It’s well established that search engine optimisation (SEO) has a huge impact on how many people access a website. But what if you don’t just want visitors who come and go, but rather want engagement with users, building advocates and enthusiasts who will be along side you for the long haul. If that’s the case (and it is for many of our clients) then perhaps ‘Social Media Optimisation’ is more appropriate

SEO?

If you’re selling widgets at 50p a go, and 1 in 5 people buy after a visit then it’s a no-brainer that the more visitors you get the better.

It’s a bit different when the success of your site isn’t judged simply by hits and financial return. What you really want is for people to engage with content and issues. In that case ‘Google surfers’ are only one small part of the equation.

SMO?

The good news is that user engagement has never been higher on the web, but it happens in the social media space, not the search engine space. People blog, create videos, talk in social networks, share links and discuss issues in public forums. If you present your content in a way that doesn’t make it easy for people to respond to they just won’t, they’ll engage with other issues and organisations.

It’s important to build a simple clear social media strategy, or you’ll find yourself technology chasing, but to get you started here are five free must haves for anyone looking to build relationships and encourage engagement.

Tip 1:  Website addresses (URLs) that stay the same and read well

Website addresses that stay the same are called permalinks.

It’s no use if the addresses to your web pages keep changing. I’m not going to go to the effort of writing a blog post about something that you’ve put on your site if I know that your page will disappear in a few days.

Tip 2: RSS feeds (special news feeds)

These are ways of making sure that interested users can follow your news, articles or blogs in their own news readers. You can’t expect them to visit your site every day, just in case you’ve updated it. The feeds let you ‘push’ this to everyone who’s subscribed.

Tip 3:  Add Share links to your content

Gone are the days when people simply add an interesting page to the bookmarks on their computer. There’s a plethora of different systems that people use to manage their own bookmarks and to share their lists with others.

You should make it really easy for people to bookmark and link to you, which ever is their chosen method.

There are 10's of different systems that people use to manage their bookmarks

Tip 4: Get your content into the social media space.

Don’t expect people to just stumble to you and engage, take your content out there.

If you’ve got video – then start a YouTube channel, upload it all and get it where people will see it.

Get a delicious account and start tagging your pages and adding your content to other lists.

If you sell resources then why not get an eBay store?

By taking your content into the social media space you’ll be starting the ball rolling.

Tip 5 : Engage yourself!

Remember that you need 2 people to have a conversation so getting your hands dirty will be essential.

If you don’t know your Technorati from your Twitter then go on a short course or attend one of our seminars to save yourself a headache, but just start engaging with other peoples content. Set up a blog and use it to comment on what you’re most passionate about and your presence will be noticed.

In summary

From the outside all this can seem complex, and some of it can be. But take small steps and see what happens. If you want to create more of a splash or a buzz then you may need some help and we’d be more than happy to provide that - it’s what we do best…