Social media optimization techniques can help you do what you’re doing even better, from improving engagement to gaining new followers.
Shannon Tien November 23, 2022 10 min read
Social media optimization (SMO) helps business owners, content creators and social media marketers get the most out of their social media presence.
Understanding how to optimize your social media profiles and posts for maximum returns might sound scary, but we’ve put together a list of simple tactics that don’t involve complicated keyword research or require technical know-how.
Read on to find out how to:
Bonus: Get a free social media strategy template to quickly and easily plan your strategy, track results, and share with your boss, teammates, and clients.
Social media optimization is the process of improving your social posts (or your whole social media strategy) to achieve better results: faster follower growth, higher levels of engagement, more clicks or conversions, etc.
Optimizing social media for business can involve many different techniques and tactics that vary in scope and complexity, such as:
In any case, social media optimization should be based on performance analysis, audience and competitor research and/or insights gathered through social listening.
Think of SMO as an opportunity for you to analyze and adjust your online presence to make it perform even better.
Here’s what the right social media optimization tactics can do for your social media efforts:
To the untrained eye, a brand’s social media presence might seem effortless, but there’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes to ensure that social media accounts are being used as effectively as possible.
There are 5 key areas to focus on in your social media optimization strategy:
Read on to find out how best to optimize for each category.
To get anywhere on social, you need to consistently post high-quality content that your audience likes. But did you know you also need to post it at a time when your audience is more likely to engage with it?
That’s right. There are certain times of the day and week that your audience is more likely to be online — and more likely to heart your social content or respond with a comment.
Figuring out those special times to post on social media is hard work. Especially when audience habits vary from industry to industry.
We’ve done some research to determine some universal best times to post on social media, but it should only be used as a general guide. What works for your social media pages and your audience might be different.
That’s where a social media scheduling tool that recommends best times to post for your unique audience comes in. We might be biased, but we like Hootsuite’s tool best for a couple of reasons:
Hootsuite’s Best Time to Publish feature recommends optimal times to post on each of your social networks
There’s no easier engagement hack than to ask your followers questions and have them comment with their responses. The trick is, though, to only ask interesting questions that your audience would actually care to answer.
Try using a question sticker in an Instagram story, run an informal poll, or simply pose some food for thought in your caption.
Carousel posts are one of the most engaging formats brands can use on the platform.
Hootsuite’s own social media team finds that, on average, their carousel posts get 1.4x more reach and 3.1x more engagement than regular posts on Instagram. Results are similar on other networks that allow carousels as well, like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
The temptation to swipe left, it seems, is hard to resist — especially when there’s a persuasive cover slide.
View this post on InstagramBombarding your followers with too much content is a surefire way to tank your engagement rate. On the other hand, finding your optimal social media posting schedule is essential to driving more engagement and conversations with your brand.
Here’s how often you should post to the biggest social media networks, according to experts:
Remember that finding the sweet posting spot might take some time. Experiment and find what cadence works best for you.
Your social media bio is one of the first things a new visitor or potential lead sees when visiting your profile page. So, it’s essential to have this as polished as possible.
Important information to always include in your social media profiles:
Your bio is also a chance for you to state why someone should even consider following you. Take Hootsuite’s social media bio for example.
We say we’re the “global leader in social media management” on all our platforms. If you work in social media, it’s clear why we think you should follow us. 
But including all this info in your bio isn’t just important for communicating with people who have already landed on your profile. It’s important for social search optimization, or helping new people find your profile through social media search engines.
Make sure your bio includes relevant keywords you think your audience will be searching for when looking for your product or service on social.
For example, if you’re a travel company, make sure to include the word “travel” in your social media bios (or even your name). [contentugprade variant=popup]
Here are some more tips to make sure your bio is optimized for SEO:
Read more tips for SEO on Instagram, specifically.
Gone are the days of the one-word caption.
Several social media platforms, including Instagram, now specifically recommend including relevant keywords in post captions to help with discoverability. That means the more you write, the more your post is likely to show up in social search results.
This is great news for lesser-known brands, since it gives people a better chance to find your content without searching for your specific account name.
A keyword results page for “travel photography” on Instagram
But don’t just write a novel stuffed with keywords. It’s gotta be relevant to the image or video you’ve posted or your human readers will know it’s spammy.
So, how do you choose your target keywords?
Analytics tools will give you more insight. For example, use Google Analytics to see which keywords are driving traffic to your website. These are likely good candidates to test in your Instagram posts.
Marketers have been using and abusing hashtags for many years (who among us hasn’t tried hiding 30 hashtags in the comments of their Instagram post?).
But in 2022, Instagram revealed some best practices for using hashtags to help people discover your content on the platform through search, even if they aren’t following you yet.
Even though these social media optimization tips come from Instagram, you can consider them best practices for all social networks. Almost every platform has published similar advice.
See more hashtags best practices:
But wait, does the idea of coming up with the right hashtags for every single new post sound daunting?
Don’t worry. It does for us too.
Enter: Hootsuite’s hashtag generator.
Whenever you’re creating a post in Composer, Hootsuite’s AI technology will recommend a custom set of hashtags based on your draft. The tool analyzes both your caption and the images you’ve uploaded to suggest the most relevant tags.
All you have to do is click on the Hashtag suggestions you like and they will be added to your post. You can go ahead and publish it or schedule it for later.
If your social media post features another brand or a customer, it’s best practice to tag that person in your post. Not only does this earn you massive niceness points, but it also helps create natural conversation and communication on your post.
