Is SMO as easy as you think it is?



What comes to our mind when we think of Social Media Marketing is, posting stuff online and hoping that people would like it and buy our product. But there’s a lot more to it! In this blog post, you’ll get to know about the basics of SMO and how to build your brand in a better and strategic manner.



Marketing in simple terms is bringing your product in the market and making people aware of it. It has been done in various ways in the past like, painting on walls, making posters and posting them everywhere, advertising on TV, playing a tape on the speaker in a rickshaw and of course going door to door and telling trying to convince people to buy the product. The journey from conventional ways of marketing to digital marketing has been a remarkable one!

Digital Marketing, however, is not that simple. It gives you a world full of ideas and space to express them to create the name of your brand. This can be achieved by using a number of digital marketing tools like SEO, SMO, SMM, PPC, Email marketing as well as by using the right keywords.

Let’s get to know these tools!

SEO : Search Engine Optimization

With the help you SEO you optimize your website according to the algorithms of a search engine. For better results and reach, you need to build your brand, your website in such a way that appears on the first page of Google. Getting your website ranked on the first page of Google is not an easy task and you need to follow a certain number of rules that fall under the SEO category of digital marketing. Most people don’t go beyond even the second page of Google search and that makes it necessary for brands to appear in the first two pages and that can be achieved by using right SEO tricks.

SMO : Social Media Optimization

You build your brand’s presence on various social networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+, Tumblr, Pinterest, Etsy etc. These platforms can differ according to your target audience. When you make your brand known on these sites, it automatically appears on the first search page of google when people come looking for your brand or even something similar.

SMM : Social Media Marketing

It is a different name for paid advertising. When you pay for ads to be on your social media. Facebook ads are the best example of SMM in action. It increases your brand exposure.

PPC : Pay Per Click

SEO generates organic traffic on your website whereas PPC is paid. You have to pay for every click on your website. The main difference between SEO and PPC is that the former is free and the latter is paid.

E-Mail Marketing

When you sign up for newsletters on a website, you are basically signing up for email marketing. Brands engage with people over emails to let then know about the new things that are happening or the new products they are launching. Emails that are written for this type must be engaging most of all, the person needs to feel that the brand knows what they want and is ready to deliver the same. That’s the reason why it is one very effective form of digital marketing.

Everyone has access to social media nowadays and that has made people aware of numerous beneficial things. Entrepreneurship has seen the biggest rise in the past decade and some of the credit for the same goes to digital marketing. Making your brand popular on social media is not as easy as people make it out to be. One needs to be strategic and present at all times to notice changes and keep up with them. There are several steps to making your online presence strong, and it takes a person who is well versed with the ways of Social Media Marketing.

The first step is knowing your brand. Sounds silly right? Of course, I know my brand, it’s my brand after all! People tend to make one mistake at the beginning itself and that is, not knowing about their target audience. You first need to identify certain things about people who will benefit from your brand. Things like their age group, location, preferences, etc. Once you know your audience then only you can choose the right platform to advertise your brand! You need to keep up with your audience. For example, people used to prefer Facebook a few years ago but now Instagram is trending as well. So brands created their online presence on Instagram when the audience started using Instagram more than Facebook.

You need to know what your goals are. How you want to present your content online and what you want from the audience in return. SMO is not just about posting pictures and simply telling people about your brand in captions and blog posts. People think SMO is limited to these things only. Your focus should be on brand building as well as generating leads from different platforms. It’s all about timing, you need to know when your audience sleeps and when they pay more attention to what appears in front of them. People online have a short attention span so that means you need to create catchy content which will appeal to their eyes, heart as well as their mind!

The third and salient thing is, making platform-centric content. What you post on Instagram can’t work on Twitter and Facebook. The content must change according to the platform, what I mean by that is, the destination remains the same but the path to reach their changes according to the platform. For example, video content works well on YouTube and Facebook. Images work well on Instagram. Business-oriented content works well on LinkedIn and so on!

The content must be posted strategically. There needs to be a fixed time to post stuff online on every platform. The number and types of posts must be planned ahead of time so that you do not miss the target goal that you set for a certain amount of time. Meanwhile, don’t forget SMM. You can schedule one or two paid posts per week for better reach. One key thing to keep in mind while doing this is that the quality of content matters a lot! The content must speak to your customers! One well planned and curated post is better than four random and simple posts.

With the help of SMO, you can get instant results if your focus on the right numbers! As Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher said, “The only constant in life is change.” You need to change your strategies and quality of content every few weeks if the old one is not working. Another reason to stay up to date with your online audience!

Social media presence is crucial for your brand because people nowadays look up and research about things on social networking sites and they form an opinion based on the image of the brand on a particular site. Which is why you should know your audience and must work on building a community around your brands.

And you ask about the result of all this hard work?

• Great brand value.
• Trust of your audience.
• Better sales.
• Happy customers and happier employees!

A win-win for all!