Taking the most out of social media

It’s curious how social media has been associated, specially, with bloggers.

Reasons are obvious, as social media can make your little blog become a great business. Internet marketing is the most powerful tool to gain popularity, and popularity is the most powerful tool to make money blogging.

That’s why today I’ve decided to write a few tips I consider a MUST to take the maximum profit out of social media sites.

With the tons of competitors out there for almost every niche possible, you can only make a difference just by doing two things:

1) Making great content that attracts backlinks and tons of traffic.

2) SMO: Social media optimization. That’s what we will talk about today.

I would say SMO is just as important as SEO, and combined, they’ll turn a newbie blogger into a professional blogger, just by increasing the popularity of that particular blogger.

Some may just didn’t even hear of SMO yet, so this post will specially help those. So here we go:

What does SMO means?

SMO is the term used to define Social Media Optimization. The main objective here is to maximize the benefits of social media, such as:

1) Popularity: Just posted tons of time about this subject.

2) Traffic: Popularity means traffic. Apart from that, social sites like Digg or Stumbleupon, that receive unlimited amount of traffic, can transfer that traffic to your site if one of your post hits the front page.

3) Opportunities: If you’re a social phenomenon, you’ll get tons of opportunities, like having some conferences, testing new stuff, having promotional codes to give away… Just to say some.

4) Monetization: Each and every point above will lead you to the so wanted make money blogging run.

SMO Tactics?

There are several tips you can apply to increase your social media exposure and maximize the profits, such as:

1) Maximize: You should get an account for the most famous social media websites out there. As a blogger, it’s a must, as each reader uses a particular social service. Stumbleupon, digg, Technorati, twitter… Use them all. It’s a similar strategy used to make money blogging, diversifying.

2) Social buttons: If you look at my blog, on the right sidebar, I’ve visible social media buttons that links to my social accounts profile. You should do the same, let the readers easily find you!

3) Promoting: Bloggers are lately asking how to get more followers. The answer is simple: Promoting. You should promote your social accounts like if you were promoting your own blog. Forum signatures, email signatures, advertising… It worth the time spent.

4) Unique profile: I would suggest you to use the same username on every social account you use. That’s one of the steps to build a profile out there. People will recognize you better if you’re always chose the same name, don’t you think?

5) Easy bookmarking: A quick tip to increase your bookmarking submissions. Use the Share / Save buttons or the tweetememe wordpress plugin. It’s the one I have on this blog and it just works great. Remember my #1 rule? Humans are lazy, you must make it easy. This plugin allows readers to bookmark / submit a blog / post with just two clicks.

6) Podcasting: Social media is about podcasting too. What do you need? A camera / micro and a youtube account. This is a great way to drive traffic to your site, from the youtube video itself, and from your channel subscribers too. You can use your youtube’s subscribers as a virtue to get advertisers.

Should you have two different accounts, one from the blog itself and another one talking about yourself? No. You can use your profile to talk a bit about your life, but use these accounts to promote your blog. If you promote your blog, you will be promoted too, so don’t worry about it.

You’re a blogger, and your blog is your baby. Take care of it, and when it grows, it will take care of you.

Do you have more ways to increase the social media effect? Would you mind sharing them?

Thanks for reading.