richADZ's Site Build It! - Profitable Web Business or Bust

By Azuan Ahmad

Social Media Optimisation or SMO has become the hot new buzzword over the last few months.

If you're a frequent blogger or site owner you've probably heard about sites like Wikipedia, Digg, and del.icio.us, but you may not know why getting there could be crucial to your site becoming famous.

As an average Web user, you don't have to know much about social media optimisation.

However, as a website owner, you do need to know that it exists and be aware of the effects and potential benefits it could have on your site.

Social media gives site owners a way to gain visibility to their sites without relying strictly on the search engines. It's a powerful tool for building brand recognition and increasing visibility.

With social media optimisation, the content can be easily found, distributed and shared by the web community.

This process may simply mean embedding a "Digg This" button on your blog site or it may mean spending hours to create a piece of compelling content, aka linkbait, that could either drive thousands of visitors to your site or have no effect at all.

Reaching out to social communities on the web to bring attention to your site isn't a new concept. However, thanks to today's technology, when done right, the power, effect and benefit of social media optimisation can be huge.

In a recent published article entitled "Anatomy of a Super Digg", Daniel Tynski shared his experience with a client who spent ten minutes creating an article specifically targeted towards social media. The article then was submitted to Digg and in seven days the client was rewarded with more than 3,000 backlinks, 532 links from del.icio.us, and an impressive (though temporary) surge in web rankings.

The benefits of social media vary depending on what you're looking to do. For some sites, the greatest benefit of SMO is the instant celebrity-like exposure and influx of inbound web links it creates. With any luck, a significant portion of your new links will be coming from quality sites in your field.

Another real benefit to optimising your site for social media is that it inspires you to create excellent, keyword-rich content, which in turn can help build your online and offline brand, increase quality inbound links over time, make you a subject matter expert, and expose your content to thousands of new visitors.

Popular SMO sites

The following are some of the most popular sites you can use for social media optimisation:

Digg

Digg is a user-driven content site where members can vote, bury and comment on stories submitted by other members. Getting onto Digg's front page often results in thousands of visitors flocking to your site and can have lasting ranking effects.

Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us is a Yahoo-owned social bookmarking site. Del.icio.us allows members to publicly save bookmarks using tags. Don't be afraid to tag your own content.

YouTube

Well-known video upload site. Recently acquired by Google, so look for YouTube videos to start appearing in Google's index.

Newsvine

Another social news site where members can submit news stories, comment on other popular stories, create connections with regular users.

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon acts as a discovery/recommendation engine and match users with Web sites, videos, images, etc. based on their interests that they may have been previously unaware of.

Other social media sites to consider utilizing are Wikipedia, Flickr, MySpace, Reddit, Spurl, Blinklist, Shadows, Simply, Yahoo Answers, Ning, 43 Things and Frappr.

Courtesy of Borneo Bulletin