Have you heard of social media optimization? Test Marketing?

Social media optimization or in other words social media
that markets through using information gathered from social
communities.

A few examples of social media optimization tools and
websites include blogging/RSS feeds for blogs, Facebook,
Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and MySpace, BEBO and incorporating
third-party applications to communities like Facebook and
Myspace. Social media optimization is similar to search
engine optimization, but differs in many ways, Mostly, the
focal point is on driving traffic from sources within Social
bookmarking sites and communities other than directing
traffic from search engines.

The number of social media websites has exploded in the last
year and each of these new social networking websites is
different, they all attract different audiences with
individual and diverse interests. More and more businesses
want to experiment with social media optimization and you
can see this in the explosion in popularity of Twitter.

Twitter, one of the newest social networking websites, it
uses micro-blogging and many people are getting actively
involved in generating publicity through this form of social
media. When you “twitter” or micro-blog, post pictures,
and/or links you are inviting others into your life to
comment and ultimately approve or reject what you are
offering. This type of immediate response is an incredible
way to gather “up to the minute” targeted information.

Why is this important might you ask?

Getting feedback about your product and services is very
important and can help immensely when branding your company.
Business reputation is very important in branding and
marketing and up to date immediate feedback is considered an
integral part of an online reputation management system.
That is why many executives are now seeing the worth of
using social bookmarking and social media optimization to
test Search Engine Reputation Management strategies. this is
incredible for organizations or individuals who need to
enhance their online presence but cannot afford to pay for
surveys and focus groups.

Using social communities can optimize your “linkability” or
give you feed back and tips on ways to make your brand more
comfortable,

Along with immediate feedback about your brand popularity it
can also help your overall business.

Companies and individuals can now successfully use services
like tweetscan or
Tweepbeep to monitor each and every time their company name
or one of their products names are mentioned on Twitter and
then choose to respond accordingly through the social media
website or through their marketing, or engineering
departments.

This has the potential for real time insight for a company
CEO, whom often lose touch, with the people who are using
the products or services their corporation provides.

Imagine, if back in the late eighties, the board of K-mart
could have been following social media sites instead of
listening to yes men in the company. Then perhaps they could
have understood how a line in a movie like Rain Man where
Dustin Hoffman says “K-mart sucks” could become the punch
line to a joke they had already become.

Smart companies that want to avoid that kind of meltdown are
learning to keep their finger on the pulse of consumers
wants and needs and if you want to succeed you’ll want to do
the same thing.