Here are 10 reasons that it is absolutely vital for your small business to be online, and taking advantage of social media like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest to the fullest.

1. Everyone Is Already There

Social media is an intimate part of hundreds of millions of people’s lives. Whether daily or weekly, social networks are growing exponentially and your business can leverage social media to see big gains.

2. An Extension of Your Branding

Social media opens a channel directly with your customers and prospects. Social media helps push your marketing message directly to your customers.

3. Keep a Pulse on Your Market

Social media presents opportunities for market research. Review groups, pages, tweets and updates to understand what your customers like, what they don’t like, and additionally to get their general feedback.

4. Lead Generation

When you connect with your customers on social media they can keep track of every individual update and item that you post. When they comment to one of your items, their connections and friends will also see the comment on your page and it will organically expand your coverage throughout social media networks.

5. SEO Benefits

Search engines are increasingly indexing and watching social media networks. By registering your business name of the major social media networks, you’re ensuring that competition is not taking advantage of these profiles and that your business is the one that turns up in search results.

6. A Personal Connection

Social media websites offer one of the easiest ways to reach everyone who is interested in your products, services and promotions. With one quick update, everybody in your network instantly knows when you have a special offer or discount, and will even spread the word to their own network.

7. Easy Promoting

Social media sites offer the easiest way to reach everybody who might be interested in your sales and promotions. With one update, everyone you’re connected to knows instantly when you have a special offer.

8. Rewarding Customer Loyalty

Social media sites are an ideal way to reward loyalty by offering exclusive discounts and coupons.

9. A Ready-Made Platform

Social media sites make it extremely easy to create your business page. It only takes a few minutes to get a functional profile online, and there is no need to create an entire website when you can simply make your profile.

10. It’s Free

Taking advantage of social media networks will cost you nothing. You aren’t getting tied into monthly fees and you aren’t required to purchase any kind of advertising, although if you want to take full advantage of what social networks have to offer, many of the major networks do offer paid advertising opportunities.

I hope these will help convince you that if you’re not already using social media for your business… you should be!  If you have any questions, as always feel free to reach out to us.