Social Media Optimisation Tips – Building Followers

SMO, or social media optimisation, is a vital aspect of online business. Your customers and prospects use social media tools and if you use them as well, you can develop strong relationships with your audience.

To succeed you’ll want to follow and be followed. Below are some tips to help you start building followers on social media sites.

1. Learn How The Site Works

Blindly using a social media site may not help you in the long run. Certain social sites have a code of social media etiquette and methods to use them in order to maximise their effectiveness. If you don’t follow these guidelines, you may not get much benefit.

Take the time to familiarize yourself with a site before jumping in and using it. Lurk for a bit to see how things work and then go ahead and get involved.

2. Follow Others

The key to many social media sites is to be sociable. Most people won’t follow you for long if you don’t follow them as well. You want people’s attention and for many social sites, the more people you have following your updates, the better. Some sites offer effective data mining tools to help you find followers by demographic, by interest, or by keywords. A good example is Twitter advanced search.

Try to find others who may be interested in networking with you through common interests. Consider following some names that are popular in your industry, as well. Associating yourself with active social media participants is also a good idea. Converse with them and they’ll respond to you publicly, bringing your name to the attention of their followers.

3. Be Helpful

Don’t use your social media accounts for pure promotion only. A higher ratio of helpfulness versus blatant link-pushing will serve you well. When people visit your profile on sites, such as: Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, and others, they may look at your contribution to conversations as a factor in whether or not they will befriend you.

A good mix of helpful and interesting participation can increase your chances of building followers, gaining popularity, and getting results.

4. Promote Others

If you’re on Twitter, re-tweet people, participate in Follow Friday, and share. If you’re on Facebook, give others a nod of encouragement, a thumbs up, etcetera. Social sites are about social participation and people often respond in kind when you’ve taken the time to acknowledge them publicly.

5. Analyse Results

If you find you are losing followers rather than building followers, take a look at your recent posting habits. Did you say something too opinionated or do a bit too much in the self-promotion area? Conversely, if you’ve suddenly had a rise in friend numbers and clicks through to your website(s) from that site, do more of what you’ve been doing recently.

6. Gather Followers From Other Sources

Don’t be afraid to try and build more social media followers from other sites, too. Tell your Facebook friends that you’re on Twitter and vice versa. Add your userid to posts and other social media updates so that people can find you and increase your following.

If you are interested in connecting with me on some of my favourite social media sites, here are a handful of places you will find me: Twitter – Facebook – StumbleUpon – Digg – LinkedIn. I’ll see you there .

See you at the top of Google!

Sean Rasmussen
SEO Australia Pacific
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