This afternoon, I sat in on a webinar with Brian Solis, FutureWorks principal and author of Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web.

Solis spoke about how social media optimization is the new version of SEO (search engine optimization), accelerated by the integration of social tools into search, and the increase in popularity of social sharing tools. Some key takeaways from the presentation:

- The key to optimized content is not just making it findable, but making it shareable.
- Social objects are the future of marketing (via @gapingvoid) -- Why? "Because it works." -- Solis
- When it comes to social sharing, people don't like a lot of options -- pick two or three. Refine your choices. Buzz, Twitter, Facebook Share/"Like"
- One-click sharing tools are king
- The success of social sharing is fed by a psychological component: the feeling of missing out. Social sharing tools like Topsy incorporate a number that shares the number of real-time shares/retweets. The larger that number grows, the more readers think they need to share it too, and creates a snowball effect.
- Measurement is incredibly important, but work beyond the "usual" methods of measurement. How many products did we sell? Then work backwards -- How many viewed? How many clicked? How many went through to purchase? Benchmark those numbers against social objects.