Social media optimization (SMO) is still very much an emerging practice. It's "emerging" because despite all the claims made by social gurus, no one (and I mean no one) really knows the secret of success when it comes to the social media channel.
Fortunately, as the intersection of search and social nears, techniques and tactics are emerging which carry some serious power when it comes to ramping up awareness and distribution of brand messages.
Twitter for example recently released "Twitter Cards" - a means for social media users to attach "media experiences" to Tweets that link to content - see image below. Just add a few lines of HTML to a webpage and any users who tweets the link to the content will have a "card" added to their Tweet which is visible to their followers. Sounds pretty sweet right? Keep reading - it gets better.
These Twitter Cards (which come in three varieties - summary, photo and player) ultimately give greater control to the publisher over how their content appears. As a result of featuring better looking content, those using the Twitter Card feature will be positioned to drive more traffic to their sites and acquire more new followers.
Whether to support Twitter cards should be a no-brainer for the truly social enterprise. There's a bit of coding involved (not too much) and publishers must apply to participate but that's a small price to pay for a more robust Twitter profile.