Many people seem to believe that Social Media traffic is not worth it’s weight because it doesn’t pan out over long periods of time. While Social Media traffic does flow differently, the key is learning how to retain this traffic and turn people into come back customers. Planning out your social media campaign is an important step to insuring the best possible growth.

SERPs & Search Traffic – When it comes to this category, you are looking for long term organic growth. Search engine results are not going to appear over night for your site (in most cases) so its important to stay at it. Stay active on relevant sites and work on building links back to your content. Sooner or later it will gain traction and people will start linking you. This does however imply that you took the time to create content worth linking.

RSS Subscribers – One of the best strategies for retaining social media traffic is pushing them to your RSS feed. The easier you make it to find and sign up, the better. Offer multiple options such as feed and e-mail features, as well as direction. Notice a high volume of traffic coming from a certain social media site? Throw up a welcome message reminding them to subscribe to your site.

Remember To Brand Yourself – If you are marketing a blog you are essentially selling yourself to the masses. Continue to write how you normally would and include your thoughts and persona in your post. People are reading your blog because they like something that your doing… Changing your style can push avid readers from the site. For businesses, creating a strong sense of community is your goal. Make visitors feel at home instead of making them feel like they are reading information on a faceless corporation. Become the leader in your niche by creating content that sets you apart from the rest.

Sustaining Traffic – After a while you will notice that traffic builds up and at some point becomes steady. This is a key point in time where you must make the most effort. You may be running low on ideas but making it through this hump and continuing to create content will allow continuous growth and organic link development. Constantly striving to push the bar will insure that you will always have traffic.

This should help you with some ideas if you feel stuck. Overall the biggest task is putting yourself out there for people to find. Social media can be much more than a short-term traffic boost, it comes down to knowing how you can retain the traffic.