Social Media Optimization: 8 Expert Tips for Businesses (2024)

In 2024, brands across the globe are predicted to spend more than $234 billion on social media advertising. Undoubtedly, social media ads can pay dividends and impact your bottom line. But ads are only one facet of a well-rounded social media marketing strategy. Another way to see follower growth and increase engagement is by using social media optimization—a way to focus your efforts, and make them as impactful as possible.

With almost 90,000 followers on TikTok, skin care brand Dieux knows a thing or two about social media optimization strategies. Read on for social media optimization tips to supercharge your social media accounts, including valuable insights from Dieux CEO Charlotte Palermino that can help give your social media profiles that much-needed personal touch.

What is social media optimization (SMO)?

Social media optimization (SMO) is a digital marketing tactic that focuses on improving social media’s effectiveness as a sales channel. 

A social media optimization strategy is about establishing clear goals for a social media account, implementing strategies for improvement, continuously tracking metrics using social media analytics tools, and iterating until your goals are reached. 

Goals you might try to achieve using social media optimization techniques include: 

Goal	Measured by
Grow your reach / Increase awareness	Impressions
Grow your following	Follower count
Increase engagement with your audience	Likes, comments
Increase website traffic	Website visits from social platforms
Grow revenue	Dollars attributable to social media traffic (first touch or last touch attribution)
Improve overall content performance	Month over month, quarter over quarter, or year over year change in social post engagement and CTR from social

8 social media optimization tactics

Social media optimization means improving your social content according to best practices and taking an iterative approach for continuous improvement. Here are eight SMO tactics to supercharge your social media efforts and reach your business goals. Plus, advice from Charlotte Palermo, founder of Dieux, a viral skin care brand that has amassed 90,000 followers and eight million likes on TikTok.

Create optimized, recognizable accounts

Your brand should be instantly recognizable across every social media site you use. For instance, Dieux uses the same profile picture, handle (@dieuxskin), and the bio line (“Clinical science for ethereal skin”) on both Instagram and TikTok. 

The principle of consistency applies to more than just your static profile—it extends to every visual asset (from typeface to color) and the voice you use in your captions. Create a visual and voice guide as part of your content marketing strategy to make sure that you have strong brand recognition between accounts. 

From there, ensure that all links in your bio and posts point to the correct place, so that you capitalize on every click you get.

Make your profile readable and accessible

Users will understand and engage with your content in a range of ways, and you want to make sure you maximize accessibility for all audiences. Include descriptive subtitles, captions, and hashtags. 

Put your hashtags in camel case (#PhotoOfTheDay instead of #photooftheday) to increase readability. Include descriptive alt text on your posts to allow consumers who use screen readers to quickly understand your images. And of course, make sure your profile image, post images, text, and subtitles are the right image size for each platform. Just a couple of small touches can be the difference between increased engagement and a lost follower.

Optimize for social search

Social media is quickly becoming the new search engine, especially among younger users—for instance, 64% of Gen Z TikTok users use the platform as a search tool. One-quarter of US adults preferred to use social media platforms as their primary choice for online search. 

To capture some of this search volume for valuable leads and increase your brand’s visibility, optimize your profile bio, your post captions, and your hashtag usage with keywords that are strategic to your business. For instance, Dieux’s Instagram profile is tagged within the “health/beauty” category and mentions the keywords “clinical,” “skin,” and “dieuxskin.com.” With these keywords, users on multiple networks searching for Dieux or for general skin care accounts can find the profile. 

Another priority for your social media optimization efforts should be to list your product on social media stores, utilizing functionalities like TikTok Shopping and Instagram Shopping. This helps make products especially searchable on social apps (and makes conversion many steps easier for potential customers). 

You can also optimize for social media search by getting more people to create social posts featuring your name or product. This might mean partnering with content creators, influencers, or affiliate marketers—all of which will link back to your page, boosting your search rankings with high-engagement content.

