The advent of Social Media sites such as, Twitter, Flickr and Facebook among others always conjures up one question: How to monetize them in such a way so that you make real money that you can sink your teeth into? Having thousands of friends, having people comment on your latest saucy vacation photo or reading a tweet on what someone had for lunch is all fine and well. That doesn’t increase your lead count, help your consumer exposure or make you any money.

Okay, so maybe you can’t monetize Social Media directly yet, but you can surely aid your viewers, friends, followers, and readers connect your Social Media efforts with your paid advertising to further your lead generation and traffic building programs. After all, we all know that increased traffic to your paid advertising is the lifeblood to amp up your lead count. On an average, it takes seven to eight views before someone will sign-up for your listing.

Here are a few examples on how to drive real traffic and create consumer awareness to making your advertising pay further dividends:

• Sell with proof! Show examples of how well the program, business and/or service is working for others. Testimonials are worth their platinum weight and help show more credibility.
• Tweet and post your link directly to your website offerings as this can increase traffic quite often in a major way. Once they are there they will see your lead form for your online marketing business opportunity and you’ll capture all of their personal information, which in turn, helps you build a database of prospects.
• If you have great photos that show you or your business or even your business in action, try hosting them on Social Media sites like Flickr so that potential prospects will see your products and services.
• Use Twitter to inform your followers of sales and specials that only they can take advantage of and again link your post to your online listings or profile so they can fill out a lead form.
• Use blogs to inform your readers of upcoming events that you’ll be attending so that, you can socialize, profile customers, and share product, industry stats, and news. Again, link your advertisement.

So, how are you using your Social Media to enhance traffic to your paid advertising?