It Starts With Social Networking
Generating online communities is powerful because of the word of mouth marketing effect you can create. Think about it you build the online communities you get more involved before you know it your name starts to viral out every where specially if your good at something, which don’t take me wrong search engine traffic is excellent for generating leads and ROI most certainly. But the thing is with social networking most of its word of mouth marketing and you can obtain a lot of referrals from it.
For example I have had a few people that was checking my blog out, or etc and have recommended people to me just because of some of the stuff I wrote about and they have seen the rankings I have achieved such as on Google, and etc. The good thing is about when these type of people call you there mind is already made up there thinking this guy is good at what he does because Joe recommended him to me. Thats there first thought, and generally a consumer will follow through with that thought.
Search engine traffic don’t work like that unless someone is searching for your brand name, or your brand is well known and they bump into it some how by running a search (thats why branding is important), but then again search engine traffic and social media have there ups and downs. Its best to generate both streams and build trends of both, if you can successfully build trends from both you are on the right path, and heading towards success.