Social Media Optimization and Social Media Marketing

Social media optimization is a marketing strategy that encourages
people, companies, and organizations to get their content distributed
as widely as possible throughout the social media universe. Th is strategy
is based on the idea that marketing is more eff ective when seen
by more people; therefore, marketers and content developers work to
spread their messages through a multitude of social media networks.
To accomplish this, developers optimize their Web sites to include the ability to share text and video content,or provide links back to their site through popular social media networks.

Social Media Marketing
Before the popularization of social media, reaching an audience
through the Web was fairly straightforward. While marketers had
options, the most prominent means of communicating a message
was through banner and display ads placed in key areas of Web sites.
Today, while banner ads are still a highly viable means of Web marketing,
social media has created numerous other opportunities for
marketers to identify and reach their audience. However, because
the social media universe can be so rich and complex, setting the
best, most eff ective marketing strategy can be a daunting task. Social
media marketing is the utilization of social media specifi cally as a
marketing vehicle, and typically falls into one of three categories:


PUBLIC RELATIONS: As more news is generated by users and
traditional news is increasingly spread through online communities,
public relations professionals are looking to social media to get their
message to their target audience. To do this, news must be trustworthy
and valuable to the reader, or it risks getting lost or ignored in the
crowded social media universe.

MARKETING CONTENT GENERATION: Blogs, videos, and other
content created for a marketing purpose need to be crafted in such a
way that they will be relevant to the desired audience.

VIRAL MESSAGING: Viral messaging campaigns are typically shocking
or unusually entertaining videos (or sometimes, text) that pique
such a high level of interest in an audience that people feel compelled
to pass the fi le or information on through e-mail, social media networks,
or other means. In instances where the content is particularly
engaging or entertaining, viral messages can make their way to millions
of people in an extraordinarily short period of time.