SMO: Social Media Optimization

ByMaurilio Amorim

Most people in business has heard, worked on or paid for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on their websites. SEO attempts to setup a website in a such a way that when search engine bots and crawlers visit your site, they are able to find, index and eventually display your information well. Here’s how Wikipedia describes it:

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. Typically, the earlier a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

But a new science/art is emerging along with the growth of Social Media, I have heard it called SMO for Social Media Optimization. SMO is about an individual or organization’s strategy to drive traffic to a website, event or even to a retailer. It’s usually a well-coordinate effort and yet a bit unstructured so it feels more organic and spontaneous than a sleek marketing push.

When done well SMO comes across as serendipitous and not forced. However, the key is in the execution. Soles4Souls is a shoe charity and a client of my company. S4S gives a pair of shoes every 12 seconds all over the world. Recently, Zach Braff and Donald Faison, stars of the television comedy “Scrubs,” created a viral video for “50000 Shoes” (www.50000shoes.com), which gives 100% of its proceeds to Soles4Souls. Jessica Simpson sent out a tweet to her million+ followers minutes after the 50000 shoes website posted Zach and Donald’s video and almost instantly, thousands of people watched the video and, subsequently donated to the cause. Simultaneously a press release went out to major media outlets and S4S’s Myspace and Facebook fans got blasted with the news. The video player on the fund raising site is branded with the 50000shoes url and has a share feature that allows for it to “travel” through the internet and keep its branding everywhere it goes.

However strategic and professionally executive this campaign was, most of it came to many in a simple tweet or text message from a trusted friend or celebrity:
“This is so funny. Check out my friends Zack Braff and Donald’s funny video at 50000shoes.com”

For people who are contributor and friends of the charity it took another slant:
You must see the fundraising video the guys from Scrubs put together for us.

I have seen other plans executed using the same approach from Thomas Nelson as Mike Hyatt, the company’s CEO and his team pushed Andy Andrew’s book “The Noticer” up the best selling list and kept it there several weeks through a well executed SMO.

How are you using social media beyond personal connections?

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