When I posted this on facebook, most of the people were taken by surprise. “Are you serious” went a comment.
I’m not surprised, and here’s why I think SMO is an obsolete term.
1. Its four years old now.
Well, you could argue that its not a valid reason to call a term obsolete. Because if that was the case, SEO is already obsolete. But before arguing, let me clarify that its not just about the age. Its about what happened after it.
When Rohit Bhargava used the term first in 2005, he suggested the 5 rules of social media optimization. At that period of time, Search Engine Optimization was doing really good and SEO was a hot term ! And I can only assume that Rohit was influenced from it. But even if that wasn’t the case, there have been lot of changes in the concept of social media – and that’s my whole point.
2. Social Media four years ago is not the social media today.
And you know that better than me. Twitter wasn’t even known at that time. Facebook wasn’t. Honestly, social media at that point was more about social bookmarking sites like Digg and it was more of an extension to the “Content is King” idea. Websites had content. Content was King and SMO proposed a new way of “packaging” content that was more share-able on the social bookmarking/networking websites.
3. Content is not the king anymore – Users are.
Today, the scene has completely changed that “Content is King” is nothing more than a cliche! Of course, content is king but that isn’t everything. The user, or the viewer/consumer whatever you want to call him, has more powers that he used to have earlier. He’s not just a consumer, nor he is a sharer, he’s more of a “producer” today. He can make or break a story. He can decide what shows on CNN headlines tomorrow. That wasn’t possible four years ago. Period.
4. Social Media Optimization has its limitations.
Honestly, if you think about it. Social Media Optimization is only about “packaging” your content to various social bookmarking/networking channels. I’m more concerned about the term “Optimization”, because that’s like putting two huge brackets around the whole thing.
“You got some content ? Okay, tweak it, rewrite it, tag it, hook it up and you’ll get links and possibly some traffic !”
That was the whole idea. And there’s clearly limits to what you can do there. Heck..that’s not even what we are doing today on social media. We’ve grown bigger, broader and smarter. And SMO is clearly stuck in the olden times.
5. Its not anymore about Optimization, but about Integration.
In my opinion (and you are free to disagree) Social Media is not to be optimized for, its to be integrated. Social Media is out there, its huge, and its for everyone. If you are still thinking about not embracing it and worrying about how you can “optimize” your content so that you can plug it into some social bookmarking site and get some attention from the bigger crowd, I’m sorry you’re going to go nowhere with it – unless you take the plunge and integrate social media into your systems, however small they are.
And, I understand that many people still use Social Media Optimization in the broader sense calling anything we do on social media as social media optimization, like we used to call search engine optimization. I don’t call it wrong, but I’d like to clarify that SMO wasn’t about the social media we see today. Please don’t get carried away with the terms and think everything social media as social media optimization – that’s nor entirely right. Its only a part of the bigger social media strategy we have these days. And I have nothing against Rohit, he’s a pioneer in social media, and did a great job with coining the term, but unfortunately many people “perceive” SMO to be everything social, that’s where everything goes wrong in context.
So essentially, the idea is that “optimization” is so yesterday and gone are those days. We have outgrown ourselves, bigger, better and smarter and we have bigger social media platforms today, we are not limited to social bookmarking sites at all. What we need to think of at this point is to try and transform our online entities go social, rather than trying to fix it. Its no more an optimization exercise, but an integration exercise. Social Media Integration is the right word.
source: dailybloggr
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