Social Media is all about connections and the way an audience can relate content to their own lives. When deciding what to post, it can be difficult to frame things in a way that engages your target audience while still catching potential new audience members on various platforms. Another challenge is how to engage the audience to fully interact with a piece, rather than just scrolling past once they come across it.
To address the problem of catching the attention of audience members, Social Media Optimization or SMO is an extremely effective strategy. Much like Search Engine Optimization for writers and bloggers, it uses similar techniques, though applied slightly differently. SMO is all about making content accessible and therefore increasing views, likes, comments, and shares…depending on your social platform or goals.
One of the most important things when it comes to SMO is uniformity of posts by building a content “brand.” This incorporates not only a little bit of marketing, but a strong sense of purpose with your content. Uniformity gives the audience something to expect and rely on your brand for. When they start to notice trends in posts, they expect a similar format or type of information every time something is posted on that specific media platforms. Obviously not every
Take @natgeo (National Geographic) on Instagram for example. From first glance they have a collection of aesthetically pleasing photos and videos. But, when given a closer look, it becomes clear that each photo is accompanied by a caption, link to the photographer’s personal page, a location in which it was taken, and finally a couple hashtags that embody which current events or trending topics the content is most relevant to. Though this formula might very depending on the type of account, personal, journalistic, or for a brand, it is a good idea to engage an audience in a few different ways.
The hashtags in the post allow people who are searching similar subjects to come across it and the caption to provide context and give the viewer more information. Linking the photographer’s personal page is also beneficial because it not only gives proper credit, but also allows their followers to engage with National Geographic page as well and helps to drive traffic.
On National Geographic’s latest post, they feature a stunning photo of a staggered waterfall in front of a bright orange sunset. Though the photo itself is stunning, one might not understand the purpose of it’s posting unless the read the caption. This same waterfall also happened to be in the spotlight because of the new Marvel Movie, Black Panther. This pulls on National Geographic’s reputation as a source for stunning natural photos but also helps to engage a new audience by including pop culture references. If a person would to look up Black Panther on Instagram’s search engine, this post would be likely to come up and draw in the user.
National Geographic and other traditionally news oriented sites are taking on a new approach to certain social media sites, especially Instagram. Since photos are the best way to engage a reader’s attention, Instagram is a natural way to take advantage of visual representations of a story. If a viewer is intrigued enough by the content of the photo, they will be much more likely to engage with the caption, and hopefully a link to the full story behind the photo (if there is one). The viewer will also feel inclined to share the photo with a friend or colleague if it is related to something that was recently brought up in conversation.
