Search Engine Optimization was the number one way to get traffic to a site for a long time (more than a decade, as a matter of fact), with lots of articles and blog posts being written about methods how you could rank higher in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) and many experts selling their SEO services to individuals and companies who needed them.

But things have started to change with the development of Social Media (which is in turn, a major part of the so-called Web 2.0), which basically encompasses all user generated content on various sites, and all the social networks where people gather and discuss anything they want.

The first such sites were the good old forums that we all know and love, and which are still a major part of the Internet. The second “coming” were the user-managed blogs and social sites like MySpace, Digg, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. With them, people got even more ways to communicate and share any information they want.

And thanks to them, entrepreneurs and businesses nowadays have even more ways of marketing their products to an ever-increasing user base. Search Engines and the SEO industry are getting pretty crowded with competition, and the social sites mentioned above already have over 800 million users worldwide, with new ones registering every day!

They are the perfect source of traffic for those webmasters and marketers who don’t have the funds or time to rank high in Search Engines. Keeping that in mind, here are some of the best ways to get traffic to any site/service/sales page you need using Social Media.

Videos. Youtube gets over 100 million views per month. Just imagine the number: a lot of the most popular Youtube channels get more daily views than actual TV channels, which are made using professional equipment and millions of dollars in expenses. Creating videos for marketing on Youtube is a great idea, only you’ll need to make it interesting for the users, too, otherwise they will not watch the video and it will become yet another failed upload that doesn’t get any views.

Guest Posts. There are literally millions of blogs out there, some big, most are small, but all of them are important in the online world. By writing and posting good articles on blogs, you can not only get direct traffic and links (which will help your site’s SEO), but also increase your authority in any niche and make yourself known to the right people. Posting a guest post is easier than you think – if the article is good (and it absolutely should be, it’s like your business card, you need to use the best you’ve got!), the owner of any site (except maybe for the more popular ones that already get dozens and hundreds of such requests per day) would be glad to post it.

Contests. Contests are a great way to get people interested in whatever you have to offer. Creating a good one on any forum, blog, Twitter or Facebook account will potentially bring you a lot of traffic, which you can then monetize using other methods. The prizes need not be expensive: something useful, interesting or beautiful will do just fine.

Viral marketing. Viral marketing basically encompasses all the techniques that will get people to talk about you, your site, your product or anything else you want. The basic method is to create something (a picture, video, story, contest, article, etc.) that is appealing to the masses (not only to certain people, but universally interesting) enough that they will want to share it with their friends. It must also be related to the site you want to promote. Then if such a campaign takes off, people will basically bring you free traffic for a long time. Even after everything is over, you’ll still have links and plenty of residual traffic.

Now that you know how to get traffic, you need to actually start working on it. Make a detailed plan, follow it through and once you get the necessary traffic, you can start converting it into real income. Good luck!