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The New SEO: Social Engagement Optimization

After a long day at work, you probably unwind on the couch by picking up your laptop, tablet, or smartphone. Think about the sites (or apps) you engage with on a regular basis. Take a moment to list them out in your head.

For me, it's Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Reddit, and tech blogs like TechnoBuffalo or MacRumors. (I don't have a Facebook account, but I'm sure many of you would add that to a list like this.)

Most of those sites have something in common: they're social platforms. They're ways for people to connect about a particular thing. In the case of LinkedIn, it's about work-related or business stuff. With Reddit (at least for me), it's something to do with video games or technology.

We make a big huff about search engine optimization, and don't get me wrong, it's still important. But we have to ask ourselves this fundamental question: why is it we use search engines like Google?

The answer to that is pretty easy: we're looking for something specific that we are not yet aware of ourselves. Again, this is still pretty important today. When you shop online for, I don't know, a new pair of eyeglasses, search engine optimization helps filter out the best results for you upon querying "eyeglasses".

But the reality is that aside from looking for unfamiliar things, we don't use search engines.

Chances are you have the Facebook app downloaded to your phone or have it saved as a bookmark on your laptop. It's not like you're Googling "Facebook" every time you want to check your Facebook. The same holds true for all the other social platforms.

That said, if I were to query you all on the time you spend on social platforms versus using search engines, my bet is that your usage of social platforms FAR outstrips your use of search engines.

Just a few posts back, I started to explore the algorithmic science behind viewership in social platforms. (If you missed it, here it is again.) What I found in my experiments is that, like search engine optimization, there is an unknown algorithm to how things are returned on social platforms. You might recall that on my experiment with LinkedIn, it appears that shares with pictures get more views.

So, let's put this all together.

If a company wants to get the most eyeballs on something and consumers are spending most time on social platforms, then why aren't we exploring how to optimize content to get returned the most per the social platform's algorithmic method?

Being super interested in this, I honestly couldn't find a term for this. In the search engine land, we call it SEO: search engine optimization. Being cutesy, I took that same acronym and turned it into what I call social engagement optimization.

The "social" and "optimization" word choices probably make sense to you, and the reason I chose "engagement" (aside from being an "E" word) is that MatPat referred to YouTube's algorithm change in 2012 to be focused on engagement in that video I shared a few posts back. (And if you missed it again, here it is... again!)

Now, of course, I'm not saying I'm a pioneer in this field. Clearly, MatPat beat me to it in the YouTube community, and I am sure that there are other people out there focused on this. But the fact that I could not find a unified term for this kind of thing via Google shows me that it has not yet gained traction.

I think this is a good place to stop for now. Again, this is a new field of study for me, too, so expect more posts coming in the future about this. For now, I hope I got you thinking. Regardless of what it will be called in the future, I think we're going to be hearing more and more of this idea in the same way that traditional SEO has come to be what it is today.

I'm going to try something a little different with today's post by summarizing everything discussed here in a few bullets. Let me know how you like this, and I'll consider doing it in the future.

SUMMARY
  • Search engines and SEO are still important, but consumers generally use social platforms much more often
  • SEO has been a big deal for companies wanting to grow their business online
  • Social platforms use special algorithms to return content in varying ways
  • Social platforms are a great way for companies to engage with consumers
  • Companies should consider the new SEO, social engagement optimization, of learning how to best refine their content so that it is engaged with by the greatest amount of consumers
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