Ana Hoffman at TrafficGenerationCafe.com is one of the most knowledgeable people I've come across on the web when it comes to promoting yourself through social media, and all of the info on her site is free!

Here's just one article that I've found incredibly helpful...

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Social media has been called a lot of things:

the best thing since sliced bread;
productivity killer;
the next marketing wonder.

Truthfully, it doesn’t really matter what YOU think about social media. If your audience and your competitors are there, you don’t really have much of a choice, do you? Social media is to your website as breathing is to living. Period.

A few quick tips before we dive into the mysteries of driving traffic from social media:

Start with one platform

Social media is the great example of Pareto principal at work (roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes). My best advice is not to spread yourself too thin.

Find the one social media platform that YOUR target audience seems to favor and stick with it.
Learn the ins and outs of it.
Master all the nuances of traffic generation.
Figure out how to put most of it on autopilot.
Move on to the next one.

How to figure out which one to start with

1. Use your Google Analytics (GA) data

If you are already driving social media traffic large enough to analyze some stats, then start here.

Go to your GA dashboard and look up your referral traffic.
See which social media platform drives the most traffic AND converts the best.
Focus on that one.

2. Use your competitor’s data

If you are brand new to social media or even blogging in general, then see where your competitors get most of their traffic from. That should be a good indicator of where your potential readers might be hanging out. The easiest way of collecting this type of data is through Alexa.com.

Just search for any competitor’s site and go under “Clickstream” to see where their social media traffic comes from.

While there are scads of social media traffic sources, I have outlined some of the big dogs for you.

Twitter

Facebook

How to Get the Facebook Crowd to Like You More

Google Plus

Google Plus Bite-Sized Tutorial for the Busy Marketer

Pinterest

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Thanks, Ana! That's certainly enough to get us started!

Until next time! Mary Ann