Social media optimization (SMO) is a set of methods for generating publicity through social media, online communities and community websites. Methods of SMO include adding RSS feeds, adding a "Digg This" button, blogging and incorporating third party community functionalities like Flickr photo slides and galleries or YouTube videos. Social media optimization is related to search engine marketing, but differs in several ways, primarily the focus on driving traffic from sources other than search engines, though improved search ranking is also a benefit of successful SMO.

Social Media Optimization (SMO) is a new term that was recently coined by Rohit Bhargava and has since been taking on life of its own. In his introduction to SMO, Rohit draws similar comparisons to SEO. SMO tactics can drive huge amounts of people to a website and can also determine whether a startup, website or idea will make it or not. It involves driving traffic to a website through new channels because search engines aren't the only sites that drive big traffic anymore. While it's not taking over SEO yet, it has the potential to someday soon.

First of all "social media" is a buzzword that has been thrown around a lot lately. But what exactly does it really mean? Wikipedia describes social media as...the online tools and platforms that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other. Social media can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video. Popular social mediums include blogs, message boards, podcasts, wikis, and vlogs.

The concept behind SMO is simple: implement changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs.

There are many other "rules" and techniques that we are starting to uncover as this idea gets more sophisticated. In the meantime we are always on the lookout for new ideas in Social Media Optimization to encourage even better thinking.