Over the past few days I’ve been thinking about Rohit Bhargava’s “5 Rules of Social Media Optimization (SMO)”. While it was published last August, it still can be utilized today and will continue to have an impact into the future. My conclusion from the post? Social Media Optimization means being a good community participant. By producing valuable content that others can easily consume and promote you will become better optimized. The most important step in SMO is to help promote others and participate in the conversation. This can be done by linking to sources in your articles as well as commenting on interesting posts on other people’s blogs. It is as simple as that.

The same rules exist outside of the digital world. When you tell a joke that your friend told you, you should probably state where you obtained the joke from. A better example would be spreading rumors. You always need to say where you obtained your information. Well in the blogosphere the same thing goes. Pay respect to those that inform you and drop a link. Continue to be a part of the community on an ongoing basis. By participating in conversation on other people’s blogs, you show that you care about what they write as well as show that you have something useful to add to the conversation. Later, when people are looking for interesting dialogue, they will come visit your site.