You may have heard all about SEO (search engine optimisation) by now, but what about SMO (social media optimisation)?
SMO is how to utilise social media to promote your business in the most effective way possible – gaining the most followers, engagement, and traffic. When optimised correctly, social media can help grow your audience, establish your brand and generate leads.
As a smaller business, it is likely that your budget will be tight. Social media is a free and accessible tool that can be used by anyone. All that you need to grow your following is the knowledge on how to best optimise your social media profiles.
So with that being said, here are our top tips on how to best optimise your social media profiles:
1. Have Consistent Handles
When choosing the handles for your social media profiles, choose something that is short, relevant and memorable. It is preferable if you use your company name but if it has already been taken, make it as closely related as possible.
Make sure that the same handle is used across all platforms. Consistency is crucial when it comes to branding. Using the same handle will make multiple profiles much easier to find, resulting in more traffic. To search for your preferred handle, we recommend using namecheckr.
2. Boost Your Bio
When writing a bio, including keywords is a great way to make a profile easier to find. Using industry targeted keywords specifically will be sure to attract the appropriate target audience.
To make your bio stand out even more, use hashtags for keywords that you feel are the most relevant. Make sure you aren’t chucking in random keywords for the sake of it, your bio needs to read well and explain what your business services and values are.
3. Get Your Links Working
Including links on social media profiles can differ depending on the platform – Instagram only allows one link at a time in your bio. A solution to this is using Linktree, a tool that allows you to attach multiple links to a single link address.
Other sites allow you to have multiple links. For instance, Facebook allows you to have Twitter and Youtube accounts displayed on your Facebook tabs. Pinterest not only allows you to include your Facebook and Twitter, it also has the option for you to include a website field on your profile. This is a useful method when it comes to cross-promoting your content, as it may result in you getting twice the usual traffic.
4. Use The Right Images
In terms of images, anything that you use needs to be good quality. Having grainy, blurred images throughout your feed looks unprofessional, especially if your profile picture is of poor quality.
Image dimensions are also very important to get right and they differ with each platform. By tailoring your content to each platform you’re presenting your company in a professional light.
These are the appropriate image sizes you should be using:
- Facebook profile picture: 170 X 170 pixels
- Facebook cover photo: 828 X 465 pixels
- Twitter profile photo: 400 X 400 pixels
- Twitter header image: 1,500 X 500 pixels
- LinkedIn profile photo: 400 X 400 pixels (minimum)
- LinkedIn custom background: 1584 X 396
- LinkedIn cover photo: 974 X 330 pixels
- LinkedIn banner image: 646 X 220 pixels
- Instagram profile picture: 110 X 110 pixels
- Instagram post: 1080 X 1080 pixels
- Pinterest profile picture: 150 X 150 pixels
- Pinterest posts: 238 pixels x adjusted to height or 735 pixels x adjusted to height (expanded)
5. Link From Your Website
Lastly, you need to make sure that your social media profiles are effectively and frequently promoted throughout your website. Even with social media being the most popular tool for promotion at the moment, websites have not lost their importance.
In order to check if your website is promoting your social media enough, look out for:
- Are there direct links to each of your social media profiles on every page of the website?
- Are people given the option/encouraged to share blog posts?
- Are social icons displayed in the header/footer?
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of SMO. If you follow these suggestions, your social media profiles will be fully optimised in no time!
Thanks for reading!
If you now have a good understanding of SMO but are stuck for content ideas, check out our blog post on how to come up with ideas for content. Or if you would prefer to get back to basics, check out our post What is Social Media Marketing?
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