Prior to my to career in the Online Industry, I worked with the Federal Government and was always amazed at the copious amount of acronyms that government people would use for virtually anything. Now, after working in the Online space for a few years, I would have to say Internet Marketers would certainly be able to  easily compete for the greatest amount of acronyms used on a daily basis:)

Just, if you are wondering, what the heck SMO and SMM stands for, let me enlighten you….

(SMO) Social Media Optimization and (SMM) Social Media Marketing and are two Web 2.0 marketing tactics I have been studying and implementing over the last few months in my own businesses.

While, there are some different definitions on these two tactics, this is the easiest way I can think of to explain them…

SMO is all ON-SITE activities employed to make your site more social search friendly. Whereas, SMM are all OFF-SITE activities used to leverage your business reach and exposure through social media channels. Rather then jumping to theoretical mumbo jumbo, let me give you some practical examples of the activities that could be employed for both SMO and SMM:

Social Media Optimization:

• Social Bookmark Tools - I would recommend utilizing a social bookmark tool like Addthis.com so that you can make your pages easily bookmarked and saved in such sites as Delicious, Digg and Stumbleupon.
• RSS Feeds - Implementing RSS Feed capabilities in order to quickly syndicate your dynamic content (Articles, Newsletter etc…)
• Blogs - Building a Business Blog with fresh "keyword targeted" content.
• Wikis and Social Networks - Creating targeted Wikis and Social Networks for your user audience to interact and contribute to your site content.

Social Media Marketing:

Imp note: I can’t emphasize enough that incorporating a "Hard Sell" approach with your SMM strategies could potentially back fire and cause negative brand exposure for your business. SMM is  simply about engaging your targeted audience in a natural (non-salesy) way, dialoguing with your community at large and providing a relevant and appropriate contribution. Through those activities, you will find natural ways to talk about your business or service in a way that doesn’t bring a "hard sell" tactic.

• Interacting with targeted blogs and forums - One of the best way to see targeted traffic to your site is to regularly dialogue and provide comments on blogs and forums in your specific industry. It is important to build relationship, provide relevant insights and look for natural ways to talk about your own business. While this approach is not a "quick fix", it can definitely provide a nice targeted stream of traffic over the long term and ultimately improve your link popularity. Quite often, I will provide a comment for a blog I regularly read and just insert my URL under my name. Other times, I will actually reference my business if I feel it is appropriate and fits with the conversation. You might check out Google/Blog Search and Board Reader to help you identify the types of blogs and forums you would like to dialogue with.

• Wiki Contributor - You might consider perusing some relevant topics in Wikipedia (and other industry specific wikis) and contribute some content and look for ways to submit a link for your business.
• Blog Syndication - Recently, I have been using a great new tool, Web2submitter, to quickly syndicate my blog posts to top Social News sites (ie. Digg, Reddit), which has resulted in a nice new stream of traffic.
• Other Social Media - There are cool user generated sites like Squidoo, where you can build a "Lens" on a particular topic you are well versed in. This topic will likely relate to your business, providing yet another targeted stream of traffic.
• Podcast and Viral Video Syndication - This will require a bit more work, but to creating a relevant and interesting podcast and syndicating it through itunes or such networks as podfeed can be a great SMM tactic. Viral VIdeos certainly take some thought and discretion in order to make sure that your video gets passed around for the right reasons:) That is the slippery slope of SMM - the potential for bad publicity.

So, Just a few ideas on how you might use SMO or SMM in your own business endeavors… Until next time!!

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One of the things I love about the Internet Marketing Industry is the rapidly evolving lingo we use like wikis, swickis, vlogs, podcasts and our topic at hand, SMO (Social Media Optimization). I know if I try throw around these terms in my social circles, they might think I am really smart, or just kind of wierd!

As you know from my last few posts, I have been closely watching the new trends that are set to take off in 2007 and we have touched on social media topics in the past couple months such as The power of social bookmarking in your Internet Marketing endeavors.

Well, I would like to delve further in the social media movement and discuss the rapidly growing area of Social Media Optimization. In a nutshell, Social Media Optimization (SMO) has been defined as a “way to optimize websites so they can be more easily connected or interlaced with online communities and community web-sites. For example; allowing RSS Feeds, easier linking and incorporation of 3rd party functionalities like Flickr photo slides or You Tube Videos.

Rohit Bhargava, who operates one of the largest global PR agencies in the world, actually coined the term Social Media Optimization and is definitely an expert on this new movement in the Internet Marketing Space.  A couple posts from Rohit’s Blog really helped me understand the power of Social Media Optimization and the where it will be headed in 2007 and beyond. Take a read of these two informative posts:

5 Rules of Social Media Optimization

3 Reason SMO is Taking Off 

SMO is definitely one strategy that you should considering incorporating (if you have not already) into your Internet Marketing strategies for 2007.

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