11 Straightforward Social Media Optimization Techniques to Start Now

Marketers need to start with social media optimization (SMO) to get the most out of their social media campaigns.

Learning how to optimize your social media profiles and posts for maximum returns isn’t scary—no keyword research or technical know-how is required. And remember, we’re with you every step of the way.

In this article, we’ll share easy-to-perform social media optimization techniques that can help you improve your brand’s social media visibility, get more engagement with your posts, and get your audience to tell you what they want.

What does social media optimization mean?

Social media optimization is not about your social media strategy as a whole. It focuses on polishing your posts and profiles to maximize their effectiveness.

Think of SMO as an opportunity for you to analyze and adjust your social media activity to improve it.

Benefits of Social Media Optimization

  • Strengthen your online presence
  • Connect and interact with your audience on a deeper level
  • Increase brand awareness on social media
  • Increase reach on social media
  • Improve the quality of your leads from social media

11 Simple Social Media Optimization Techniques You Can Start Using Now

To the untrained eye, a brand’s social media presence may seem effortless, but there’s a lot going on behind the scenes to ensure social media is being used as effectively as possible.

Post at the right time

To be successful on social media, you must consistently post content that not only engages your audience, but is also posted at a time when they are most likely to engage.

Find out the best time post on social media is hard work. But luckily for you, we’ve spent hours researching and analyzing millions of social posts to find this out. It is between 10:00 am on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

But remember, this is a general guide. What works for you and your audience may be different.

Use an online scheduling tool that has a best publishing time feature (we may be biased, but Hootsuite is pretty good!) and take advantage of publishing your social media content when your audience is most likely to be online and engaged in what you are doing. serve again.

Hootsuite’s Best Time to Post feature recommends optimal times to post to each of your social networks

Try it for free

Polish up your bios

Your Social Media Bio is possibly one of the first things a new visitor or potential lead sees when they visit your profile page. So it’s important to have this as polished as possible. Important information that should always be included:

  • Who are you
  • Where do you work
  • What you are doing
  • The topics that interest you
  • The tone of your brand (more on that below!)
  • How someone can contact you

Watch how Hootsuite nails their bio by ensuring the message of being a “world leader in social media management” is consistent across social channels.

Hootsuite Twitter bio

Hootsuite Instagram bio

Hootsuite About section on the Facebook page

You may also want to include a call-to-action (CTA) in your bio that encourages visitors to click a link to your website or a key landing page.

Pro Type: Use a tool such as One click bio to promote your latest content and keep your profile visitors engaged with your business.

Feel free to regularly swap out the link in your bio with your most recent content or an important landing page that you need to drive traffic to.

Optimize your links with UTMs

As we just mentioned above, social media optimization often uses links to direct visitors to a web page where they can continue their interaction with the brand. This is important to drive traffic to your website, content or landing pages.

Link optimization is an essential part of understanding how your audience is interacting with the links you share. By tracking your customers’ behavior, you can see which posts are generating the most traffic from your links and which aren’t. You can track behavior quickly and easily by adding UTMs to your social media channels and posts.

Need information on using UTMs on social networks? This post has everything you need to get started.

Make sure your images are the right size

There’s nothing worse than visiting a social profile and the pictures look awful, don’t they? The look of your brand is everything, darling. So make sure your images look, and most importantly are, professional and polished the right size.

At the very least, make sure your profile picture is a high-resolution picture that isn’t overly cropped, speaks to your brand (preferably a company logo), and clearly represents your business. Oh, and you also want your profile pictures to be consistent across all your social channels. This helps your audience with brand recognition.

Book the correct amount

You don’t want to bombard your audience with non-stop posts, nor do you want to post so little that you fall off their radar. Find your optimum Social media posting schedule is essential to drive more engagement and conversations with your brand.

Keep in mind that finding the right posting spot can take some time. Experiment and find what cadence works best for you.

Review your social media strategy

Take the time to review your current social media strategy and think about the following areas:

  • Are you achieving your goals and targets?
  • Do your social media goals still align with your overall marketing strategy?
  • Are you publishing the right types of content? For example images, videos, just text or a mix of all three? (Hint, you should aim for all three!)
  • Are your posts resonating with your audience?

As you ponder the above, consider how your SMO is affecting them positively (or sometimes negatively).

To get inside information about your company’s social performance, most platforms have built-in analytics to help you understand whether your social strategy is working or not. tools like Hootsuite analytics give you additional valuable insights.

If you want to go one step further, you can always do so A/B testing Your social media optimization and see if one tactic works better compared to another.

For example, if you are an online organic grocery store and you want to talk more about food waste, which image will drive more engagement with your audience? A photo of an overly full landfill producing methane gas, or a photo of a reduced grocery bill?

A wise old marketer (okay, it’s me) quote says, “Always test,” and SMO is the perfect opportunity to do so.

Always keep an eye on your audience

Not all audiences are the same. Spend some time researching demographics to optimize your social media content for the right groups.

For example, if you are addressing an audience in England, you should abandon US slang. If you’re targeting an audience in America, you might not want your social media copy to sound too British, Mr. Boss.

Optimize your accounts for search

Not all of your posts need to use this tactic, as not all of your posts need to be findable by a searcher. Sometimes you post on social media just to communicate with your audience. Remember to be strategic. For example, when we share this post, we include the keyword “social media optimization” as a hashtag to improve the discoverability of the post.

You can also talk to your SEO team to find out the top keywords for your brand and incorporate them into your social media posts to further boost your organic performance.

Online fitness studio A Few Fun Moves incorporates wellness-themed hashtags into their posts to help searchers and prospects discover them on Instagram.

Be consistent with your username

Your username on your social media channels says volumes about who you are and is an essential piece of the puzzle of how your brand comes across. So it’s important to be consistent with your username.

For example, the username @Hootsuite on Twitter and /Hootsuite on Facebook looks much better than @OwlShop and /Hootsuite123.

Write catchy headlines and captions

Not everyone is a writer. Hire a copywriter or social media expert to help you create catchy headlines and captions that will help you achieve your goals. Keep in mind that lyrics that feel appropriate for Twitter might be completely different than lyrics for TikTok. Experiment and test which language and words resonate best with your audience.

It’s important to maintain your brand voice in your posts and captions, and find that sweet spot between conversation and promotion.

Add tags to your posts

If your social media post features another brand or client, it’s a good idea to tag that person in your post. This not only earns you massive niceness points, but also helps create natural conversation and communication in your post.

A golden rule of thumb is that if your post contains user-generated content (UGC), always make sure you tag whoever created the original content.

Ready to start optimizing your social media posts and profile? Hootsuite has the tools and insights to help you understand whether or not your optimization efforts are working. Sign up today to get started.

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