A new phrase starts taking force in the world of Internet marketing. As well as it is common to talk about the importance of the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in a web life; with the emergence of increasingly dynamical social applications and sites, there arises also the importance of optimizing the web social communication, this optimization is known as SMO (Social Media Optimization).

The appearance of social communities, web portals 2.0, mashups, RSS and millions of blogs interacting, are changing the classic Internet traffic distribution. Before, traffic was provided almost only by the portals – seekers, now on the other hand many visits come for references. To close our eyes before this change, would be a great mistake.

For it, Rohit Bhargava started outlining the first directives to optimize the Web social communication, which they have been increasing and here I summarize.

Rules of Social Media Optimization

1. Increase your linkability: The first one and more important. The web has to stop being “static” as possible.

2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy: To add buttons for “add to del.icio.us” or other services.

3. Reward those who link your web (Inbound links): To incite links, we need to make the process simple and offer clear benefits. The use of “Permanent links” in the blogs, for example.

4. Help your content travel: Unlike SEO, SMO is not only to make changes to a web. If you have content that could be “portable” (such as PDFs, videos or audio), send them to relevant sites and /or blogs.

5. Encourage the mashup: SMO’s recommendation happens for facilitating that our contents could be used by others and generate attention on ourselves.

6. Be a Useful Resource, even if it doesn’t help you: Include links to pages and information that could help them with their aims and intentions. In this way, your page turns into a reference point of a specific community.

7. Reward valuable and helpful users: This type of users will be good influencers or spokesmen of your site. Seek for forms to “reward them “. Probably you could present them in your home page, or develop a “rating” system. Other times an e-mail or a private grateful note can be very favorable. Try to be always sincere.

8. Participate: Join the conversation. Social Media is a two way street. To take part makes your message spread further and faster.

9. Know how to get to your audience: If you don’t know your target audience you are in trouble. There will always be a specific audience that will find you interesting and others that not. Worry on pleasing the one that is interested.

10. Create content: There are certain contents that spread socially in a natural way. It does not matter what industry you are in and what boring products you sell, there is always some kind of content that can be created that will work.

11. Be real: A community does not reward those who are fakers. This post can be very illustrative in the matter.

12. Do not forget your roots, be humble: If you have turned into a “BlogStar” or your site obtains an impressive traffic, stay humble.

13. Do not be afraid of trying new things, keep fresh: Internet as a social phenomenon changes by the minute. Be aware of the new tools, products and challenges.

14. Develop a SMO strategy: Define your aims and establish goals. Be totally conscious of what you want to manage as result of these tactics.

15. Choose your SMO tactics wisely: Be conscious of which actions will have more effect in the search of your goals.

16. Make SMO part of your process and best practices: Find ways to incorporate SMO tactics at the “template” level of document creation and as part of information distribution.