In Part 1 of this article series, we talked about what social media sites are and how they can be used together to drive traffic, get links and build your list. But we didn’t get into any details… so we’re going to pick up where we left off and discuss your social media marketing strategy.

1) Register and Start Networking ASAP.

Social media sites are by their definition places where you network, socialize and get in contact with those of like minds. That means you can’t hold a one-way conversation where you “lecture” to your prospects and participate in activities that will directly benefit you.

As such, that means you need start networking and participating on these sites before you start doing those things that directly benefit you. For example:

* Comment on and rate videos on video-sharing sites like YouTube before you start posting your own videos.

* Comment on and rate other people’s content before you start bookmarking your own content on Digg, StumbleUpon, ReddIt, and similar.

* Comment on and rate other people’s content while you are building your own Squidoo Lens or HubPages.

If you become a part of the community first, then you’ll be able to grow a good reputation quickly. This makes you more authoritative and influential when you do start submitting and bookmarking your own content. And that means more traffic, fast.

2) Start Sharing Quality Content

Once you’ve helped other members and contributed to the community, then it’s time to start contributing your own quality content. That means you can share videos, bookmark your pages and build your content sites. You can also run a blog on these sites, start niche groups and similar.

3) Network with Like Minded Others

You may find plenty of prospects on these social networking sites, which is why you should work to get people on your mailing list. But don’t forget that you may also find potential joint venture partners on these sites – so network accordingly.

4) Commit to Doing Something Every Day

Finally, you should commit to doing one social media marketing activity every day. For example, load a new video, create a new Squidoo page or answering five questions on Yahoo! Answers.

The reason for this consistency is because the more you do, the more traffic you’ll get and the faster you’ll build your list. See, you can’t just “do” social marketing for one day and expect it to pay off for months. But you can do just a little bit every day and watch as it pays you handsomely every day.

You’ve seen just the tip of the social media iceberg in this article. That means you need to check out Social List Building to discover what the gurus know about building their lists using YouTube, MySpace, Digg, Squidoo and other social media sites!

Who else wants tons of free traffic, free backlinks, new subscribers… and more money? All of this (and more) can be yours when you start using social media sites to drive targeted traffic to your site and onto your mailing list!

Now before we jump into the details, let’s define “social media.” Basically, social media sites are those where like-minded individuals (niche groups) can meet, network and share information. The most popular types of social media sites include:

1) Social networking sites. These are sites like MySpace.com, Facebook.com, Friendster.com and LinkedIn.com. Here, people with common interests can network, get on each other’s “friends” lists, keep their friends updated using bulletins (internal emails) and blog posts, etc.

2) Social bookmarking sites. These are sites like Digg.com, Reddit.com, StumbleUpon.com, Propeller.com and similar. The idea behind these sites is that users can share interesting web pages with other members.

Members rate and review pages – the more good ratings and reviews, the more these pages are seen by other people… and that means these sorts of sites work hand-in-hand with viral content.

3) Social “Content Sites.” These content sites include YouTube and other video-sharing sites, Squidoo and other user-generated pages, Yahoo! Answers and other community question/answer platforms, and similar.

Like the other social media sites, these content sites integrate social networking. However, the content sites are primarily known for their content – and for the love that Google gives them. (That means if you optimize your pages for long-tail keywords, you can snag top rankings in Google.)

If you want to start using social media sites to drive traffic to your site and subscribers onto your newsletter list, remember this: These sites don’t operate in a vacuum. The more you use them together, the more powerful the strategy becomes and the more traffic you’ll see.

For example, let’s suppose you create a video to post on YouTube. You should then:

* Use Digg, StumbleUpon.com and similar to bookmark the video.

* Post the video on your social networking sites (like MySpace) and alert your friends list.

* Post the video on your other content sites like Squidoo and HubPages.

* And blog about it on all of your social media sites.

In other words, your accounts on all these different sites give you plenty of opportunities to link your social profiles and pages together as well as sending links back to your own site.

Now that you know a bit about how these sites work and how you can use them to drive traffic to your own site, you’re probably wondering how, exactly, you can leverage them for links, traffic and sales. You’ll discover plenty of tips to do just that in Part 2 of this article series.

Until then, check out Social List Building to discover what the gurus know about building their lists using YouTube, MySpace, Digg, Squidoo and other social media sites!