“According to Hans Peter Brondmo of Plum during the SES San Jose session “Marketing with Social Media“, 1% of those involved with social media are creating content, 10% will enrich that content and 90% will consume it. That’s a lot of influence wielded by content creators and those that reblog and mashup. Think about what you can do to enable content creation as well as the repurposing of that content for what might possibly be the most productive outcome.” Source: TopRankBlog.com (emphasis added)
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has long been the most important three-letter acronym on the block. Not any more. Move over SEO, SMO is about to crash the party. How does your forum stack up?
I was poking around at TechMeme recently, and I came across a blog post that referenced a great piece titled, “5 Rules of Social Media Optimization (SMO).” Since I believed I was up on my Internet acronyms, and this one escaped me, I thought I would take a look. I am glad I did - it’s great food for thought for forum admins.
Blogger Rohit Bhgargava has coined a new phrase for us:
“The concept behind SMO is simple: implement changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs.”
Aha! You mean there wasn’t a name for this? Well now there is, and you can thank Rohit. So how does this apply to forums? I thought I would take my favorite 5 rules (actually, now there are 17 in total, but I will only talk about 5 here) and see how they apply to message boards. There is something in here for everyone, and you can probably guarantee an increase in traffic if you implement some of them.
1. “Make tagging and bookmarking easy.” Do you use social bookmarking like del.icio.us? Are you familiar with tagging? These tools are used widely in the blogosphere, but I rarely see forum admin make these tools easy to use for its members. Why not add a small “Digg This” button to each thread? Why not add a couple of syndication buttons to each thread/post so users can just click to save? (Note, don’t go crazy with the buttons! Depending upon your audience, one service may be more popular than another. If you are going to add anything, I would limit yourself to two or three services and make SURE they are not huge!)
2. “Reward Inbound Links.” Very interesting. I really like this one because it’s just plain nice to recognize new incoming links, and it also encourages more. I could see a small section in the sidebar of a forum index with an area for, “Recent Incoming Links” or something where is lists the last 5 places that have linked to you. Implementation is easier on a blog (using trackbacks, etc.), but there are already link reciprocating scripts that can verify incoming links, so I would imagine it wouldn’t be too hard to get this in place if you come up with a method for verification. And if you are worried about sending people to other sites via outbound links, stop worrying. There are a gazillion sites on the net at their fingertips. Don’t let that stop you from rewarding those who are linking to you. You are crazy to think that not giving readers outbound links is going to keep them on your site.
3. “Be a User Resource, Even if it Doesn’t Help You.” This one goes with the last part of #2. Forums are the ultimate collaborative effort. Encourage the creation of resources that people really WANT within your niche. Encourage collaboration amongst members to add to specific, relevant topics and then create really great one-page resources on those topics. (And when you become the ultimate resource for the specific topic, make sure that the proper social bookmarking tools are listed!) All those new inbound links will drive lots of targeted, free traffic.
4. “Reward helpful and valuable users.” Love, love, love this one! Forums are a natural environment for this kind of system. vB already has a bit of a rating system in place with thread ratings and reputation, but I think you could go a step further. Consider showcasing a member every month. Emphasize quality and not quantity. Consider implementing badges to recognize the best/most helpful members in different categories. Consider allowing other members to vote in order to get everyone involved. The options are limitless here, but the message is the same: Reward the members who have made your site what it is today. You wouldn’t be anywhere without them.
5. “Don’t Forget Your Roots, Be Humble.” This goes with #4 a bit, but it deserves its own mention. Don’t ever forget where you came from. Every forum started with zero members. Your members ARE your site. They drive the creation of every new page. I have seen some sites implement changes that the masses hated (like a new design or taking away a feature) and the admin took on a ‘like it or leave it’ attitude (seemingly because they felt criticized). It’s not pretty, and it’s also not necessary. If I may be so blunt, cater to the every whim of your members (within reason). You may not be able to do everything they want, but you darn well better look like you tried. Don’t get too proud and don’t rest on your laurels. (I look forward to sharing the details of our new design launch because we really tried to implement this, so stay tuned for that.) And if you want to know what it’s like to act like an a** to the people who made you what you are, check out Facebook.com’s idiotic blunder.
I think the main thing to remember is that media is changing. I would argue that bloggers tend to be better at implementing changes to take advantage of the social networking/bookmarking/media tools out there, but forums really haven’t tried. Perhaps it’s due to their size and clunkiness, or perhaps forums just already do a good job on their own, but I know that there are several ideas that I plan to implement in the near future on our forum based in this list.
Oh, and before anyone emails me that “Forget SEO!” is bad advice, let me say that I don’t mean to completely forget it. Just remember that while Google has done its darndest to return the best, most relevant results, there is still crap all over the place. Social tools imply human interaction, and that human interaction, in my opinion, produces better results in determining what’s good and what isn’t. As such, I think these social tools with dominate the future… Okay? 
by Laua Alter, NoteBook Forums
