Social media marketing can often seem like the wild west. Anything goes, and marketers have to try everything to see what sticks.
However, this isn’t the most efficient way of going about social media marketing. There are ways to make your campaigns more efficient while focusing your energy into what works instead of what doesn’t.
Let’s talk about the key elements of social media optimization and how you can optimize your social media campaigns.
What is Social Media Optimization (SMO)?
Simply put, social media optimization is all about finding what works best for your brand and focusing in on that success. There’s no point in spending time and money on social media campaigns that don’t benefit your business.
However, it can be challenging to figure out what will work and what won’t. Building a popular brand on social media networks is extremely important, so it’s critical that businesses focus on the most efficient path to success.
Some common social media optimization strategies are:
- Efficient post scheduling – when should you post content so that it reaches its maximum potential audience and achieves the highest level of engagement?
- Intelligent hashtag usage – which hashtags should you use in your posts that will garner you the best results?
- Intelligent profile creation – figuring out the best way to present your brand’s social media profile descriptions and links to users is important for any brand’s success.
- Focus on community – How can you engage with your brand’s audience over time and make them feel part of the action?
How is Social Media Optimization Related to Search Engine Optimization?
If social media optimization (SMO) seems similar to search engine optimization (SEO) to you, then you’re not wrong!
They are related in some ways, but they have distinct characteristics. One important aspect of SMO is that it can improve SEO performance when done correctly.
They both have similar goals as well, as both aim to raise content awareness with a company’s audience and drive more traffic to websites and services that businesses operate.
As social media becomes more important in people’s everyday lives, so too does social media optimization for brands.
SMO For Every Platform
SMO can be applied to any platform, including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and more.
Each platform has its own nuance to it, so marketing on these sites will never be exactly the same.
Designing social media content for any platform should take all aspects into account.
The Main Idea of SMO
The most important element of SMO that will be a theme throughout the rest of this guide is that properly executing SMO involves formulating a strategy, putting that strategy into action, and then monitoring its progress.
This makes it similar to SEO marketing, but with a deeper focus on the nuance of the particular social media platforms you’re working with.
Why is Social Media Optimization Important?
Social media optimization can help your business be discovered more easily. Since social media is extremely pervasive in our society, more and more businesses are using it to promote their brand.
Leveraging the power of social media is critical for remaining competitive in the modern market. This is important even for local businesses.
Successfully implementing SMO can lead to better audience engagement and increased brand awareness. It can also help your brand reach a wider audience through different social media platforms.
SMO can also help marketers assess their ROI and other KPIs more concretely. These strategies can also help your business perform better on search engines, as social pages will rank for certain keywords.
Being connected with your audience on social media also helps marketers measure the response and thoughts of their audience.
With that in mind, let’s talk about specific ways that we can utilize social media optimization to benefit our brands and businesses.
#1 | Identify Your Social Media Goals
One of the most important aspects of social media optimization is to simply take a second to understand what you’re trying to achieve.
Focusing on what you want to accomplish will help narrow your strategy down and help you find purpose in your campaigns. Different campaigns will emerge from different goals. A strategy related to boosting sales will differ from a strategy that focuses on boosting a company’s followers on Instagram.
The length of these goals is also important to consider. It can be helpful to break down your goals into pieces and ask questions that can help you zero in on those goals.
Who is your target audience? What benefits do you offer through your social media presence? What are your competitors doing and who is following them? What kinds of quality content can you provide that differentiate you from that competition?
These are questions that can help you narrow down your goals and help you make better decisions when optimizing your social media campaigns.
#2 | Take Advantage of Your Profile
Consider that your profile is something nearly everyone in your audience may see. If they are curious enough to click on your profile after seeing a post they find interesting, what they see next is critical to retaining their viewership.
It’s important to fill out your profile as much as possible. Pay close attention to your profile picture, bio, links, location, and store hours. These will depend on the platform you’re using.
Your profile is a golden opportunity to communicate with your audience about what your business does and what matters to you. Be sure to include important keywords as these can help improve your search ranking not just on social platforms but also on search engines.
Be sure to make your company’s profiles across all social networks as consistent as possible. This will help with brand recognition. Profiles on social media are essential for social media optimization.
#3 | Do Your Research
Social media optimization strategies require research to be successful, just like SEO.
Taking a deeper look into competitor strategies and analyzing keywords can help you make your campaigns more successful.
Finding what keywords you’d like to implement into your campaigns can help formulate more effective hashtags and captions.
#4 | Use Hashtags
Knowing how to use hashtags is incredibly important for the optimization of any social media campaign. After you’ve done keyword research, top keywords can transform into hashtags that can help you accomplish your campaign’s goals.
Each social media platform is different in terms of how its hashtags function. For example, using single hashtags can be more effective than multiple ones.
