While the words ‘social media optimization‘ may sound like something totally foreign to you, it is something you absolutely need to know about if you want your online business to be as successful as possible.  In today’s online world, people are hungry for information and they are willing to share what they know about a particular niche with others.

You want to spread the word about the value you offer in your business, and social media is one of the most effective ways to go about this.  If you are not familiar with these terms, this information will help you have a better understanding.  And for even more in-depth information, subscribe to Matt Bacak’s Internet Marketing Dirt where he explains the steps and strategies he uses to be successful in the Internet world.

Social media optimization may be thought of in a way related to search engine optimization.  With SEO, you are trying to remove the barriers that prevent the ‘crawlers’ from accessing your site.  With social media optimization, you actually want to knock down any barriers on your site so that your information and content can be found easily by an interested community of people so that they can share it with others.

In effect, you let other people spread the word about your products and services – and with excellent presentation and honest information, it has the potential to spread like wildfire!

So, how do you do this?  There are several things you can do that make it easier for people to share what they find on your site with others.  Placing the ‘Digg This’ or ‘Share This’ icons on your site is something that is hugely popular, and makes it easy for people to share the treasure they have found on your site with countless others.  You can also create ‘link bait,’ which simply means writing about a topic in a way that is so compelling, it may drive thousands of people to your site.

If not done correctly, this may not have any effect whatsoever.  For some people, what they hope to get out of social media optimization is instant recognition and hundreds of backlinks.  The real benefit?  Knowing that you are trying to attract all of this attention makes you work harder to produce genuinely compelling content.