SMM and SMO have been two fascinating topics for discussion in the digital sphere. While both of these are the two essential pillars of what we call as the Digital Marketing World, people still have lots of confusion about each of them – their meaning, purpose and impacts. Therefore, let’s find out the meaning and the points of difference between the two terms.
As a cutting-edge industry, internet marketing has experienced continuous evolution and is still unstoppable. With so much of changes and improvements, there are many ways to promote a business, brand, or product among millions of consumers within a short timeframe.
Among the various means, SMO and SMM are the two impactful marketing sources that are built upon many tools and strategies, which differ with each other greatly.
While these two terms seem so identical to one another, their real meaning and purpose contradicts with each other greatly.
Read more to know more about these digital marketing techniques, which have changed the face of entire internet marketing industry.
Social Media Optimization
Social Media Optimization or SMO refers to the process of streamlining or optimizing a website so that it can be exposed online on various social media channels. This process can include anything carried out “on-page” such as refining the interface and usability of the site so that it becomes more compelling to the visitors in an effort to help them share it through various social media sites.
https://www.rise.company/forum/image...2016/04/17.jpgTypes of social media include social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, video and blogging sites and social news and bookmarking sites. In general, social media optimization refers to making a website and its content viable and optimized for sharing across social media and networking sites.
In short, SMO is all about pulling your audience in with an “optimized” website and encouraging them to spread your content without any effort on your part.
Social Media Marketing
SMM on the other hand is the next step to SMO. Once you optimize your website, it’s time to share and publicize it online on various social media channels for the people to know about your brand, its product and services and to show interest in them. It plays more of an active role by referring to the creation and sharing of content and other messages through the social web by means of viral marketing. These may include advertisements, blogs, images, and videos describing your services and products. For instance, creating a convincing content that gets bookmarked, spreading a viral video by putting it on YouTube and other social media websites falls under SMM.
SMM is about activities that are done off-site, for instance, participating in online communities to have direct interaction with your customers forms an active part of SMM.
Conclusion
The clear difference between the two is: SMO refers to on-page modifications on your website whereas SMM refers to activities taking place outside your website (on some other channels). In brief, SMO can be taken as a way to encourage SMM activities by visitors of your website.
