According to technologist Danny Sullivan, the term "social media optimization" was first used and described by marketer Rohit Bhargava[8][9] on his marketing blog in August, 2006. In the same post, Bhargava established the five important rules of social media optimization. Bhargava believed that by following his rules, anyone could influence the levels of traffic and engagement on their site, increase popularity, and ensure that it ranks highly in search engine results. An additional 11 SMO rules have since been added to the list by other marketing contributors.

The 16 rules of SMO, according to one source, are as follows:[10]

1. Increase your linkability
2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy
3. Reward inbound links
4. Help your content to "travel" via sharing
5. Encourage the mashup, where users are allowed to remix content
6. Be a user resource, even if it doesn’t help you (e.g., provide resources and information for users)
7. Reward helpful and valuable users
8. Participate (join the online conversation)
9. Know how to target your audience
10. Create new, quality content ("web scraping" of existing online content is ignored by good search engines)
11. Be "real" in the tone and style of the posts
12. Don't forget your roots; be humble
13. Don't be afraid to experiment, innovate, try new things and "stay fresh"
14. Develop an SMO strategy
15. Choose your SMO tactics wisely
16. Make SMO a key part of your marketing process and develop company best practices

Bhargava's initial five rules were more specifically designed to SMO, while the list is now much broader and addresses everything that can be done across different social media platforms. According to author and CEO of TopRank Online Marketing, Lee Odden, a Social Media Strategy is also necessary to ensure optimization. This is a similar concept to Bhargava's list of rules for SMO.

The Social Media Strategy may consider:[11]

1. Objectives e.g. creating brand awareness, and using social media for external communications.
2. Listening e.g. monitoring conversations relating to customers and business objectives.
3. Audience e.g. finding out who the customers are, what they do, who they are influenced by, and what they frequently talk about. It is important to work out what customers want in exchange for their online engagement and attention.
4. Participation and content e.g. establishing a presence and community online, and engaging with users by sharing useful and interesting information.
5. Measurement e.g. keeping a record of likes and comments on posts, and number of sales to monitor growth and determine which tactics are most useful in optimizing social media.

Facebook has in recent years become a popular channel for advertising, alongside traditional forms such as television, radio, and print. With over 1 billion active users, and 50% of those users logging into their accounts every day[14] it is an important communication platform that businesses can utilize and optimize to promote their brand and drive traffic to their websites. There are three commonly used strategies to increase advertising reach on Facebook:

1. Improving the effectiveness of posts, achieved by adjusting the length and timing of posts to influence the number of likes and comments it receives. This will help the post reach a greater number of Facebook users, ultimately increasing its reach.
2. Increasing network size, achieved by analyzing user behavior to determine how often to post and what type of content to post.
3. Buying more reach, achieved by paying Facebook to advertise a post.

Improving effectiveness and increasing network size are organic approaches, while buying more reach is a paid approach which does not require any further action.[15] Most businesses will attempt an "organic" approach to gaining a significant following before considering a paid approach. Because Facebook requires a login, it is important that posts are public to ensure they will reach the widest possible audience. Posts that have been heavily shared and interacted with by users are displayed as 'highlighted posts' at the top of newsfeeds. In order to achieve this status, the posts need to be engaging, interesting, or useful. This can be achieved by being spontaneous, asking questions, addressing current events and issues, and optimizing trending hashtags and keywords. The more engagement a post receives, the further it will spread and the more likely it is to feature on first in search results.

Another organic approach to Facebook optimization is cross-linking different social platforms. By posting links to websites or social media sites in the profile 'about' section, it is possible to direct traffic and ultimately increase search engine optimization. Another option is to share links to relevant videos and blogposts.[11]

Facebook Connect is a functionality that launched in 2008 to allow Facebook users to sign up to different websites, enter competitions, and access exclusive promotions by logging in with their existing Facebook account details. This is beneficial to users as they don’t have to create a new login every time they want to sign up to a website, but also beneficial to businesses as Facebook users become more likely to share their content.

Often the two are interlinked, where in order to access parts of a website, a user has to like or share certain things on their personal profile, or invite a number of friends to like a page. This can lead to greater traffic flow to a website as it reaches a wider audience. Businesses have more opportunities to reach their target markets if they choose a paid approach to SMO. When Facebook users create an account, they are urged to fill out their personal details such as gender, age, location, education, current and previous employers, religious and political views, interests, and personal preferences such as movie and music tastes.

Facebook then takes this information and allows advertisers to use it to determine how to best market themselves to users that they know will be interested in their product. This can also be known as micro-targeting. If a user clicks on a link to like a page, it will show up on their profile and newsfeed. This then feeds back into organic social media optimization, as friends of the user will see this and be encouraged to click on the page themselves. Although advertisers are buying mass reach, they are

attracting a customer base with a genuine interest in their product. Once a customer base has been established through a paid approach, businesses will often run promotions and competitions to attract more organic followers.[10]

• Customer engagement
• Online identity management
• Propaganda
• Public relations
• Search engine marketing
• Social media marketing
• Social network