What really is Social Media Optimization (SMO)?

[Ben Wilkinson]

I have read a lot about Social Media Optimization (SMO) recently but they all seem to be about using social networking sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, MySpace, etc. to create a buzz about my site. Why should I spend my time and money on adding content to other sites that might create buzz about my own? And how do I do that without being labeled a troll?

What I would like is to optimize the User Generated Content (USG) that is already on my site and generate the buzz here, not for some other company. If I could do that I think it would create a networking affect between my users as they share the good stuff? (In a perfect world it would generate the buzz back to my site)

I understand how Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is all about fixing up my website so that search engines can better index it. I want to do that for UGC. Shouldn't SMO be about making it easy on the users that visit my site?

So how can I do that? Can that even be done? Or am I misunderstanding what SMO is about?

[Mel]

it may not be as easy.
ugc is somehow controlled by these giants too.
but u can try. probably u end up doing it everyday to get it up and first or it will keep going down
??