A very interesting post in the Online Media Daily touches on an emerging reality in social marketing optimization — it needs to handled with the smoothest and softest of kid gloves.

Social marketing optimization (SMO) is yet another web2.0 buzzword that deals with marketing to social content and user-drive sites like facebook, myspace, Digg, and the blogosphere at large.

I believe that in principle, Social marketing optimization is the exact opposite of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO, for the uninitiated is a practice where one tries to optimize a site for given keywords on a search engine. The aim for search engine optimization is to try and elevate the position of a given site for a given keyword, with the goal of elevating it to as high a position as possible for the most keywords.

How is the opposite?
Whereas the practice of search engine optimization involves studying keywords, altering and then testing of your work with search engines, it happens in isolation. The SEO tactitian operates and competes against competitors for those precious keywords. But he doesn’t communicate with them. He or she might discuss tactics and strategy on boards, IRC or any manner of communication, but the substance of his work is done on its own.

Social Marketing Optimization, on the other hand, necessarily is one of participation, communication, and engagement. By actively engaging in the blogosphere and other ecosystems where people are active participants in those user-driven communities, the goal would be to try and attract traffic, fans and ultimately create a community around a given business or brand.

It is so new that there are very few recognized metrics, and at best strategies or tactics that would be regarded as embryonic with regarding social marketing optimization

However, there are a few strategies that most people would consider intuitive.

• Participate in communities of users who are already passionate about a given area of interest (that your business needs to thrive in) — on boards, in comment fields, directly through email and the like.
• Act respectfully, responsibilty, and in genuine good faith.
• Be as helpful as possible – be an unspoken embassador for those new to that community, for example.
• Post regularly to your own wiki, blog, or CMS of your choice with intelligent, unique, creative or entertaining opinions.
• Hope that your efforts improve your reputation and standing – and plant the seeds for your own brand in that community, which directly and indirectly leads to more traffic back to your site … and the creation of community on your own home turf.

But, because the nature of the web2.0 is by its nature participatory your ‘marketing’ efforts will be known. And perhaps commented on. Although every community is different, I think its important to highlight that the ‘collective intelligence’ of those communities will resist any heavy handed attempts at overly direct selling and marketing to itself. Almost anyone who participates in these communities will individually be intelligent, savvy, and media aware. This is the generation of potential customers who have been brought up on the teat of 24/7 marketing messages in television, movies, and the Internet.

They dislike being sold to in a grossly stupid, clumsy and ineffective way. They will react with a level of vitriol that most non-Internet savvy marketers (or humans) will probably find shocking.

As the Internet companies large and small point there lenses at MySpace and drool at how much traffic passes through those ‘pipes’, the post at Online Media Daily provides a cautionary tale in the first forays into this method of marketing. Social Marketing Optimization requires companies to deal with its potential customers fairly, with transparency and with a degree of respect. This kind of marketing is inherently about making connections in a very connected ecosystem of individuals.

Making a mistake by disrespecting and insulting the intelligence of a single individual, will have repercussions and be felt through the entire community. People will notice. They will react.

And they will react, in some cases, angrily.

Your business will be talked about, flamed on, and be (to quote Stephen Colbert) put on proverbial notice; the collective memory is long, and the community of users will keep an eye on every subsequent ‘marketing’ move you make.

To be effective, social marketing optimization, I think, needs to be approached in the same way you’d approach another human being in the street that you would like to meet face to face. You’ve got to treat that person with respect, and that is the only way to be respected in return. A generation of marketers may have derided their prospects either publicly or private as ‘marks’ or ‘rubes’, but it simply won’t work in social marketing optimization.