I’ve heard of many people pulling their hair out because they don’t know where to focus their energies: paid searches or social media? But why do you have to pick just one? They both have different benefits that can strengthen your campaign.

Paid searches are mostly for driving leads, conversions, and sales. Unless the person that clicks on your ad takes the time to search through your site to see what you’re about, you probably won’t be doing much brand-building with your pay-per-click campaigns.

Social media, on the other hand, is where a lot of the brand-building can take place. It’s a great supplement to any campaign for nearly any brand that can promote discussion and interaction as a primary goal, and ideally, generate sales as a secondary goal. However, social media has a bit more to it than people let on.

The more interaction a potential customer has with your brand through social media, the more likely they are to make more specific searches that are related to your brand. In turn, your paid search positions come up more consistently, and this high click-through rate helps your page gain ground on the organic searches. A win-win, if you ask me.  Also, social media helps you generate keywords that are more effective for your paid searches, because you can dig out words and phrases that are used heavily by your followers/fans anyway.

In conclusion, don’t focus all of your attention at one point of marketing. Here’s a video that shows you some fun facts about social media. You know, just for the fun of learning:

Did You Know: Social Media – Watch more Funny Videos

Here are some Twitter directories that will help you acquire targeted followers:

http://www.twellow.com
http://justtweetit.com/directory
http://wefollow.com
http://www.loadedweb.com/twitter
http://www.tweetfind.com
http://mrtweet.com
http://mytwitterdirectory.com
http://tweeplepages.com

Taking a few minutes to add yourself to these directories will get you permanent, free exposure on each of them.

For those who are trying to catch up in the social marketing networks, it’s likely you’ve stumbled into Twitter.

Polls now show that 1 in 20 Americans has a Twitter account. Good social marketers have acknowledged its incredible marketing potential and ran with it, adding it to every client’s overall online marketing mix.

But, for those of us who still don’t quite understand the Twitter-mania yet, click here for a good explanation.  (I thought it was funny)