It’s 2021, and social media isn’t going anywhere — so if you’re not taking advantage of it yet, there’s no reason to put it off any longer. With that said, it’s understandable that businesses are intimidated by this sphere that’s not exactly easy to understand. However, one approach that you should learn about is social media optimization. If this is a new concept to you, don’t worry — we are here to help.
Here are six must-know tactics and how to implement them within your business.
What Is Social Media Optimization?
Social media optimization, or SMO, involves creating, building, and maximizing your social media marketing plan to grow your business effectively. Optimizing your campaign can lead to a more cohesive and comprehensive strategy that incorporates various platforms to reach target demographics.
SMO goes way beyond simply creating business profiles on popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Instead, it involves a whole host of different tactics to cover all of the bases in this widespread marketing arena. As a result, you can clearly stand out from your competition, build brand awareness, and eventually convert sales.
Why You Need to Optimize Your Social Media Marketing
Gone are the days when you could get away with just having a website and leaving it at that. Instead, customers are expecting to interact with companies on social media. This environment helps foster a real relationship that goes both ways. When you’re able to better connect with your audience, you can better serve them.
Additionally, you need to be where your customers are, and odds are they’re on social media in 2021. SMO allows you to reach different people and get more visibility than ever before, thanks to targeting. When you reach the right people with the right content in the right places, you can increase your visibility and generate potential leads.
Finally, SMO helps to build your brand image and reputation. By posting content that aligns with your brand voice and personality, you can become more than a nameless, faceless organization. Instead, customers can learn what you’re all about and make positive associations based on engaging and effective content.
Six Must-Know Tactics for Social Media Optimization
SMO isn’t necessarily a straightforward process. Instead, there are several different tactics that you should follow to do it effectively. Here are six moves you should make if you want to optimize your social media strategy and grow your business:
Start With a Strategy
To be truly effective on social media, you need to start out with a strategy. While it’s tempting to simply post random things whenever you feel like it, that’s probably not the best approach. Instead, you need to determine which platforms you’re going to use and what your objectives are. Believe it or not, but there’s more to marketing than just sales or leads. Instead, you could choose to focus on brand awareness or engagement. In any case, these are things to nail down before you go any further.
Conduct Adequate Research in Every Sphere
Once you know what you want to accomplish on social media, you need to put in the work on the front end. This involves doing a lot of research in a variety of different areas. For example, you may want to research your competitors and check out their social media accounts to see what they’re doing and get inspiration. You should also research your potential keywords to see what you need to specifically focus on. Finally, you should research your target customers to see what they want and expect in a brand. Once you’re equipped with all this knowledge, you’re ready to move on to the next step.
Create Effective Content
After laying the groundwork, it’s time to create your social media content. You should post a combination of both original and curated content from other sources. Make sure that this content is eye-catching, widely appealing, and provides value. Always keep your target customers in mind in this stage and think about what they want to see. Compelling content is key to a successful SMO as it will help improve engagement, leads, and rapport.
Test Your Content Before Posting
Just because you think you have the perfect post doesn’t necessarily mean that others will agree. For that reason, it’s also important to test your content before posting. After all, you don’t want to be wasting time and money on something that’s not effective. Whether you actually perform A/B testing or simply pass it around to friends and colleagues, make sure that several people view and approve your content before posting.
Build Your Profile and Engagement
Once you have the right content, you can focus on building your profile and engagement. You wouldn’t have to pay for social media advertising in an ideal world because it would all be organic. However, this can only occur if you already have a lot of followers. This won’t happen overnight but is instead a long-term strategy accomplished through effective SMO. Perhaps one of the best things you can do to build your profile and increase engagement is to provide incentives, whether it’s through a referral program, a contest, a discount, or a free product.
Take Advantage of Data and Monitor Your Campaigns
Along the way, you need to use data and analytics to your advantage. After all, this is one of the most significant benefits of social media. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram provide you with tons of insights about your profile, followers, and campaigns that you can use to improve your SMO. It’s important to use this data to regularly adjust things as necessary before you waste too much time and money on an ineffective approach. And you don’t even have to be a data expert to understand the information on these user-friendly platforms — you just need to be diligent and proactive.
Get Help With Social Media Optimization
Although we’ve broken down SMO into six tactics, there’s so much more to effective SMO than can be covered in a single post. For that reason, it may be necessary for you to get professional expertise in this area to create and execute an effective strategy.
If you want the best, look no further than Greg Gillman. Greg Gillman focuses on helping direct-to-consumer brands develop omnichannel growth strategies to achieve their business goals. We have worked with big-name brands such as Adidas, Petco, Ring, Goop, Lunya, and Theragun to generate nearly $4 billion in annual revenue.
We also understand what it’s like to be a small business. We are here to listen to and strategize with our clients to help them achieve their goals — big and small.
Final Thoughts on Social Media Optimization
By following these six tactics, you’re well on your way to an effective social media optimization strategy. While we tried to make everything as simple as possible, there are intricacies and complications to consider. If it ever becomes too much to handle on your own, be sure to reach out to Greg Gillman for tailored assistance and expertise in the realm of social media optimization.
Sources:
https://www.business.com/articles/social-media-patterns-during-the-pandemic/
https://smallbusiness.chron.com/goals-objectives-advertising-25273.html
