Social Media Optimization

Rohit Bhargava of Influential Marketing started an excellent thread of blog posts with his post titled: 5 Rules of Social Media Optimization. In it, he starts us off with a list of rules for engaging the social web community and building traffic in the process. This initial post has since been enhanced by others, resulting in a list of 16 rules so far. The additional contributors include:

1. Jeremiah Owyang contributed Rules 6 and 7.
2. Cameron Olthuis contributed Rules 8 through 11.
3. Loren Baker contributed Rules 12 and 13.
4. Lee Odden contributed Rules 14 through 16.
5. Jean-Marie Le Ray has translated the initial 16 rules into French.

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As you will see, Rohit Bhargava has done a nice job of following his own rules. He has updated his post on a regular basis to add links to those who have added new rules. This speaks to the recommendations of several of the people above of engaging in a dialogue and communicating. To that end, I would like to propose a new rule, Rule 17.

1. Engage your peers: Find out who your peers are. Specifically, seek them out and engage them in discussions. Read their writings regularly. Add comments to their posts. Send them emails. Ask for their opinions. In the world of the social web, people are looking for the value added dialogue.

This thread of blog posts is an excellent example of people of like minds looking to build out a concept to its fullest. It’s this type of discussion that helps a concept achieve its most complete definition.
In addition, I would like to propose a modification to Rule 11, as proposed by Cameron Olthuis. The original rule 11 was “Be real – The community does not reward fakers”. I would simply change it to “Be Real / Earn your readers trust – The community does not reward fakers”. The modification is simply intended to broaden the task a bit, as there are many things that you can do to earn trust from your readers, such as being accurate, providing timely info and insight, etc.
That said, let’s look at the total list, including the new proposed rule 17, and the proposed modification to Rule 11.

1. Increase your linkability
2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy
3. Reward inbound links
4. Help your content travel
5. Encourage the mashup
6. Be a User Resource, even if it doesn’t help you
7. Reward helpful and valuable users
8. Participate
9. Know how to target your audience
10. Create content
11. Be real / Earn your readers trust
12. Don’t forget your roots, be humble
13. Don’t be afraid to try new things, stay fresh
14. Develop an SMO strategy
15. Choose your SMO tactics wisely.
16. Make SMO part of your process and best practices.
17. Engage your peers.