Social Media Traffic Through Social Media Optimization

Social media optimization (SMO) is a collection of strategies for generating attention through social media, social networking sites and and other Web 2.0 properties. Some ways SMO can be employed include using RSS feeds, adding a "Digg This" button to your sites or blogs, blogging and incorporating third party sites with applications like Flickr, YouTube and others. Social media optimization would be classified as a form of search engine marketing.

Social media optimization is also akin to viral marketing in that word of mouth is created not through friends or family but through the use of networking in the various social bookmarking, networking, and video sharing websites. Blogs achieve a similar affect by sharing content through the use of RSS and special blog search engines such as Technorati and others.

Like any thing that comes along and is useful for social media traffic, SMO is prone to spamming. The good news is that where users are active participants, spammers are very likely to be found out quite quickly and the networks take actions against them to lessen the occurrences. Some social media sites, such as Digg, Mixx and others empower users to bury content that is considered poor quality or spam.