Social Media Optimization (SMO) is a marketing technique where brands use the social media to create awareness and value among the users. Social media is slowly replacing television, newspapers and radio sets as the primary source for news consumption. It also acts as a referral point for people looking for products and services. These make it compulsory for brands to be active on social media.

Gone are the days when we whipped our phones out to call the customer care to register a complaint and wait for weeks and months to get it addressed. Now, in this age of social media, all it takes is a tweet tagging the correct handle to pull the brand to redress the complaint. That is the power of social media.

There are multiple reasons why brands are now marking their presence on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter :

• Most people browse social media multiple times in a day. The retention is higher in people’s memory and it generates more engagement.
• When brands interact with people online, there is a personal feel coming into play. Customers like to be wooed and treated in a special manner. Social media helps brands do just that.
• Social media gives the trends in an instant. This helps the brands stay at the top of their game and also stay relevant to the changing market scenario.
• Higher visibility. Social media guarantees increased visibility. This generates a certain amount of goodwill and brand value which can be capitalized later.

A good Social Media Optimization Services involves addressing customer issues and also engaging the customers through likes, comments, retweets, tags and sharing. Social Media Optimization services also involves a little of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) whereby a search string will throw the social media page of the relevant brand as the top search result.

Companies these days hire dedicated teams for SMO. These teams are in-charge of the content creation, scheduling, publishing, managing and analyzing the results of the content. They conduct Social media campaigns, contests thereby involving the user in their growth.

Specialized teams will not be hired if the companies do not see advantages in SMO.

Some common advantages that SMO provides are :

• Helps know the image of the brand among the general public. Social media monitoring helps the brand understand how people perceive them and plan their strategy accordingly.
• Helps address specific issues of the consumers. Since social media is highly personalized and individualistic, it shows the individual preferences of a large number of people. Proper use of this information can help in satisfying the customers and thereby garnering brownie points and customer loyalty.
• Watch over the competition. Market space is crowded and there is no better way to leverage the space than to use social media to see what the immediate competitor is doing.
• Design planned campaigns to attract symbiotic customers. Twitter campaigns between Zomato and Ola are great examples for collaborative campaigns on social media.
• Engage users in contests and give-away. A new form of the freebie culture, this provides traction when the social media posts are shared using a designated hashtags thereby increasing the impressions and mentions.

A good Social Media Optimization Services company offer:

• Constantly engage your users. Participate in their comments and reply with quirky, witty and snarky one-liners.
• Enable sharing and tagging easy such that viewers can do it in a single click.
• Be more informal in your tone. Create an impression that as a brand, you are approachable and affable.
• Experiment and create fresh content.
• Plan and adopt a specific SMO strategy.

SMO also has its own share of disadvantages :

• It is as easy to gather negative publicity online, especially when you are a big brand with a huge following. Online Reputation Management (ORM) comes in handy to monitor and tackle such damage.
• Out of sight and out of mind. There is a constant need to up the game and play to the gallery. In this fast paced world, every second counts.
• Fake campaigns and fake profiles are traps that could derail a good brand. Beware.