Develop Your SMO Strategy

As you’ve done with your business plan, so should you do with your SMO strategy. Define your objective and your goals for reaching it. Choose the SMO tactics that will have the most impact for your desired outcome and make those part of your company’s best practices.

What are your objectives? Reputation and influence within your industry? Sales? Site traffic? All of the above? What steps must you take to achieve them?
For example, your business sells home fitness equipment. You want to increase your site traffic and sales. Therefore, you need to 1) increase your site ranking on the search engines, and 2) convince consumers to buy from you rather than your many competitors. What SMO tactics will best achieve these goals?

Target your niche demographic like a laser with content. Start a participatory blog, encouraging social bookmarking and rewarding incoming links and participation. Publish articles and videos on your web site supporting the needs of your users that go beyond the treadmill. Submit that content to social media sites and RSS feeds to allow the content to travel to increase the links to your site. Participate and offer your helpful expertise on related blogs and forums using your signature with your business link.

SMO tactics go far beyond traditional advertising venues to get your message to the targeted users you want to reach.

Make SMO Part of Your Business Best Practices

Incorporate your SMO tactics at the “template” level, making them as routine as SEO. It’s an ongoing, dynamic process. Word of mouth has always been the most valuable advertising for any business, often determining success or failure. Social media is the newest neighborhood for word of mouth advertising. Become a valued member of that neighborhood.