When you were a little child, you probably never heard an adult talk about your need to develop socialization skills. However, they were teaching us how to do it anyway. Let’s face it; we need to stay connected with each other. The same is true for your business. This is why social media optimization is very important to your business success.
Learning how to socialize is an important skill because rarely does anyone thrive on being isolated. In fact, in Dr. Brian Tracy’s audio program the Psychology of Achievement, he talks about an experiment done with babies. In this experiment, a certain group of healthy babies received care just by being fed and having diapers changed. That comprised virtually all of their social interaction.
Another group received the same care but in addition, they were given affection. They were held, smiled at and lovingly touched a lot. Sadly, scientists stopped the experiment too late. The group of babies given no affection actually died. The condition where babies go without affection (social interaction) and simply waste away because of it is called “marasmus.”
You can apply your business activities to that social interaction experiment of long ago. It is necessary to engage in something called social media optimization (SMO.) In SMO, you develop an important relationship with your target by social sharing content meaningful to them. Without being social, your business dies.
When we talk about SMO for business, we refer to creating online content most likely to be shared through social networks. This content is not all about sales. Instead, SMO is about creating content that connects you with people. Being more art than science, it can be challenging to map out a repeatable, measurable consistent formula for shareable content. However, social media optimization is becoming more important for online businesses as it is increasingly integrated into search results.
What Comprises Social Media Optimization?
Basically, the formula for SMO involves two basic parts; contextually relevant content people want to share and online tools that make social sharing easy. What’s an important key to knowing what content is most shareable? Being very aware and using the demographics and statistics of your ideal prospect/customer.
What’s Important To Your Target Audience?
Find out what’s important to your ideal fan. Share that type of content in places where they visit online. Do this, and your fans commit to viewing and sharing it with others they believe also relate to the content.
As with any online piece, the subject line/headline and the first paragraph need to ignite interest in your ideal target’s mind so they feel compelled to share. The battle for positioning in the mind is a constant when it comes to marketing and being social.
Why would an online visitor share a piece of content? Because of the value he/she sees in the message. Find just the right balance of interesting subject lines (for emails) and/or headlines (for blog posts or articles) and interesting article information and you’ve got a winning formula for your shareable content formula.
Here’s another formula to help you when you use social media optimization in your content. It’s just three steps.
- Find out your target market community’s events/causes/movements. These are activities very important to your target.
- Get involved in your target market’s community events/causes/movements. The content you share must be relevant to that specific event/cause/movement.
A.) For example, if your target audience is a movement to decrease divorce, the content to socially share must be contextually relevant to parents/families who also believe in families supporting each other.
B) If your target audience interests those involved in promoting sports to keep kids off drugs, the content you share must be something that appeals to families with kids in sports.
C) If your target market involves those interested in making healthy nutritious snacks, it must be something like a healthy recipe or new news about the latest nutritional breakthrough for fighting some aspect of bad health. - Publicize your community involvement by socially sharing content about your involvement.
SMO is an important activity in which to be involved for many reasons. You’ve just read some of them. Now go out and socially share something your fans would LOVE to hear!