As per Watblog.com article Social Media branding may be paid or non paid dependent upon what you are proposing.If you are commercial entity or a big brands then there are two options either you tie up with a small social media site and pay very little and promise them good traction from your association or pay some big bucks to get the big boys of social media in India.
Social Media Optimization is all about working on building a positive presence across social media sites i.e. facebook, orkut, youtube, flickr, twitter etc and making sure that the maximum potential of these social media sites is leveraged to connect with a target audience that is interested, engaged and evangelised to participate in conversations concerning the companies products and services.
While Social Media Branding is not looking at only a conversation propagation it looks at creating a branded presence by tying up with social media sites. In the former there is no apparent tie up i.e. in social media optimization one uses the available social media tools to engage existing audiences on that third party platform while in social media branding one would be using the third party platforms to create a branded experience which becomes a destination in itself for users looking to engage with that brand. This could be done through a contest, freebies or just with a branded page on a social media site that looks to engage users.
(Source: Watblog)