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Guest post by: Rob Lawson Become an Author

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You've heard of SEO and SEM, but there's another acronym making its way around the big wide world of Internet marketing. It's called SMO - that's Social Media Optimization. SMO is using social media outlets, such as Facebook , Twitter, or YouTube, to attract visitors to a website. More and more businesses are using social media outlets on their websites to market their product or service to the visitor in a new, different, and exciting way. It's not just about drawing visitors in through search engines anymore - you can take the initiative and just getting those hits yourself.

You might join a social networking site, add social news sections into your website, blog, share videos and images. With the tide of social media outlets rising, the possibilities are endless. SMO has been described as the next level of online marketing, and it's easy to see why.

The facts don't lie

The past year has seen a rapid growth in the popularity of social media, more dramatic than the years before it. In Australia alone, Twitter had 800,000 visitors in June 2009, up from 13,000 in June 2008 (that's a 607% increase). Think it's not relevant to your customers? The fastest growing demographic on Facebook is 55-65 year-old women. Still not convinced? Three out of four Australians visited a social networking site in the month of June. You can't ignore the facts - one of the easiest and most effective ways of attracting visitors to a website is through social media.

Let's face it, the popularity of social media is at a high, so it makes sense that this needs to be taken advantage of now, and be used in an online marketing campaign.

Making SEO work for you

So you like the idea, but you're not quite sure how to get it to work for your online business. The first step is choosing the right social media - you need to select one (or more) that best suits your market demographic, and that will work best for what you want to use it for. If you have a website that advertises retirement village condos, there's not a great deal of use in using Twitter - a social media outlet that is being used mostly by young adults.

• YouTube is a website where users can upload, view and share videos.

• Facebook is a social networking site where each user has their own page. Access is free. There are other applications that ...

• Twitter is an online micro-blogging service that allows users to post regular updates (‘tweets').

• Del.icio.us is social bookmarking service, where users can store, find and post their favourite bookmarks.

• Flickr is a website that hosts videos and images. It most commonly used as a storage and blogging space for users' photographs.

This list is by all means not comprehensive; there are countless social media outlets available and more being created every day. Do a little research, have a play around, and find the one that is most well suited for your website and why you want it. Is it for pure advertising? A way of connecting with customers? Having your say in the community?

Reaping the benefits

Say you have a store and a potential customer walks in. You wouldn't walk up to them, hand them a long winded document, and walk away to let them read it. You would engage them personally, chatting to them, showing them different products, making them laugh and enjoy their experience with your business. That's the sort of familiarity that SMO can give you. Even having a social media outlet as simple as a video feed on your site can let you strengthen your relationship with customers or clients.

Applying SMO methods to your website is a way of giving your business instant exposure. To be a part of a social networking site is to have extra publicity, and any business that becomes part of an online community will only see good things come from it. Visitors will see that your business is contemporary and ‘up to date' in what it has to offer, and your brand can be strengthened through the extra hype that social media can bring to your website and to your brand. For example, loyal customers can become ‘fans' of your Facebook page, which then shows up in all of their friends' feeds, instantly making your brand more recognizable.

There's no doubt about it, social media is the way of the future for businesses. SMO can be used to establish yourself and your brand in the community. It will allow you to connect with your potential customers in ways that online businesses couldn't before.

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