Social Media - Validated

You know that social media is an accepted marketing channel when there is talk of optimizing it - see the Introduction to Social Media Optimization (SMO).

Some take-aways:

• It involves driving traffic to a website through new channels because search engines aren't the only sites that drive big traffic anymore. While it's not taking over SEO yet, it has the potential to someday soon.
• Social media can be considered anything that can help build a community to rally around.
• Buyer beware though, you can't force SMO.

And here are what began as Rohit Bhargava's 5 Rules of Social Media Optimization, now up to a list of 16 rules; 6 & 7 courtesy of Jeremiah Owyang, 8-11 from Cameron Olthius, 12 & 13 courtesy of Loren Baker, and 14-16 from Lee Odden:

1. Increase your linkability
2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy
3. Reward inbound links
4. Help your content travel
5. Encourage the mashup
   
6. Be a user resource, even if it doesn't help you
7. Reward helpful and valuable users
8. Participate
9. Know how to target your audience
10. Create content
11. Be real
12. Don't forget your roots, be humble
13. Don't be afraid to try new things, stay fresh
14. Develop an SMO strategy - define objectives and set goals
15. Choose your SMO tactics wisely
16. Make SMO part of your process and best practices