Everyone knows there are applications known as Facebook, Twitter and handfuls of others but what many

people are still slow to understand is the power that these applications hold.

To most people, these social media sites are nothing more than a way to stay in touch with your “BFF” or a

great place to use the “LOL” abbreviation.

The problem starts when this assumption affects your decision making process, and the value of a well

developed social media build is either discounted or dismissed.

The hidden benefit is that these sites are also a powerful traffic driving tool at your disposal, and most of us

overlook this importance or are ignorant on how to best use this to our advantage.

I have heard the dismissive statements made about social media that “its just for teens” or “its unprofessional” or “I

can pay a kid $5 an hour after school to do that.

Those statements are the sound of defeat and ignorance, and a strategy of this nature will guarantee that

you will be watching the competition consistently place ahead of you on the search engines.

For those of us who understand how useful social media can be, we may have a decent build in place or are

planning a strategic build.

If this is the case, I will give you some tips on how to make your strategy more effective.

First, you can use social media simply to drive traffic to your site.

This effort results in more leads and higher conversion rates; keep in mind that this essentially is your demostrable ROI, and shows that your effort pays off in real revenue beyond the ranking and traffic gains.

This is the type of data that most business oriented social media builds will need to show the people who control the budgets, to get approval for expansion.

We can accomplish this result by engaging our social media visitors and utilizing things like user reviews and commentary to encourage visitors to voluntarily share contact information.

By effectively utilizing “how-to’s,” contests, giveaways and content that gives the impression of “something for nothing”, you actually encourage return visitors, by your posts. Make sure to have a place or link to add the visitor as a friend or follower for your preferred social media outlet.

You will see your online following grow and your marketing will get a huge bump as well.

Next, lets make sure that we are actually incorporating our website into the social media build and incorporating these goals into our social media strategy. This is accomplished by always having a defined purpose and goals in mind when writing and adding content.

Remember, content is king, and with your social media “subjects” spreading around the marketing that you want “out there” the benefits of the build are realized sooner than later.

We need to remember to carefully tailor our social media strategy to fit these well-defined goals; conversely by having them run independently and in two different directions is fruitless and wasting both your time and resources.

Finally, we can use social media to drive down negative results and drive up positive ones on search engines.

If you are having trouble with a particularly difficult to remove enforcement or negative commentary on the search engine results, then a properly utilized social media build may be the answer to your problems.

Utilizing targeted keywords and back-linking, we can professionally build a social media campaign to arrange search results the way you envision them. When the followers or friends are of sufficient quantity on the social media outlet, they are a great ranking builder as well.

Keeping visitors regularly returning to your site, drives up the traffic count too, which when strategically planned, has a reciprocating benefit.

Essentially, a social media build could be the very thing you have been waiting for to get your results more in line with your marketing strategy and sales goals.

Keep in mind that even if you don’t build a social media presence, your competition most likely will.