Social media optimization is possibly one of the most helpful tools to build traffic. The amount of people who use social networks on a daily basis is already huge, and continues to grow daily. To leverage the power of social media, you need to start at the source and have your website up to par before you push it to the masses.

Optimize Your Site or Blog
Before you get yourself on the bandwagon, you will need to make sure your website is ready. You have to create content that’s not only interesting, but intriguing and informative. Fill your content with details, links, videos, images, and other collaborative tools that allow visitors to get involved on your site. Offer something appealing, something they cannot get elsewhere. This will ensure they come back to you for their fix. Stressing the quality content again, don’t just post stuff for the sake of putting it up. If its not quality, it will reflect poorly on yourself and visitors may not come back.

Get Buttons!
Pretty much every social media site has some kind of button or widget that allows your visitors to take action right from your website. Make sure to include these buttons from the outlets you use most. Adding Digg and Stumble buttons for instance (if it fits your type of content) can make it much easier to gain a front page Digg sumission or a top Stumble. These buttons also make it much easier to share content, which builds links (SERPS) and traffic. You also want to make sure that if you offer RSS, that every person knows about it. Make your subscription offers so that no one can miss them.

SMO For Link Building
One of the great side effects of social media is it creates many backlinks to you when done right. This ensures that when the initial surge dies down, your search engine standings are in it for the long term. Join every possible social site you can and start to flesh out your online identity. As it grows, you will become more and more linked. Content will be spread faster, and to more people which again provides more chances for links. This is really a no-brainer, it’s easy to see how social media optimization can build links.

Stay Active Online
This will be a tipping point for your SMO campaign. Going out and registering yourself, throwing up a link on your profile, and calling it a day won’t do. Update your social media profile daily and become a part of the community. You can not leverage social media until you are a part of it. While this may seem time consuming, good things come to those who wait. But if you don’t have the time to do it yourself, there are plenty of consultants out there. This may be something to take advantage of especially if you are trying to market your business.

One of the great things about social media optimization is that it allows you to go guerrilla. Instead of investing large amounts of time and money on advertising campaigns, you can go out and use yourself for the marketing. Leveraging social media comes down to how well you can create content, how fast you can network, and how well you can network.