Instagram is the opposite, performing well with as many as 30 hashtags per post! However, we recommend sticking to approximately 11 hashtags per post if possible.
Remember the purpose of hashtags: helping people find your content. For your business, this means that you can extend your reach to a wider audience.
Be sure that the hashtags you use are relevant to your brand. The more users that you reach, the more engagement that you will receive.
On Instagram, engagement has been declining in recent years, making it more important than ever to adopt effective outreach and engagement strategies for your brand.
#5 | Optimize Your Content
It’s critical to ensure that the content you’re creating is relevant for consumers. You should avoid redundant, pushy, or other language that comes off as trying to sell something too overtly.
Some different types of engaging content include infographics, news, and giveaways. Images are also a great way to increase engagement. Just like with other social media optimization strategies, take a step back every once in a while and consider if your content is closely aligned with your goals.
Each platform also has specific ins and outs that are very important for social media marketers to take into account.
For example, verifying your website on Pinterest is very important for helping you rank in Pinterest search results.
Paying attention to the way that your URL slug will appear on a post is important as well, as this can affect your post’s SEO performance.
Creating high-quality social media posts can be very effective for building your brand and building more brand awareness. The more that you build out your brand on social media, the more recognizable your business will be across platforms.
It will also become more difficult to replicate your marketing which differentiates your content from the competition.
#6 | Craft Effective and Attention-Grabbing Captions & Headlines
Your overall goal must be to capture the attention of your audience and maintain it. A common misconception is that captions and headlines should always be positive.
It’s easy to imagine that a negative headline might drive away a user. However, negatively framed headlines can actually be extremely effective in hooking a reader into your content.
For example, a headline titled “3 Things You Should Never Do…” can hook your audience quickly and consistently and is an effective way to optimize your social media content.
| Positive Headline | Negative Headline |
|---|---|
| 3 Things You Should Do | 3 Things You Should Never Do |
| How X Can Help You Get Work Done | Don’t Buy X Until You Read This |
| This New Video Broke the Internet | 10 Foods You Should Think Twice About Eating |
Be sure to include keywords in your captions. Make sure that they reflect your brand and your goals.
Numbers can also be effective for drawing in engagement with your content. Captions should also feature some kind of call to action.
Integrating emotion into your captions can also be effective at converting and enticing users. Emojis can also be helpful, having the potential to boost engagement dramatically.
#7 | Create a Posting Schedule
Consistency and activity on social media is critical for a brand’s success with any audience. You should take some time to find the right schedule for posting in order to maximize brand engagement.
Do research to find when your audience is online most often. This will vary based on the time of year, who you’re trying to reach, as well as your audience’s demographic.
Different platforms are effective for different levels of frequency as well and mastering these can be helpful for optimizing your social media strategy.
| Platform | Frequency |
|---|---|
| 3-10 posts per week | |
| 5+ posts per day | |
| 2-5 posts per week | |
| 5-10 posts per day |
It’s also important to think about when the best time to post is during the course of the day.
This will vary based on what platform you’re using, but keeping in mind when your audience is most active during the day will help you better optimize your social media campaigns and achieve the most engagement.
#8 | Engage with Your Followers
Being active and responding to your audience is extremely important for social media optimization.
Be sure to respond quickly and kindly to your followers. Remember that every follower is a potential customer that can add more value to your company.
#9 | Keep Track of the Results, and Change What Isn’t Working
Monitoring your progress is one of the most critical components of social media optimization.
If you don’t know how you’re doing, it’s impossible to improve and narrow down how to achieve your goals over time.
Every social media marketer should track results and metrics depending on the platform they’re using. Some metrics to watch are:
- Likes
- Shares
- Follows
- Retweets
- Post views
- Link clicks
Be sure to pay close attention to what’s working well and what isn’t.
Optimizing your social media campaigns is all about adjustment. Achieve your goals by keeping what works and tossing out what doesn’t.
#10 | Using the Best Tools for Social Media Optimization
Using professional tools to optimize your social media campaigns can greatly increase your results and help you accomplish your goals faster with higher ROI. Tailwind is an effective solution that provides features such as SmartSchedule, Hashtag Finder, Smart.bio, and more for Instagram marketers.
Pinterest marketers can take advantage of scheduling, creativity tools, and community features as well with Tailwind.
One of the best parts about Tailwind’s social media optimization suite is that the creation tools don’t require any design skills, making them very easy to use for marketers of all skill levels.
Social Media Optimization Strengthens Brands
In a very competitive digital landscape, social media optimization is incredibly important for strengthening brands online. Utilizing effective tools, doing the right research, and planning out your content can make or break your business’s success on social media platforms.
Industry experts like Tailwind provide effective tools that can elevate your brand and help you achieve your goals more efficiently.
When you’re ready to optimize your company’s social media presence, try out Tailwind’s social media tools today for free to see how professional content can help you achieve the results you need!
