Best practices for social marketing?

I guess PR is increasing awareness and differentiating your personal brand, and marketing is implementation - all wrapped up it's social marketing.

In GlennGarry Glennross, Jack Lemmon is a loser who trudges through the rain, following recycled leads to reluctant buyer's homes. Al Pacino walks through the rain, across the street from the office to a bar, meets a fellow, and spends the evening making a big sale.

(All right, it was a crummy sale.)

Being an FA right now makes people run? People run when you say you are a dentist. Are you a dentist who looks for work in people's mouth, tears up the roadway looking for make work? Probably not.

How do we position ourselves to help people who need to help themselves. What are the best practices for social marketing?

Even referrals from clients, for me, involves getting clients together with their friends in some kind of social situation, so the friends can check me out socially from a distance before talking money later on.

But everyone is busy these days, money is tight, and nobody wants to be pitched to -   who is it that does an annual bbq where clients bring their friends to party and meet him?