What News Do You Share? Is Your Site Optimized for Social Media?

I'm always weary of news buzzwords - but this one caught my eye: "Social Media Optimization."

At this point in the web's development "search engine optimization" is standard. I challenge you to find a serious web publisher who doesn't recognize the acronym SEO from a mile away.

Social media, however, isn't on everyone's radar. My question in reading this blog post from the Early Edition, which tipped me off on "Social Media Optimization, isn't how news organizations can leverage social media to get more traffic - but on what rubric they are doing so. Do we want news organizations to clamor for traffic or quality reporting - and is there a way to achieve both?

Journalism is not a consumer product. In some ways it's a social service - so on what basis do you want people sharing news articles? Because it is funny, entertaining or inaccurate? Or on the basis that it is informative, insightful and timely?

This comes back to a reoccurring theory of mine: Social news sites like Digg, Reddit, Mixx, etc, all have different communities. To the extent that some of these sites vote on rubric that is very loosely defined like Reddit, their community has a wider type of story they want to promote. On Reddit I’ve seen everything from hacks and jokes to breaking news promoted.

Sites like Newsvine have a little more definition to them - and thus the articles shared on that site fit a more particular profile. Unless you join the “tech” group – you can filter out content that is just about computer hacks.

To my knowledge NewsTrust.net has the most defined mission statement - to find quality information and journalism on the web.

To that extent NewsTrust also fits into the discussion on Beth's Blog about how nonprofits can use social media. Not only are we a nonprofit ourselves - but the type of traffic we generate for other sites is highly focused. Unlike traffic from Digg, which is very quick and usually doesn't add anything after the initial spike, NewsTrust.net traffic tends to stay longer and  -- gasp -- actually reads content.

As the net evolves this notion of "Social Media Optimization" will become increasingly important, but will continue to raise red flags. There is content on the web and then there is a subset of content that is journalism on the web. The former requires it's own kind of social media optimization, but I'd argue that it needs to be very specific to the practices and principles that make journalism unique and an important part of our democracy.

clipped from earleyedition.com Social Media Optimisation, or SMO, is gaining momentum as the new content distribution buzzword.  Content is increasingly shared, and news content particularly is delivered through social networking sites.  Will SMO replace SEO, search engine optimisation, as the way news organisations get their content seen by a wider audience? A New York Times article last week tried to explain the future of news distribution by describing how ‘the young’ share news online via social networks. SMO, or Social Media Optimisation, is one of the most important stories of the new media campaign - for several reasons. MSM (main stream media) are beginning to understand that social content distribution is a serious threat to their current distribution methods MSM in the main were disrespectfully late in adopting SEO, and It’s only now, well into the Facebook boom, that people are starting to take notice of the value of SMO.

Comments

[Rory]

I was already aware of this phenomenon through my work with the Media Bloggers Association, whose head Robert Cox introduced me to the concept a while back. He and others referred to it in a slightly different form, however -- as "SNO, " or Social Networks Optimization...