Here are your 10 tips for using social media to drive traffic to your websites…

1. Complete your profile

When you first open your Twitter, Facebook, Squidoo or other social media site account, fill out your profile including a picture). Doing so makes it easier for people to get to know you and build relationships with you, which will make it more likely they’ll click through to your site.

2. Interact

Social sites are, by definition, social. They’re two-way streets (not monologues). That’s why you shouldn’t just post content and move on. Instead, spend a few minutes each day interacting and getting to know people in your network.

3. Include a link to your site on your profile page

This tip is simple but effective: Give people a reason to click through from the social media site to your blog or squeeze page. A promise of a free solution usually makes for a good enticement.

4. Ask your followers to “retweet” and repost

If you create a “buzzworthy” post (such as a post on a hot or even controversial niche topic), ask your Twitter followers to “retweet” it and ask your other social media networks to repost it.

5. Spend time each day growing your network

Commit to spending at least 10 minutes each day growing your network. You’ll see big results by the end of the month. And you’ll be amazed at the size of your network in 6 months or a year from now.

6. Link your social site pages together

Link your Twitter account to your Facebook, MySpace, Squidoo, Hubpages and other social media pages…

7. Use your real name so that you’re easy to find

People who want to do business with you won’t respond well to working with “BaseballBoy72″. Instead, build trust by using your real name. Doing so also makes it easier for others to find you on Facebook and similar sites.

8. Post good content

Social media is not just about networking, it’s also about sharing information.

If you share some of your best information with your network, you’ll get respect, trust and more sales. Plus you’ll establish yourself as a niche expert.

9. Optimize some of your content

Some social sites (such as Yahoo! Answers and Squidoo) get crawled and indexed regularly by the search engines.

As such, you may consider optimizing some of your content for the search engines by including relevant (long-tail) keywords 2 or 3 times for every 100 words of content.

10. Get the most benefit for your time

Instead of trying to interact and build relationships with thousands of prospects, consider building a relationship with a handful of partners. That’s because just one good partner can send you hundreds or thousands of prospects and customers.

In summary: Social media is only expected to grow in the future and now is the best time to get involved if you’d like to grow your business right along with it.

You can start today by applying these 10 traffic-generating, relationship-building tips you just discovered!

Brian Terry runs JVhero, where you can sign up for a FREE membership to discover how you can build a mailing list of your first 10,000 subscribers!

Bron: Brian Terry (blog)