Our dream has always been to own a breakfast joint here in our hometown, and now, after years of scrimping, saving, and working hard, it looks like that dream is about to materialize. The Breakfast Joint, as we’re calling it, because no one liked our first proposal of Eggy McEggbritches, is scheduled to open in one month, and we want to make sure we do everything we can to make that grand opening a success.
Part of us doing everything we can involved hiring a marketing consultant. His name is Mark, and every time we talk to him, he keeps going on and on about something called SMO. “SMO,” or “social media optimization,” is a marketing strategy focused on using social media to promote awareness about something. In this case, we’d be promoting awareness about The Breakfast Joint, and about its grand opening.
According to Mark (and he’s right), SMO (close cousin of SEO: "search engine optimization," i.e. doing everything you can to make Google Search find you and rank you first as being most relevant in its results) can involve everything from setting up a business FB page and Twitter account to RSS feeds, shareable videos, even targeted online ads that use geotags and other data tidbits to attract their audience.
SMO is like search engine optimization on steroids: we’re not just trying to get people to find us on Google. We’re trying to actively manipulate their scrolls and clicks, with the end goal of getting them to scroll and click their way over to our website…and eventually physically visit our restaurant.
