What is SMO: The use of the social media outlets and social networking communities for creating awareness of certain products or services provided by a business or a brand is called Social Media Optimization or SMO. These activities for promotion includes strategies and use of tools like social bookmarking sites, social news sites, RSS feeds, the social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest as well as video marketing and blogging. In short it is the collective term for all these activities together, that are done for improving the visibility of the business website online as well as improving the overall revenue of the business. The result of this strategy is definitely an increase in the traffic to the website and also the awareness of the business is spread. This technique helps in spreading the word about the brand’s quality and helps to share it across different social media platforms. It isn’t still a much known concept to many like the SEO professionals and questions are asked whether it is a part of it. Well, along with Social Media Marketing and Search Engine Optimization, SMO is a part of internet marketing. It can be used with Search Engine Marketing or SEM as well, though it isn’t exactly SEM. Businesses have understood that it is wise to have the social networking sites to be the platform for their product promotion and marketing. What they face is the lack of understanding of how to implement it correctly.

Why it works: The success behind this theory is the age old word of mouth thing which is more successful than most of the marketing strategies. People place their trust more on what their friends recommend to them than any other advertisement. Some of the bigger brands have underestimated this and have suffered the loss of a lot of potential customers for their business. On the other hand mane small and startup businesses have truly understood this, and through its effect went on to became one of the well-known businesses online. However, it is important that you seek expert advice for your online presence with SMO. Hire SMO professionals for your business website and get the things done rightly or else it may even lead to the search engines and others considering your site to be spammy. Just adding friends and sending out messages won’t help you in achieving your goals. You may see that your conversion rates are still not good.

Useful for any business: The word of mouth strategy used here does a lot for businesses. It helps in bringing organic traffic to the business and generates a lot of leads. You make people aware of your online existence, the mission and vision of your business, without seeming to be selling your products or just marketing them. People will be informed of your new ventures in your business, they will know of press releases, new products or certain services. It surely is an effective strategy for any business.