With social media fever running at an all-time high, it’s easy for people to lose sight of the fact that these tools are only one part of an overall online marketing strategy.

While Tweeting, Facebooking and the like are fantastic methods, they are not the only game in town. For best results, you will want to have a varied mix of marketing tools in play all at once.

However, it is worth mentioning that before you even start implementing any marketing strategies, you’ll want to be crystal clear about whom it is you are trying to reach. What is your niche? Who is your target market and what is it that they want? What is your message to them? This is a point of “stuckness” for many clients and it does take work to discover. But once you have that, reaching them becomes a whole lot easier.

At that point, much of your job centers on driving traffic to your website or blog so that prospective clients or customers can find out more. (You DO have a site, don’t you?) One of the best ways to increase the chances that someone will eventually buy from you is to build an email list. Essentially, you want to have a way to capture people’s email address and first name so that you may keep in touch with them, build trust, and make offers in the future. It’s a good idea to entice people to provide their information by offering something in exchange, such as a free report or email course. Then, keep yourself on their radar by sending them a regularly scheduled email newsletter.

Social media is an awesome way to drive traffic and build your list, but it is only one way. Consider these other techniques as well (just a few of many):

* Writing and submitting articles to article directories
* Commenting on high traffic blogs and forums
* Guest blogging
* Offering free teleseminars
* Being a podcast or internet radio guest
* Utilizing your email signature
* Pay Per Click (Google Adwords)
* Implementing basic Search Engine Optimization on your site

One final area I’ll mention is copy. Copywriting is a great skill to learn in order to make your sales pages really effective. Your words matter and they can have a tremendous effect on a person who is considering purchasing from you. There are plenty of resources available to learn about this, and you don’t have to become a master of it. Knowing and using a few key techniques can go a long way.

So, be a well-rounded marketer. Use sites like twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube along with the other strategies I’ve suggested and the results you are looking for–more traffic, more subscribers, more clients, more sales and more money–will certainly follow.

According to the April 2009 Discover Small Business Watch monthly report, 38 percent of businesspersons surveyed said they used Facebook, Linked-In, My Space or Twitter, up from 22 percent in October of 2007.

18% of those surveyed said they used their social-networking accounts to promote their businesses."Of those who use the internet to network, more say they use it for purposes other than getting new business leads," states Ryan Scully, director of Discover's business credit card. "I think this speaks to the fact that there just aren't as many leads out there - on the internet or elsewhere - and open-minded small business owners are trying more avenues to develop new prospects."

In the competitive Applicant Tracking System market, RecruitGear Express was not achieving the visibilty that we wanted. Ranking well for such general keywords as"recruiting software", "hiring software" , and "applicant tracking system" seemed impossible, so we performed keyword research using Google's Keyword Tool to determine more specific keyword phrases that would be less competitive.

Four industries were targeted: Health Care, Hospitality, Retail and Seasonal/Temporary workers. A "landing page" was added to the site for each of the industries, with graphics and text customized to that industry.

As a result, RecruitGear Express now ranks:

• #1 on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL for "online retail hiring software"
• #1 on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL for "seasonal temporary hiring software"
• #1 on Google and Yahoo for "hospitality hiring software", #2 on MSN and AOL
• #4 on Google for "health care recruiting software", #1 on MSN, #8 on Yahoo

While the traffic for those keyword phrases may be lower, the visitors who do see RecruitGear Express are more likely to be looking for the exact service that the software provides. It's better to have a high conversion rate on a small group of visitors, than a low conversion rate on a large group. Your clickthroughs and bounce rate are now being factored into your quality score by Google, to be used on both organic search results and Adwords listings.

Your goal should be the same as the search engine's goal: to get the right visitors to the right place.