Social Media Optimization Defined
Social media optimization, often referred to as SMO, is a vital part of being successful on social media. Social media optimization is defined as analyzing your brand’s social media strategies and tactics to improve your digital presence, and ultimately reach your goals. But truthfully there is much more to it.
This is a vital way to increase your brand awareness of your products, services, or information you or your company offers. One of the sole advantages of social media is to connect with people virtually, so optimizing your social media accounts can help you connect with your audience and create authentic relationships in hopes you can also create some brand loyalty.
For a long time, SEO was the top dog in regards to brand awareness, but now with social media marketing, optimization has become extremely important as well. When social media accounts are optimized, it can effectively drive potential customers or clients to your website which is the ultimate goal.
Benefits of Social Media Optimization
There are several benefits to social media optimization, but some key benefits include:
- Increase followers at a faster rate
- Understanding your audience on a deeper level
- Increased brand awareness
- Increase stronger leads
- Increase sales
- Better engagement
When you sit down and create a social media strategy, it is safe to assume that several of these benefits are listed as your goals, so be sure to participate in social media optimization.
Your next question may be: “Okay, but how can I do this?” Well, thankfully there are many powerful tools that can help optimize your social media profiles, in easy and affordable ways.
So, let’s see some SMO tools that can help you easily improve your socials.
Social Media Optimization Tools
There are many tools that can help with social media optimization. Metricool offers just about all you need to take your accounts to the next level. Some key tools to keep in mind would be content creation tools, management and scheduling tools, and analytics tools.
SEO and Trend Data
As we mentioned earlier, SEO helps rank content across search engines such as Google. However, did you know that social media sites such as YouTube, Pinterest, and TikTok are becoming the main search sites for many users?
Therefore, you can utilize SEO strategies to rank your content and increase your visibility. Some SEO tools for social media include Semrush, Keyword.io, Answer the Public, and Google Trends. These tools help you see at a large scope what users are searching for, and what solutions they need.
For more tips on how to optimize your social media profiles for SEO, read these guides below:
Content Creation
Metricool has an absolute game changer of integration with the well-known Canva. This feature allows users to schedule content from Metricool on any social network without switching apps.
With this integration, you are able to improve both the quality of content and the cohesiveness of your content. Canva templates are very professional and pleasing to the eye. They also offer many different ideas and pieces of content to choose from.
Planning and Account Management
The Metricooler Planner helps professionals who plan, edit, and schedule months’ worth of content in hours. We offer a planner for all of your social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
Schedule your content and have the tool auto-publish content, across multiple social platforms at once. If you have a digital presence across multiple social media platforms, this is huge. Save time in your planning, and never manually post again.
Analytics
This is arguably the most important tool to focus on when it comes to social media optimization. Social media metrics are key to your strategy because they can tell you whether you need to change something if it isn’t working or stick to your current plan if it’s going well.
Metricool is the Swiss army knife for social media managers, freelancers, marketers, and just about anyone who works in social media. It provides you with the necessary data to understand how your content is performing across social platforms. Metricool’s Analytics feature gives you in-depth metrics for each social network, and content. You can also spy on your competitors to see what is working well for them.
Another piece of analytics to keep in mind is whether you are posting at the most optimal time. Metricool also shows you the best times to post in two ways: through the calendar colors, with the darkest slots being those with the highest number of active users, or by viewing an exact percentage of active users.
How to Optimize Social Media Profiles
There are a few steps to be sure you are doing to perfect your social media optimization process. Be sure to:
Pinpoint your social media goals
Completing this step first will help immensely so that you can make sure that your efforts are reflecting your goals. For example, if your ultimate goal is to increase brand awareness, you must try new strategies like Instagram reels or try a new platform to get your brand in front of new eyes.
Or if your goal is to strengthen your relationship with the audience you already have, consider posting more CTA’s on your post and engage with them more frequently.
Make sure social profiles are complete
Be sure you have filled in all of your spaces on social media. For example, be sure your link is in your bio, your category on Instagram reflects your business type, include a recognizable profile picture, include keywords, information about what you offer, and location.
Use hashtags
Many people believe that this has little of an effect t but hashtags can get your content to the right people even if they do not follow you. For the most effective keywords, we recommend using our Hashtag Generator on Metricool. To learn more click the button below:
Include calls to action in your posts
A call to action is an instruction that guides visitors-clients to what to do on your blog/website. It sounds simple but many still include irrelevant phrases on their sites thinking that they are motivating their potential clients.
Stay active
Since social media is a quick way to consume media, users expect all features to be quick and that includes replies, whether it be comments or DMs. So be sure to be timely and active to show your audience you care.
With Metricool, you can manage all your social media messages in one place, including replies, and comments, so you don’t have to manually jump between each platform to stay engaged with followers. We all love a brand that responds in a timely manner.
Track your progress
As we discussed above, knowing which content does well and which does not helps you post the content your audience responds well to. That’s why analytics are so important. With Metricool, you can create custom social media reports, so you never have to manually report again. Then, you can spend time focusing on other strategies to improve your content.
After all of this, our hope is not only that you understand the importance of social media optimization but you also feel confident that you can use these tools and tips to increase your social media success!
Conducting frequent social media audits can also help your social media success and help with the optimization of your accounts. To better understand how to conduct an audit, watch our Masterclass where we run through the ultimate checklist to audit your social media accounts:
