Social Media Optimization (SMO) in 2007
The blogasphere is awash in 2007 predictions and Rohit Bhargava has an interesting one titled Top 7 Marketing Trends for 2007. In looking at marketing trends for the next twelve months, and specifically SMO, Rohit wrote:
Originally introduced just a few months ago, SMO has rapidly blossomed into a movement in the online marketing industry worldwide. Primarily being driven at the moment by those in the search marketing industry, in 2007 I suspect SMO will continue to get broader use from marketers interested in building traffic and buzz online, moving far beyond linking strategy and smart SEO into the marketing mainstream. Hooks to allow site visitors to easily share and bookmark content may become more commonplace than those ubiquitous “email a friend” links.
I agree completely with Rohit. In 2006 SMO was mainly the playground of search engine marketers looking for the latest tactic to game the search engines. SMO to them was Digg, Netscape and YouTube and how to use those sites to gain links and short-term traffic to a web site.
What I expect to see in 2007 is for more mainstream marketers to move into SMO. The success of the Product Red campaign. The Product Red initiative (the charity backed by Bono established to raise awareness and money to invest in African AIDS programs) launched recently and it quickly turned into the poster child for how to successfully advertise on social networks.
Within a week of the campaign launch on MySpace, brands associated with Product Red saw significant increases in downstream traffic from MySpace to their web sites. This traffic was not just people looking for more information. These were visitors who were actively buying the goods and services offered by companies involved in Product Red.
I expect to see more socially active campaigns like this, as marketers realize that caused based marketing and social marketing work well together as Aquafina recently demonstrated.
Of course in 2007 we will have more SMO disasters like what happened to Virgin, Wal-Mart and GMC but overall I believe that 2007 will be an important transition year for SMO away from the gamers of SEO to more traditional marketing campaigns.
Filed under Brand Marketing, SEO, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization : Comments (3) : Jan 5th, 2007
January 6th, 2007 at 10:40 am
I think social media becomes optimized, as with all other forms of online media preceding it, when the data available to the publishers and advertisers recgonizes the attributes of this new form of media, and thus becomes rich and actionable. I wrote about this:
http://newspeedwayboogie.blogspot.com/2006/12/advertising-data.html
If social publishers can do this, there is a new, and I submit enormous, monetization opportunity. If not, $.10 CPMs may become the norm.
January 7th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
[…] For more information: 5 Rules of Social Media Optimization (SMO) (Influential Interactive Marketing) What’s the Big Deal With Social Search? (Chris Sherman) The Dark Side of Social Media Optimization (Graywolf) The Five Pillars of Social Media Marketing (Marketing Pilgrim) Social Media Marketing, eh? Let’s See What’s in Our Bag o’ Goodies (SEOMoz) Social Media Optimization (SMO) in 2007 (Social Media Optimization Blog) Add to feed reader | Digg this | Post to del.icio.us | Add to Reddit Posted on Sunday 7 January 2007 Filed under: Search engine marketing and Online search tools and services and All […]
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