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Social media is a great way to build your brand image and reach new potential customers by creating a community. Being active on social media helps you engage followers and enhance your credibility with thoughtful dialogue. Your followers may also find comfort in connecting with one another through your page. But with so many channels available, do you choose the best one for your audience or try to appeal to everyone on every platform? By implementing a social media optimization (SMO) strategy, you can spend your time focusing on the best platforms for your customers and creating content that appeals to them.
What Is the Purpose of an Optimization Strategy for Social?
With more than 5 billion active users, social media is one of the best ways to make people aware of your brand. However, the social media landscape is always changing as algorithms shift. You're also facing competition for attention from other brands and influencers in your industry.
A social media optimization strategy helps you create a consistent brand image across social media platforms to improve your online presence. SMO works in tandem with search engine optimization (SEO) because social media plays a vital role in establishing your relevance to searches. With an SMO strategy, you can increase your social mentions, backlinks, and other attributes that boost your online visibility.
8 Steps To Implement an Optimization Strategy for Social Media
Follow these steps and start posting meaningful social media content that helps you meet your business goals.
1. Audit Social Media Profiles
Profile audits are one of your most important social media optimization tools. To enhance your brand, your social media presence should be consistent across profiles. When you have multiple profiles, they should all convey the same message and use the same brand tone and voice. Look for inconsistencies and clean up your profiles so anyone who finds you online recognizes your brand.
An audit lets you evaluate all your social media profiles at once so you can see which ones are up to date and which may need more of your attention. Regular audits can also help you cut certain profiles that may be less effective at driving traffic your way. Social media optimization is all about using your socials wisely to attract potential customers. If your ideal customer isn’t hanging out on Snapchat, don’t spend time posting there.
2. Create a List of Target Keywords
One of the simplest social media optimization tips is to make a list of target keywords you can use to find new followers online. Some emerging social media platforms, such as Threads, are limiting how brands can use hashtags. Including target keywords in your posts and your captions helps algorithms find your brand more easily, allowing you to pop up in relevant feeds.
SEO and SMO share similar strategies in that keywords are the primary clues search engines and algorithms use to find you online. If you’ve already done SEO, you probably have a good list of target keywords. Start there and refine your list based on phrases people would use to find you on social media. If you haven’t done SEO, use keyword research tools to look through your website analytics and see what’s driving people to your website. Use this as a starting point to develop your list.
3. Optimize Your Social Profiles for Search Engines
Like your website, you want your social media profiles to be discoverable online. When your potential customers can find your socials through a web search, they can easily follow you and join in on engagement with your other followers.
You can improve your discoverability by:
- Using consistent profile names
- Making sure your profiles are complete
- Doing keyword research
- Using keywords in each profile bio
- Optimizing your profile image and banner images
- Posting consistently
- Using geo-tagging
- Using hashtags intentionally
4. Improve Your Content To Reach Your Target Audience
Social media marketers are experts in engaging with followers and creating a community. One way to do this is by posting content that's relevant to your audience.
Figure out what matters to your audience and post content that offers solutions. Mix it up with branded content that interests them. For example, if you own a heating and air conditioning repair company, you might post links to a series of articles with steps for improving energy efficiency during peak hot and cold seasons. These articles offer a solution to your followers who want a comfortable house without a huge energy bill.
In the middle of your series, you might also include behind-the-scenes footage of your shop or post interviews with some of your technicians. Consider using a social media content creator to help diversify your posts.
5. Use Post Scheduling Tools
Consistency is key to social media success, but it’s tough to post on multiple platforms every week. Post scheduling software allows you to develop a series of posts and release them on a preset schedule.
With these social media tools, you can draft multiple posts at once and schedule them to trickle out at different times. Take advantage of slower times in your business to draft your posts and use the scheduler to post them at times when your audience will most likely see them.
6. Improve Engagement With Your Followers
Social media engagement isn’t just fun for your followers, it also boosts your social proof. Engagement refers to how much people interact with your brand online and includes comments, likes, follows, and mentions.
The first step in improving your engagement is to see where you are currently. Use your social media analytics tools to see which posts are getting the best levels of engagement. If you use a single platform to manage multiple social accounts, you should be able to see a side-by-side comparison of each profile.
With this data, you can see where your target audience is most active and what interests them. Instead of posting a ton of content on multiple accounts, you can focus on thoughtful, high-quality content that meets your audience where they're at and improves your engagement rate.
7. Use AI To Streamline Processes
Plenty of social media optimization tools involve using AI and machine learning to analyze a large volume of data and give you insights that can improve your content. Run a sentiment analysis to see how people are talking about you on the internet. You may be surprised. If online sentiment doesn’t match your brand strategy, you can use social media to fine-tune your brand image.
Many social media management platforms can also use AI to evaluate how your audience interacts with your existing social media content and automate posts. AI can examine their behavior to determine what kinds of content interests them most.
With these tools, you can develop a content calendar with a detailed list of meaningful topics and create a curated social media presence that appeals to your target audience. You can also use AI content creation tools to generate captions and gather relevant content from other brands you can share on your feed.
8. Track Metrics and Adjust Your Strategy
Social media optimization isn't an exact science. You probably won’t get it right the first time, but that is where analytics come into play. As you play with your social media strategy to communicate with your audience consistently and thoughtfully, you'll start to notice trends that can help you continue to improve.
Track how many new followers you’re getting on each platform to see which social accounts you might be able to purge. Social optimization involves using your social media intentionally to appeal to your potential customers and encourage them to engage with your brand. It's likely that not every platform is necessary for your business.
When you start tracking metrics, you can cut the platforms that aren’t serving you. You can also adjust your social media strategy and focus on the social media optimization techniques that are improving follower counts and engagement rates.
Optimize Social Media To Reduce Work While Improving Results
When you're developing a digital marketing strategy, it helps to focus your efforts on your most successful channels. If you’re running sponsored ads on social media platforms that don’t interest your potential customer, you’re essentially throwing away your time and money.
Social media optimization techniques allow you to take a more streamlined approach to managing your social presence. With audience research and analytics, you can find the platforms that will connect you with your target audience. With keyword research, you can build complete profiles that are discoverable through internet searches. Finally, with a social media audit, you can make sure your branding and messaging are consistent across the internet.
By using these tools together, you can get the most out of your social media profiles and free up some of your time to focus on other marketing efforts or simply running your business.
