Utilising various platforms and communities to create attention for a product, service brand, event, or other endeavour is known as social media optimisation (SMO). RSS feeds, social news, bookmarking sites, social networking sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, as well as video-sharing and blogging platforms, are among the several social media types that are involved. In that it seeks to drive visitors to a website and raise its visibility, SMO is comparable to search engine optimisation (SEO). The primary goal of SMO is to increase natural links to social media content. Achieving the top of the search engine hierarchy is the main focus of SEO, in comparison.[1] A website's and its content are typically optimised for social media in order to attract more users and promote sharing.

SMO is used to intentionally develop online content that motivates and entices users to interact with a website, ranging from well-written text to eye-catching digital photographs or video clips. Users send the web address for this information to their friends and acquaintances on social media. "Liking and commenting on posts, retweeting, embedding, sharing, and promoting content" are typical instances of social media interaction. In other words, if someone submits a nasty review of a company, social media optimisation can make sure that the review is not the first link to appear in a list of search engine results. This is known as online reputation management (ORM).

As social media sites supplanted television as a source of news for young people in the 2010s, news organisations relied more and more on these channels to drive visitors to their websites. While other major publishers increasingly use cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to create higher levels of web traffic, publishers like The Economist employ large social media teams to optimise their online content and maximise traffic.