The benefits of Social Media Optimisation

We've all heard of SEO, the practise of optimising a website for reasons of attracting targeted search engine traffic. But a similarly important practise of website optimisation is taking shape. What am I talking about? SMO or social media optimisation, of course.

In short, SMO is the process of optimising a website so that its content can be easily spread on the Net by the website's own visitors to off-site social and online communities - basically making it "socially friendly". The most common example is adding social bookmarks, trackbacks and widgets to a site's page, such as "add to del.ici.ous" links and the MyBlogLog widget. But it doesn't stop there.

While the above is definitely a first step, alone it serves no purpose at all. You see, in order for these social bookmarks or widgets to be of any benefit, the page containing them needs to have compelling content; content that is of interest to the user and, most importantly, content that said user will want to share with his or her online community whether they are strangers or personal contacts.