Let's take a look at the basics of social media optimization. We'll go over how to integrate social media with your marketing strategy, how optimization is different from marketing, and how optimization can be beneficial for your marketing efforts. Social media is a broad term. It includes not only applications like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, but also a broad and diverse group of platforms, websites, and online tools that enable people to connect, express themselves, share things, and interact with others. What is social media optimization, and how does it assist in integrating the use of social media and social media networks with your marketing strategy? It helps you manage and grow your firm's online presence and message; build your brand for online marketing, increasing awareness of your new products and services; connect with your customers; and deal directly with any potentially damaging news about your organization that appears online. While some businesses are just using social media to keep their marketing current, many companies use social media marketing as a complement to their integrated marketing strategies. Social media and social media networks have a broader place when it comes to branding both products and services. Most businesses need to include social media in their marketing. People use it for various reasons, ranging from social interaction to business. By using the proper social networks and listening to what people say online, and by understanding the dynamics of sales and marketing in a connected world, businesses can improve all of their marketing programs. With more than 4.3 billion active social media users worldwide today, it's not an easy task to reach all of them, much less the ones who are ready, willing, and able to connect with your product or service. To reach interested potential customers, it is recommended to optimize your company for social media. For example, if you search for a brand or company on Google, you'll likely see social media profiles on the first page of search results. You want that to be you. Now that you've learned about how social media and networks integrate with marketing strategy, let's compare social media optimization and how it differs from and relates to social media marketing.