When you understand what
social media are, it’s not a far step from there to social-media optimization. It’s
about using social media to spread the news about your web site. And instead of
tweaking the elements of your web site, when you’re practicing social-media
optimization you’re participating in social networks and tweaking the content
that you share within those networks.
It’s through that
participation and optimization that your site is distributed, and that’s what
brings traffic to your web site. There are also a couple of added benefits to
social-media optimization. First, it’s free in terms of monetary investment.
There is no cost to participate in these networks except your time. But make no
mistake about it; you will have to invest a chunk of front-end time into this
type of optimization. You must become familiar with the communities and
participate to establish a name for yourself before anyone will take serious
notice of you.
The other benefit of
social-media optimization is that it’s really a viral marketing strategy. Nearly
everyone is familiar with a virus. It’s that nasty little bug that multiplies
exponentially and makes you believe death would be an improvement. Viral
marketing is neat, not nasty, but it works in a somewhat similar way.
When you can tap viral
marketing for your online presence, word of your brand spreads like a virus —
it moves faster and faster as the buzz increases, and there doesn’t seem to be
any way to stop it. And that’s good. If your marketing message has become
viral, you can expect to see some serious growth in the number of visitors to
your site and by extension to the number of goal conversions that you see.
Viral marketing is a good
thing. And when you’ve optimized your social-media participating, you can
almost guarantee that your marketing will soon have that viral quality that
you’re looking for.
