Looking to maximize your business’ online presence?  Of course, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is incredibly important, but you should also be taking Social Media Optimization (SMO) seriously as the digital marketing and digital public relations stratospheres flourish.

One of the first actions we take when onboarding a new client is to carefully review their social media platforms. We take a look at which social platforms are being used and why, how those platforms are performing against their intended goal, and what content opportunities are being missed or underutilized. As consultants, we are part of many different social engagement strategies so we always bring a lot of ideas to these assessments.

Enhancing your business’ online presence is more than just simply creating an account and posting content to your social media channels, it requires thorough strategy. Social Media Optimization is essential when trying to strengthen your brand, gain more visibility online, generating leads, as well as connecting with your audience.

The first thing to consider when improving upon your company’s SMO is properly building your profile pages as they are the foundation of your brand.

• • Your profile photo should be a clear image of your company logo.
  • Your username should be short, concise, and consistent with your other social media accounts; therefore, when searched online all of your social accounts will appear.
  • Your bio should be a brief description of what your company does. Your bio (for Twitter and Instagram) should include keywords and on-brand hashtags.

The content will be the deciding factor as to whether your brand succeeds or not — “Content is King,” as they say in the digital marketing world. Make sure that your content is original and comprehensible. What will set your brand apart from its competitors?

• • Use images – A recent study found that images were the most important tactic for optimizing content for social media. Make sure that the images that you use in social posts are high quality and properly formatted for each platform.
  • Implement hashtags – hashtags are effective on nearly every social media platform as a means of reaching your target audiences organically. In addition, try creating original hashtags that are tailored towards your brand, so that newly interested social media users can find more of your content specifically.
  • Consider caption length – Twitter allows for 280 characters, but even then, most scrollers will not stop to read the entire tweet. Ideally, your “copy” or the caption accompanying your posts on every platform should be short and quickly readable.
  • Research the best times to post – Through our research and testing, we have discovered that generally, the best times to post on social are Monday-Friday 7 AM – 9 AM, 12 PM to 2 PM, as well as 5 PM to 7 PM. However, every target audience is different, so experiment with posting times and find the best posting times for your business.
  • Some “rules” can be broken – As mentioned in the previous point, what works for your business may not fit into these broadly applicable rules. Be sure to perform detailed audience research to find when your target audience is active, what types of content they like, and replicate that research across every platform that they’re on.

Make sure you regularly check and update your social strategy in order to optimize your profiles. The essentials of a good content marketing strategy always begin with SMO. Have any questions about your SMO strategy? Contact us! And, don’t forget to read our other blog posts on all things Digital Public Relations.