Social Media Marketing (SMM) and Social Media Optimization (SMO)

Social Media Marketing (SMM) and Social Media Optimization (SMO) are two new phrases that popped up last year to define marketing through social media and social networking sites. There seems to be a lot of confusion about what each of them mean and what exactly they define, which is bound to happen with any new phrase.

SMM is the process of  creating and distributing of content and other messages through the social web by some form of viral marketing. This can be anything from creating compelling content that gets bookmarked and even hits digg’s homepage to spreading a viral video by putting it on YouTube and other social media websites. It’s about the things that are done off-site, for example, participating in online communities where your customers hang out would be an active role that falls under SMM.

SMO plays more towards refining a website (optimizing it) so that it’s existence and content are easily spread through social mediums and online communities by users and visitors of the website. This can include anything done “on-page” such as improving the usability and design of the website so that it becomes more compelling to users, in an effort to help them spread it through social media sites. The most common example of SMO is represented by all the “digg this” and “add to delicious” icons and links that are all over the web today.

The two remind me of the differences between pull vs. push marketing, and I have to be careful what I say here. In a way with SMM you are actually pushing your message out there, but that’s usually where the pushing stops. Once you push that message out there it should not require any more pushing. A true viral marketing campaign is so good that it spreads on it’s own and people actually want to spread it, so the push usually ends with the creation and initial “planting” of the campaign. SMO is all about pulling people in with an “optimized” site and encouraging visitors to spread your content without any effort on your part. I think the clear difference between the two is that SMO refers to on-page modifications (on your website) while SMM refers to activities that take place outside of your website (on other websites). As I see it, Social Media Optimization can be one of the ways to encourage Social Media Marketing activities by users and visitors of your website.

What other people think about these ideas about social media optimization and social media marketing and does my explanation make sense to you, or do we need to go back to the drawing board?