1. Pick a Good Name
If you are looking for long term social media traffic and not just rankings, don’t pick a spammy keyword filled name. If you are not using your own name pick something original that people will not shy away from. In other words, don’t make your name BigAssSerialKiller. People will most likely stay away from you.

2. Try Not to Spam
Most likely you are going to submit some of your own content sooner or later. Just try to save it for later once you have established power user status. Submitting your own content on a new account will quickly give you spammer status and you don’t want that now do you. Instead, take some time to flesh out your account by submitting other good content you find. Or just go to a popular website and submit their content.

3. Don’t Be A Vote Whore
This is one of those situations where quality beats quantity. If people see you voting for everything under the sun including the most crap of posts, you will get nowhere real fast. Take your time to pick through the content and vote for the good stuff and the stuff you find interesting only. Start to friend people who submit relevant content and don’t go crazy on this objective either. Sure you can go crazy and friend everyone in your niche but stay away from going nuts and making everyone on that network your friend. Chances are no one will return the favor if they notice what you are doing.

4. Get a Dam Picture Already
If you don’t have an avatar in your profile I can almost guarantee people will skip right over you. It’s the first tell tale sign that you are to lazy to be worth looking into. I would recommend a real photo of yourself, not those gay cartoon looking avatars. People respond much better when they see another human, and not a skull and crossbones ya dig.

5. Cross Link Your Social Sites
Chances are that if you are in a certain niche you have friends on multiple social networks in the same niche. Look for these friends on every social network you use. Creating a network like this will not only strengthen your account but make you more visible, and more importantly more prominent in your niche.

6. Perfect Timing
Most of the social media sites you are using have predominantly U.S. traffic. Use that to your benefit when you are submitting content. Chances are if you submit a story at 9:00PM you will have a hard time getting it to the front page or voted up. Submit your content early in the day, or in the afternoon when there is more people scouring across all of the social networks. The more people that are online when you submit, the better your chances.

7. Have Depth In Your Posting
Not submitting your own content at first is important, but you also have to diversify what you are submitting. Try to submit real news stories, or news related to your niche. Submitting 100 pieces of content a week on making money online will most likely place you in the spammer category to those who see what you have submitted.

Before you can use social media for your own personal gain you must create some credibility, and authority. Without those two key components, you will never be able to create a large enough audience to be of any use. There are other routes you can take, and if you are looking to spam for some quick traffic then by all means go ahead. It will work, but be warned the aftermath will be worse. Not only will the traffic die out quickly but you will alienate everyone on the network and possibly get your accounts banned.