One of the biggest challenges in social media, beyond figuring out how to use the insane amount of tools, sites, and platforms available is how to keep the traffic or people that are coming to your site. You’ve created these touchpoints with the intent of engaging your customers or prospects but what are you doing once they get there?

The reason this is such an important topic is that IF you are a marketer or a startup, your success, your livelihood is predicated on people finding you but then doing something on your site. There has to be some type of call to action once people hit your social site, or your web site for that matter.

If you are on Facebook, how are you engaging visitors? What are you offering them? What incentive is there to come back tomorrow? Dangling carrots can work but did you ever think that maybe they want more than just some type of prize or incentive? Have you ever asked?

Whether you offer a product or service, whether you are an ad agency in Pittsburgh or a deli in New York, people come to your site either by accident or by purpose-either way you have an opportunity to do something with that visit once they get there-you need to decide what they will do and what you will get out of that initial visit.

On a blog what will keep someone coming back is the content, pure and simple. beyond the quality of the posts is the frequency. Beyond the frequency will be the dialogue or the comments wrapped around those posts. One of the hardest things for most people to grasp is how time intensive blogging can be. The payoff? Awareness of your brand, your product and your service.

Twitter is not as much about sustaining traffic as it is about being visible, being relevant and being genuine. As it stands now, marketers have still not quite figured Twitter out-which means that it is still wide open.

The bottom line with all social sites is that if the wheels are not oiled daily, they will eventually grind to a halt.