Komosion | Online Solutions Agency | Social Media Optimisation
| Social Media Optimisation (SMO) is essentially a strategy set-up to facilitate the population of site content by your target audience. The end result is that your site will perform better in search. |
| The objective naturally is to maximise traffic and target audience ‘engagement’ with not only your ‘brand’ site, but the ‘brand’ in its entirety... |
Content, Content... It's All About 'Engaging' Content... |
| When it is functioning well you can see the results in increased target audience engagement with your brand, a spike in the number of unique visitors to new content, and increased traffic to your site. The key objective for any social media optimisation strategy is to facilitate target audience 'engagement' with the site. Having them interact... often describing and commenting on your 'brand’ using keywords that you would normally either have your content managers populate on site pages, or that you would pay Google for. The more that your audience organically use 'keywords' that are relevant to your brand or business, the more likely it is that unique visitors will find your site. Additionally, it will mean that you will keep the audience you already have within your site for increasingly longer periods of time. The overall aim is to be better than your competitors in attracting engaging and keeping your customers, not only on your site, but with the 'brand' as well. |
On-Page Optimisation |
| Komosion developed the Vibe-rate Discussion Forum and Vibe City Guides for Vibe Hotels. The Vibe-rate Forum is a good example of how established brand 'keywords' and concepts (populated organically via online discussion) will optimise your site for SEO benefit. SEO 'keyword' strategies are increasingly about 'connecting' your brand with your audience so their interaction mimics natural conversation. In essence, their discussion delivers valid search benefit to the brand. |
| Tag clouds are another way to optimise any social media within the site for search benefit. The Vibe-rate Forum has been carefully crafted so that subject/topic titles and discussion threads follow a logical hierarchy. Categories highlight travel 'product', but also destinations, things to do, and travel tips - categories and topics used are then populated within the tag cloud. Images and video can also be easily embedded into discussion threads. Komosion set-up this facility to facilitate discussion around travel videos, competitions, and additionally to foster the sharing of discount vouchers etc. amongst community members. |
Don't Forget ‘Connection’ to External Links |
| Of course, social media integration within your site is part of a natural organic link-building strategy. However, high-quality third party external links are still important. On the Vibe Hotels site, some 'key' third party links include Tourism NSW and Sony Music. |
Don’t Re-Invent the Wheel |
The objective is to integrate already pre-existing and highly utilised social media platforms with the ‘brand’ to facilitate two-way communication. Komosion encourage the use of ‘plug & play’ type features such as Vibe Musicbox, or features built using API software such as Google Maps.Other Tools |
| Social media integration doesn't just start and end with Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, and Google Wave. Other site features that can be added include RSS feeds, bookmarking tools, user rating and polling tools, and incorporation of You Tube or real-time video streaming. Vibe Hotels use all of the above mentioned additional tools on the www.vibehotels.com.au site. |
Review... Then Review |
| Of course, implementing a social media strategy and excuting it via a Forum, Music Box or Facebook doesn’t end there. It is important to review the Google Analytics ranking of any social media pages to measure how it is performing in search. To build a picture as to how social media is contributing to the site, and to the ‘brand’ means reviewing the previous context (i.e. reviewing how the site as ranking before the new initiatives were put in place). Additionally, making ‘tweaks’ and ‘just noticeable differences’ to see the benefit of small changes (e.g. new topics areas within the Forum or interaction on new albums within Music Box or My Space. |
| In the longer term, value may be gained by doing split or multi-variate testing on content, structure of the plug-ins (e.g. topics, threads, subjects), and the use of landing or intro pages. Additionally, it is worth considering running a parallel Google Adwords campaign in tandem with any social media strategy. In doing this you would naturally use Adwords that reflect the ‘core nature’ of the brand and/or the sector, ensuring naturally that these are in-line with the overall brand marketing objectives. |
