Blurring of SMO and SMM
Great article by Cameron over at Pronet Advertising about the blurring between Social Media Optimization and Social Media Marketing.
Cameron does a great job setting the stage for the discussion by clarifying the difference between SMO and SMM. Cameron writes that:
SMO refers to the process of refining a website (optimizing it) so that it’s awareness and content are easily spread through social mediums and online communities by users and visitors of the website. This can include anything done “on-page” such as improving the design and usability of the website so that it becomes more compelling to users, in an effort to help them spread it through social media sites. The simplest example of SMO is represented by all the “digg this” and “add to delicious” icons and links that are all over the web today.
SMM on the other hand plays more of an active role in relation to social media by referring to the creation and distribution of content and other messages through the social web by some form of viral marketing. This can be anything from creating compelling content that gets bookmarked and even hits digg’s homepage to spreading a viral video by putting it on YouTube and other social media websites. It’s about the things that are done off-site, for example, participating in online communities where your customers hang out would be an active role that falls under SMM.
To me SMO is all about driving traffic to your web site, which makes SMO very similar to traditional internet marketing tactics like search engine optimization (SEO) and Pay-Per-Click (PPC). This is one of the reasons why SEO’s jumped on the SMO band wagon in 2006 as they understand how to utilize social networking sites like Digg and Netscape to game the search engines.
SMM is something very different as the goal is to drive traffic to your web site. In a previous post called “Are You Welcome in the Neighborhood” I wrote that:
The mindshift that you have to make with social media, is that your online strategy is not solely focused on your web site! It includes the “neighborhood” around you.
Imagine that your web site is a store in a good location where people congregate, sort of like a Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks. Your store (ie website) gets a lot of walk-in traffic from one main road (your SEO strategy). Now, you’ve noticed some new suburbs have sprung up and there’s a new place that may support another store. What would you do? Probably consider building another store in the new location – that’s where the people are. The concept of social media optimization is similar. You want your web site and message to appear where people are congregating online.
Whether you call this marketing SMO, SMM or something else, I agree with Cameron’s point about their being two tenants to social media optimization. A successful social campaign will contain both SMO and SMM attributes. When talking about social media tactics, I often switch between the two, as do many other people, which leads me to believe that SMO and SMM are interchangeable terms to most readers.
Filed under Social Media Optimization : Comments (0) : Jan 3rd, 2007
