Social Media Optimization (SMO) is becoming one among the must-adopt methods to generate traffic by increasing website (or blog) popularity and visibility amongst your type of visitors directly or through social media sites like online communities, discussion groups, etc. This could be achieved through networking in blog post sharing, resource sharing, videos, podcast and social book marking.
Now SMO is one of the best ways to get free traffic, which can benefit in both ways – 1. To generate leads, and 2. For spreading your business type by tagging. SMO is also known as web 2.0 marketing.
SMO is much recommended along with your regular SEO plans for better and quicker results. You can get good amount of quality Backlinks from networking and bookmarking and also visitors will have a chance to know about your products or services through the respective links, when they browse through social networking sites. Along with these benefits, it helps in getting you on top of the search ranking. Some of the most popular Social sites which you should target first are Twitter, Technorati, del.icio.us, Digg, Furl, you tube and stumbleupon.
Once you register with most popular Social sites you can see the difference in your site traffic and visibility in search engines. However you need to measure SMO conversion and work further to improve and find where all your website visibility can be increased.
Assuming you have some site statistics tool to check your site traffic, but if you don’t have one it is advisable to go for Google analytics, a free web statistics account. Find out social media referral unique visitor, time spent on the site, depth of visit and location. All these can be measured using any top recommended popular statistics or Google analytics. There are few other alternatives to Google analytics, which we discussed here.
Some of the important SMO conversion measures are listed below
Site or Blog posts Book marking Conversion
There are many ways to check these conversions, as you can use “Add this” or “Share Social Book Marking Services” sites. If you have not used them before, it is advisable to create profiles in del.icio.us, Digg and the likes, and search for your urls. Another possible way is by using Google analytics “Site overlay” option as you see in the below attached screen shot.
“Site overlay” Google analytics
Add this Top Destination Chart
Your content readers
If you have resources section or blog, then monitor who are all your readers and from which location they land to your page. Use Google analytics “Top Content” section and find out most popular content pages of your site that are referred by social sites and how long they where in the page, including the bounce rate of the specific content.
| Page | Page Views | Unique Page Views | Time on Page | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | /resources/stored_procedures_for.. | 3,039 | 2,887 | 00:05:27 |
| 2 | /resources/calling_stored_proced.. | 2,887 | 2,607 | 00:05:13 |
| 3 | /resources/Converting_HTML2PDF.. | 2,131 | 1,868 | 00:05:37 |
| 4 | /resources/web_development_life.. | 1,894 | 1,590 | 00:04:21 |
| 5 | /resources/dynamic_layers_with.. | 1,499 | 1,140 | 00:02:31 |
RSS feed Subscriber Conversion- Feed burner
Feedburner is one of the widely used services for blogs and RSS feeds subscription. There are various ways to measure visitor’s subscribing your feeds. You can check from which location your feed readers are and through which user agent they come from, as you can see in the below screen shot.
25 hits 19 and half hours
in the last
All times are translated to your local time zone
| Time | User Agent | Country |
|---|---|---|
| 10:17:36 AM (2009-1-16) | WordPress | United States |
| 9:46:22 AM (2009-1-16) | Google Feedfetcher | United States |
| 9:40:01 AM (2009-1-16) | FeedBurner Feed Insurance | N/A |
| 8:17:19 AM (2009-1-16) | WordPress | United States |
| 8:02:06 AM (2009-1-16) | FeedBurner Email Subscriptions | United States |
Discussions on your Content – Commenting
Do allow commenting about your content in the resource pages and blog posts. They allow you to be more social, at the same time helps you find number of visitors who interact about your content. One of the best ways is to use openid for comment login so that you can also track users in social sites too.
Authority sites and Micro blogging
Another method to check social media conversion is, by using authority sites and micro blogging using technorati, twitter and so. Through authority sites you can find who is linking to you site or blog through blog roll and also it can be a discussion post about your content. These are called as reactions. In twitter and related sites you can monitor followers and tweets and find out what they are discussing about your content and where your followers come from.
Networks and communities
Trusted networks and sharing website communities provide decent conversion which can bring you possible leads to develop your business and also increase you website popularity. Through trusted networks like Linked in, you can find, from which geographic locations you are more visible and who all can reach your profile / business, along with getting information on who are all searching for your service. All are depending on network direct connections, also termed as degree connection. Sharing sites in communities are similar to content commenting. Youtube and related sites provide video sharing and commenting – if you have a video uploaded then you can find out who all interact with your video content.
All the above SMO conversion metrics can help you improve your business website or blog visibility, further corresponding your visitors and location, allowing you to target locations where you are not found.