Marketers should start with social media optimization (SMO) to get the most out of their social media campaigns.
Understanding how to optimize your social media profiles and posts for maximum returns isn’t scary; Doesn’t require keyword research or technical knowledge. And remember, we have you every step of the way.
In this article, we’ll introduce easy-to-do social media optimization techniques that will help you increase your brand’s visibility on social media, get more engagement for your posts, and get your audience to tell you what they want.
What does social media optimization mean?
Social media optimization is not about your social media strategy as a whole. It focuses on polishing your posts and profiles to maximize their impact.
Think of SMO as an opportunity for you to analyze and adjust to better what you do on social media.
Benefits of social media optimization
- Strengthen your online presence
- Connect and engage with your audience on a deeper level
- Increasing brand awareness on social media
- Improve reach on social media
- Increase the quality of your potential customers from social media
11 easy social media optimization techniques to start doing now
To the untrained eye, a brand’s social media presence may seem effortless, but there’s a lot going on behind the scenes to ensure that social media is used as effectively as possible.
Publish at the right time
To win big on social media, you need to consistently post content that not only excites your audience, but is posted at a time when they are most likely to engage.
Finding the best time to post on social media is hard work. But luckily, we’ve spent hours researching and analyzing millions of social posts to figure this out. Between 10:00 AM on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
But remember, this is a general guide. What works for you and your target audience may be different.
Use an online scheduling tool with the best time to post the feature (we might be biased, but Moyens I/O is pretty good!) and take advantage of posting your social media content when your audience is most likely to be online and interact with you. is serving again.
/a>
flash your bios
Your social media bio is one of the first things a potential new visitor or potential leader sees when visiting your profile page. Therefore, it is very important to make it as polished as possible. Important information that should always be included:
- Who are you
- Where do you work
- What did you do
- topics that interest you
- Your brand’s tone (more on that below!)
- How can someone contact you
See how Moyens I/O has shaped their bios by keeping their message of being “the global leader in social media management” consistent across social channels.
You might also consider adding a call-to-action (CTA) to your bio that encourages visitors to click on your website link or an important landing page.
Pro tip: Use a tool like One Click Bio to help you promote your latest content and keep your profile visitors engaged with your business.
Feel free to regularly replace the link in your bio with your most up-to-date content or an important landing page you need to drive traffic to.
Optimize your connections with UTMs
As we mentioned above, social media optimization often uses links to direct visitors to a web page where they can continue their interaction with the brand. Doing so is important for driving traffic to your website, content or landing pages.
Link optimization is integral to understanding how your audience engages with the links you share. Monitoring your customer’s behavior allows you to see which posts are driving the most traffic from your links and which are not. By adding UTMs to your social media channels and posts, you can track behavior quickly and easily.
Need skinny on how to use UTMs on social media? This post has everything you need to get started.
Make sure your images are the right size
There’s nothing worse than visiting a social profile and the images look horrible, right? Brand looks are everything, darling. So make sure your images look professional, polished, and most importantly, the right size.
At the very least, make sure your profile picture is a high-resolution image that isn’t overly cropped, describes your brand (preferably a company logo), and clearly represents your business. Oh, and you’ll want your profile pictures to be consistent across all of your social channels, too. Doing so will help your audience gain brand recognition.
Submit the correct amount
You don’t want to constantly bombard your audience with posts, and you also don’t want to post so little that you’ll fall off their radar. Finding your optimal social media posting plan is essential to drive more engagement and conversation with your brand.
Note that it may take some time to find the sweet shipping spot. Experiment and find out which cadence works best for you.
Review your social media strategy
Take time to review your current social media strategy and consider the following areas:
- Are you reaching your goals and objectives?
- Are your social media goals still aligned with your inclusive marketing strategy?
- Are you publishing the right types of content? For example, images, videos, text only, or a mix of the three? (Hint, you want to target all three!)
- Do your posts resonate with your target audience?
As you consider the points above, consider how your SMO will affect them positively (or sometimes negatively).
For insider information about your company’s social performance, most platforms have built-in analytics to help you understand if your social strategy is working. Tools like Moyens I/O Analyze provide you with additional valuable information.
If you want to go a step further, you can always A/B test your social media optimization and see if one tactic works better than the other.
For example, if you’re an online organic grocer and want to generate more conversations about food waste, what image would get your audience more engaged? Photo of an overfilled landfill producing methane gas or a photo of a reduced grocery bill?
A quote from an old, wise marketer (okay, mine) says “always test”, and SMO is the perfect opportunity to do just that.
Always keep your audience in mind
Not all audiences are the same. Take some time to research the demographics to optimize your social media content for the right groups.
For example, if you’re targeting a UK audience, you might want to forego colloquialism from the US. Similarly, if you’re targeting an American audience, you might not want your social media copy to sound too British, guv’nor.
Optimize your accounts for search
Not all of your posts need to use this tactic because not all of your posts need to be discovered by a researcher. Sometimes, you will post on social media just to communicate with your target audience. Remember to be strategic. For example, when we share this post, we will add the keyword “social media optimization” as a hashtag to help the post discoverability.
You can also talk to your SEO team to find the most important keywords for your brand and include them in your social feeds to give your organic performance an extra boost.
Online fitness studio A Few Fun Moves uses health-related hashtags in its posts to help searchers and potential new customers discover them on Instagram.
View this post on Instagram
Build consistency with your username
Your username on your social media channels says a lot about who you are and is an important piece of the puzzle of how your brand looks. That’s why it’s important to be consistent with your username.
For example, having the username @Moyens I/O for Twitter and /Moyens I/O for Facebook looks much better than @OwlShop and /Moyens I/O123.
Write catchy titles and subtitles
Not everyone is a writer. Hire a copywriter or social media expert to help you craft catchy headlines and captions that will help you achieve your goals. Remember, the copy that looks appropriate for Twitter may be completely different from the copy for TikTok. Experiment and test which language and words resonate the most with your audience.
It’s important to maintain your brand’s voice throughout your posts and captions and find that sweet spot between speaking and publicity.
Add tags to your posts
If your social media post features another brand or customer, it’s a best practice to tag that person in your post. Not only will this earn you big courtesy points, but it will also help you create natural conversation and communication in your post.
The golden rule is this: If your post contains user-generated content (UGC), be sure to always tag who the original content is from.
Ready to start optimizing your social media posts and profile? Moyens I/O has tools and insights to help you understand if your optimization efforts are working. Sign up today to get started.
