Tyler ReedYoung Entrepreneur & Speaker

This is a presentation I did for a course called Technomadic Markets at UCT GSB on Social Media Optimization. Almost two years ago Rohit Bhargava introduced us to Social Media Optimization (SMO) and the 5 rules, which were also expanded on by others.

Now, while I agree and believe that the way SMO has been defined and the rules that have been expressed are all still valid and useful. However, I think they’re no longer the definition for SMO, specifically for marketing (and a South African market). The current definition, while being social to a degree, is generally based on generating traffic. Traffic is important, but when we’re creating a marketing campaign, sometimes we need to look at another way optimize our campaigns for social media. This is what I try and bring out in the presentation, my slides may not make complete sense as you have to hear what was being said. I will elaborate slightly by introducing you to my new definition of SMO and the additional rules.

Definition of SMO
A process of optimizing your brand to be more visible in social media searches and sites, allowing people to interact with your brand easily, encouraging conversation around your brand on blogs and other social media.

Additional Rules for SMO

• Own Your Brand
  Register your brand on all and any new social media sites. Not owning your brand has several dangers, so making sure you own it across all social media platforms is essential. Take a look at the Coca-Cola slides, that blog is not owned by Coke, while the Nikon slides demonstrate how Nikon has successfully gained ownership of their brand on Flickr.
• Train Employees
  School your employees on social media trends and technologies. Find the ones already using them and give them access to the material they need or can use to organically promote your brand when possible. Take a look at the Twitter slide about BMW, the potential customer had his best brand experience and it wasn’t even in-store, it was in a digital environment.
• Build Communities
  Build your own niche target communities that consist of people who passionate about your brand, products and services or the industry it’s in and reward them. Find existing communities, penetrate them organically by finding influencers. Remember you never advertise in social media, you get involved in social media.
• Be First / Respond Quick
  It’s all good and well to optimize your messages to spread, but when people start talking about you (and they use SMO too) then you need to make sure you respond too. Remember, it’s social media, you can’t expect to be one sided by constantly pushing out content and messages without ever responding or being actively involved (being social).