Integrated Marketing – Social Media and the Internet Empowered Consumer.

SMO – Social Media Optimization is the process of driving more traffic to a website through the co-ordinated online marketing efforts of the organization and, more importantly, the word-of-mouth marketing efforts of the community of brand advocates. Today, what is being said about your product, service, brand or organization by others online via social networks, chat-rooms, forums, blogs, microblogs and rich media sharing sites, is more important than your own branding efforts, because people trust what their peers have to say, and even trust the opinions of online strangers significantly more than they trust what marketers have to say. What’s more important, is that when people write positive things about your brand and link back to your site, it helps you with your [[SEO - Search Engine Optimization]] efforts, because Google considers this to be an active endorsement, and no amount of paid advertising online or offline can do this. And the more people who link to your site, the better your ranking.

So, before you get persuaded to do that next big brand campaign, especially if it relies on expensive traditional media like TV, Print, Outdoor or Radio, you may just want to check the real-time brand barometer that is Social Media to see if your message is likely to be well received, ignored or rejected with extreme prejudice. Online Reputation Management or ORM is the process of monitoring what’s being said about your brand in the social media space and reacting to those conversations through direct or indirect engagement. The exponential power of the masses, the people, has eclipsed the power of mass media, turning the tables on the broadcast network monopoly, and changing the communications paradigm from a one to many model, to a many to many model.

Social Media is simply word of mouth, amplified. The social nature of the new web 2.o landscape has empowered people to share their ideas and opinions about products and services more freely. Social Media Optimization is about knowing how, when and if to engage in a conversation about your brand in an effort to create an army of brand advocates.

To learn more about [[Focus Integrated Marketing]] and how SMO – Social Media Optimization can help your company, [[contact]] us today.