Previously we talked about the difference between Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing. Both of these strategies leverage search engines to maximize your webpage’s visibility in search engine results pages. Today we are looking at social media, and how you can increase traffic to your website by harnessing the power that social media provides through SMM and SMO. As you continue to expand your knowledge of digital marketing strategies, you should turn your attention to social media. It is one of the most powerful communication tools we as humans have at our disposal. Experts estimate that there are around 4 billion people worldwide who use social media via one platform or another.

Looking at North America, roughly 82% of people over the age of 13 have at least one social media account. Recent reports show that Facebook and YouTube are the most popular platforms with a little over two million users each. YouTube is one of only two (along with Reddit) platforms to show statistically significant growth in the last two years. To drive users to your website, look into Social Media Marketing (SMM) and Social Media Optimization (SMO).

SMO

Social Media Optimization (SMO) is all about streamlining and optimizing the content on your webpage to make it easily shareable across social media platforms. This includes simplifying your interface to make the page easy to navigate and providing easy linking opportunities to your page that can be shared across platforms. Remember that social media is not limited to text, so any effort toward SMO should include text, image, videos and relevant content to draw attention quickly and get the message across as clearly and simply as possible. This enables social media users to readily share your content with others with no continuing effort on your part.

SMM

Social Media Marketing is the next logical step after SMO. Once your webpage is easily shareable, you need to get the word out. This means posting to social media across various platforms to ensure that your brand is visible. This is where you create marketing campaigns on social media sites. It can also include sponsorships of various social media influencers who can help to spread the word about your business. The more shares you can get on social media, the more visible your brand will become. And as more people become familiar with your brand, they will begin to share it on their platforms as well. With some social media platforms, such as Facebook, you can target your advertising campaigns on the social media platform to specific demographics and interest categories in order to maximize the number of people who respond to your ad.

In summary, social media is a powerful tool that is growing all the time. In order to maximize your business’ online presence, harnessing the power of social media can help to build brand familiarity and drive traffic to your business webpage. Using strategies that optimize your website internally and increase your visibility externally, you can grow and expand your business.