Maintain a consistent cadence 

Posting consistently isn’t just a way to boost engagement—it directly affects the way a social media platform will recommend your content. The Instagram algorithm favors new content over old when showing search results or serving recommendations. This means, if you’re not regularly posting new content, you could get lost below the crowd of others who are.

The perfect rhythm to post your content is a delicate balancing act. Too seldom and you can lose followers, momentum, and brand awareness. Post too often and your social media presence might start to annoy your following (and burn out your social team.) In general, brands should try to shoot for between three to five times a week, depending on the platform. 

To really optimize, tailor your calendar to your audience. Track metrics to find when your Instagram posts or Facebook posts perform the best. With some trial-and-error and enough data, you can find the time when your target demographic is online and willing to engage. Once you’ve optimized for your target audience, you can set a consistent posting schedule with your golden time slots across several social media platforms.

Build and maintain robust tracking infrastructure

You’re probably tracking analytics on your social media sites, but how well is that data actually being captured, evaluated, and actioned on? Audit your social media tracking infrastructure for weak points and potential improvements. Look for ways to optimize toward converting your various demographics and to increase brand awareness.

For example, how many of your links to a website or landing page are trackable to the specific social account? Do you know which hashtags you use are bringing in the most new followers? 

If you’re in the dark about your data, you might need to consider using new or updated analytics tools that track more than just your followers and likes. Your new best friend? AI social tracking tools that can analyze trends and create reports with suggestions for improvement. You can also use these AI social media optimization tools to create and recycle evergreen content so you can maintain a consistent posting schedule. 

Don’t forget to look beyond your account—use social listening tools to scan for social media posts and valuable content relevant to your business. AI social media optimization tools can even make suggestions about what moves you should make next.

Go deeper

If your content isn’t going viral yet, the first thing to evaluate is the content itself. Does it go deep enough to really provide value for your audience? Might it feel artificial or gimmicky? Charlotte has found that in-depth, authentic storytelling is the key to success on any social network. 

For example, one of Dieux’s most viral videos isn’t flashy or scripted; it’s just Charlotte discussing the packaging journey for a product. 

“It’s just, like, a five minute video about plastic and aluminum,” Charlotte says. “It’s about how the way we use plastic sometimes isn’t the way it should be used—now that we have more information on it.”

To go deeper in your own content, think about the conversations users are having on social media—even those that your brand might be afraid to have. Ask yourself: What do my customers want my brand to level with them about? Which of their questions have the most complex answers? 

Charlotte notes: “It’s much easier to give a straightforward answer to something that’s definitive versus saying, well, it depends.” But the gray area is where the richest storytelling can happen.

🌟Out of content ideas? Try some strategies from our list to help improve your brand’s social media marketing. 

Be yourself

Audiences know when you’re not being authentic, and they may not respond well if they think you just want them to buy what you’re selling. How do you optimize your social media channels to be more you? Do some brand soul-searching to find a voice that not only matches your brand identity, but also resonates with your audience. Test and iterate on your social media pages until you can make your content stand out and your followers recognize your brand voice the moment they scroll to your post.

For Charlotte, this means being utterly herself on Dieux’s social feeds. 

“When I met somebody that I was friends with on the internet,” Charlotte recalls, “they said: ‘Oh wow, you really are exactly like you are on social media.’” This is exactly the effect she wants. 

Her advice for business owners who want to cultivate something similar for their brand? 

“I can’t tell you to emulate me,” she says, “but I can tell you to kind of strengthen who you are.”

Create clear CTAs and drive traffic to your website

Having followers is great, but having customers is better. A strong call to action (CTA) will help your followers make the transition to paying customers, so evaluate the wording, placement, and effectiveness of the CTAs you’re currently using. 

CTAs for social media can take many forms—captions, spoken words during a video, a subtitle on the screen, a link to landing pages in your bio. Wherever the CTA, shoot for strong verbs, a sense of urgency, and a short-but-sweet length.

For instance, this Instagram post from Dieux gets straight to the point: “Comment FOREVER to get on the waitlist.” Other CTAs might direct followers to “Shop the sale” or “Subscribe now.” For more ideas, take a look at our guide to writing the best CTAs.