Social media sites are doing well. Established networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ become more and more popular every day, while exciting new arrivals astound the Web with their amazing growth. Marketers who don’t try to get their share of the social media pie will be losing customers.

The Details:

1. Web users spend more and more time on social media sites. People log into their social media accounts several times a day and each time they spend at least a few minutes. Social media usage accounts for 18% of all time spent online (according to comScore).
2. It improves your brand image. While ads bring you more sales, social media spreads your brand vision and message to existing customers, but also to prospects. It enables you to tell the world who you are, what you do, and how you do it in a convincing manner.
3. It keeps your customers updated with your latest product launches and events. Spreading company news on the Web through tweets or Facebook updates is faster and more convenient than doing it through press releases, and can bring you much more exposure than news items posted on your site.
4. People connect to social media sites through various devices. More and more people are using smartphones and tablets to connect to Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest, and for marketers, this creates the opportunity to market to specific groups based on the platforms used.
5. It connects you with other companies and experts in your niche. When you use social media actively, you establish ties not only with your customers, but also with important companies and people in your niche, and this can lead to joint events and collaborations in both the online environment and the real world.
6. It increases your online exposure. Customers who have not heard of your company before are more likely to discover you if you have set up a business page on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter.
7. It builds trust with existing customers. Social media lets you stay connected with your customers even when they are not buying your products, helping you to gather more feedback from them and understand better what they want, and this in turn helps you improve your products and services.
8. It boosts your search engine rankings. It does this by building organic backlinks for you each time people share your content. It’s also said that Google takes into account the buzz you generate on the big social media sites when ranking your website.
9. It enables you to provide faster customer service. Customers prefer to receive helpful advice for their product- and service-related problems from friendly employees via Facebook or Twitter than through a formal customer service that requires the exchange of emails.
10. It enables you to do highly-targeted marketing. You know more about social media users than about Google searchers, and on social sites you also have tools that enable you to discover the demographics of your audience. A Facebook ad can be targeted to a more specific user group than a Google ad.
11. Social media marketing doesn’t cost money. It’s probably the most effective free marketing tool available, and while it’s true that it requires an investment of time, there are many marketers who would rather spend more time than more money on their marketing campaigns, and maybe you are one of them.
12. It’s the new media. People all over the world spend the time that they previously devoted to reading newspapers and magazines, watching TV, or listening to the radio on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social sites. Social sites provide the same news that those other channels do, but it enables users to block the stuff they don’t want.