Two valuable currencies that you can use in your online business are content and social marketing or networking. If you combine them, you get a powerful one-two punch for generating high quality sales leads. Let’s take a closer at each part of this Internet marketing strategy.

Content: Article marketing is probably the most popular mode of content marketing. However, this strategy is so overused and saturated that it has lost some of its effectiveness. I’m not suggesting that you ignore article marketing, just don’t count on it being your major source of traffic.

Too often, marketers will use Google’s Keyword Tool to find “hot” keywords or phrases, slap together an article using these keywords and post it on hundreds of article directories. Sure, you may get a temporary surge of traffic using this method but it makes it very hard for you to stand out if all you do is follow the herd.

What can you do differently? Uncover your inner brilliance instead. I read a great article by Vickie Sullivan who is internationally recognized as the top market strategist for experts and a popular speaker. In her article, “Uncover Your Brilliance: How to Write So That People Take Notice,” she discusses two techniques to get you out of your mental rut.

I suggest that you add your own take on popular issues to differentiate yourself. Here are a few ways to do that.

1. Use case studies to show how you applied your unique expertise to deliver results for you or your clients (and I don’t mean those screen shots of PayPal or ClickBank checks with outrageous and unbelievable amounts)
2. Conduct a webinar where you can demonstrate step-by-step, click-by-click how it is done to go from point A to point B
3. Interview a high-profile expert in your niche and really pick his/her brain to get at the nitty-gritty details of how to solve the problem at hand. Convert your interview into a Podcast using a service like AudioAcrobat and share it with your list, post it to your site and blog about it

Social Marketing: After working long and hard creating your content, don’t just post it your site and hope for hordes of traffic to find their way to your page. You must actively market your content for interested surfers to find you. In this day and age, social marketing or networking is the way to increase awareness and drive traffic. And the best part is that most if not all of it is FREE!

• Use Twitter to let your followers know about your new content. Instead of posting it directly on Twitter, I use bit.ly to post my tweets. It not only shortens my URLs but it also let’s me track the clicks. Here’s an example of one my tweets from bit.ly:
  “New blog post: Repurpose Content to Maximize Profits. http://bit.ly/xT1m0”
• If your niche is business-to-business, then use LinkedIn. You are not limited to 140 characters and can do all sorts of things to promote you, your business and your latest content. Take a look at my profile for an example
• Facebook is another very popular social networking site to announce your new content. To learn more about using Facebook in your business, download this free kit from HubSpot (NOTE: Does require you to register)
• Convert your article into a short PowerPoint presentation by selecting the main points and writing them as bulleted text. Convert your presentation into a short video and post it to YouTube and other video sharing sites. Here’s an example of my video for “Online Income on Remote Control eBook” I use for my list building. A side benefit is that it could go viral and drive even more traffic
• Post a shorter version of your article on your blog. Search engines love fresh content and comments on your blog are considered “social proof”
• Squidoo, HubPages and MySpace (I personally don’t care for this one) are also very popular. See my hub, “Do You Know What it Takes to Upsell Profitably?”
• Announce your content on forums where you are active and add a link to your content in your signature. This is a great technique for getting quailfied traffic because these are communities of people with common interests or niches so you have access to a captive audience

High Quality Sales Leads: You’ve done the hard part of driving qualified traffic to your site or blog. Now, your priority needs to shift to converting a majority of those visitors into subscribers and/or customers. It is rare, that someone will buy something on his or her first visit unless yours happens to be an ecommerce site.

Focus on capturing those visitors as leads for future marketing. Email marketing and autoresponders are your best bet for this. Create a squeeze page or some kind of sign up form for capturing names and emails. If you look at the top right hand column of this blog you can see my sign up form. I’m also using an unblockable exit popup to capture leads from people who are about to leave my site.

Here’s my squeeze page for “101 One-Minute Traffic Tips.”

Ask yourself this question, “Are you marketing with content or merely creating it?” To learn how you can use content to successfully market your online business, head over to Content Marketing Roadmap.

How are you using content to generate leads? Leave your comments below.