What to choose between SMO, SMA, and marketing automation for your strategy?

26 Jun 2024

Marketing campaigns must follow a clear plan and a specific strategy. While marketing automation is widely used nowadays, some believe that SMO or SMA are much more advantageous. As the choice is not always easy, it is better to study each of these techniques.

SMO: advantages and disadvantages

SMO is the acronym for 'Social Media Optimization'. It refers to the optimization of content published on social media. In fact, social networks have become the most effective new marketing platforms. In other words, SMO is the application of all the referencing techniques to social networks for marketing purposes. Hashtags, photos, GIFs, videos… all types of content on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and others are concerned.

The goal of SMO is to bring more visibility and traffic to a post, but especially to a professional profile. Just like in SEO or SEA, this type of referencing follows strict rules, such as text size, image quality, captions, or call-to-actions. It differs from these two modes of referencing because it targets all Internet users without any distinction.

There is no age range, gender, or even specific interests to target. Social networks are used for disseminating and promoting your services or products or your website. There is also the traffic that creates backlinks, brings new followers, new customers, and increases your online popularity. The advantages are thus numerous.

However, it does present disadvantages:

bad buzz: due to false optimization, an overly ambiguous choice of words, or incorrect code, you can fall victim to negative viral content. This can cost you your reputation;
algorithm updates: algorithms are often updated to improve the use of social networks;
paid referencing: some updates involve monthly subscriptions whereas the concerned features were previously free.

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SMA: Advantages and Disadvantages

The SMA refers to "Social Media Advertising" or advertising on social networks. The objective remains the same as that of the SMO, as do the advantages. You use ranking techniques to optimize your content to increase your visibility. This creates traffic and attracts new followers. You will quickly gain reputation and notoriety.

The SMA is therefore not so different from the SMO. To be honest, it is part of it since SMO involves advertising on social media. However, it pertains to the paid aspect because the company is obliged to pay to benefit from an additional advertising feature. It could still involve an additional advertising space, broadcasting continuously on the homepage of all potential targets, more narrowed targeting, etc.

On Facebook, the SMA allows a paid account to be seen in the news feed of all members of a group. Sometimes, targeting is done by age, gender, profession or location. This is what is absent in the SMO. This is in the sense of inbound marketing because we aim to gain direct traffic and direct customers without any intermediary, aside from the ad. This is the mode of advertising that varies. Everything must encourage reaction: sharing, commenting, curiosity, etc.

The disadvantages of SMA are the same as those of SMO. Posts can tend to engage too much and incite interactions. They can go viral but are not always well perceived. This can generate a lot of traffic in a short time, but may encourage followers to unsubscribe. Your reputation can suffer as well. Since they are also ads, they will be subject to the rules of paid advertisements and updates.

Automation: Advantages and Disadvantages

Automation involves streamlining certain stages of a marketing campaign through robots. Here, we use "social media bots", intelligible robots specifically dedicated to social networks. It offers the advantage of convenience. It avoids repetitive tasks and time wastage. Everything that is time-consuming is assigned to a robot, and the human task is minimized.

For businesses, it works because it saves time for engaging in other activities. This way, you become doubly effective. Beware, the bot must yield results; otherwise, it would be a loss-making investment. It is very effective if used wisely. It can either improve your online visibility or your reputation and harm them. The boost can therefore be positive for a while and then decline afterward.

The other disadvantages lie in the "automatic" nature of communication. Indeed, customers sometimes require human contact rather than automated responses. Even if the replies are personalised, they may not be well received. The cost of such a service is also very high, in addition to the many necessary configurations. You should hire a specialist whose service can be even more expensive.

To assist you in your outreach marketing campaign, your marketing automation, or your social media marketing, My Name is Bond offers its services. This web agency knows all the tricks of the trade to propel you to the first page of search engines. And this, regardless of the chosen advertising strategy.

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