Social media sites are networks where people interact with each other through personal profiles. They use them to hang out, keep in touch with friends, share interests, network and even find jobs. For your business, it’s not a question of if but when you should start using them. Your business needs to be social and here are 10 reasons why.

1. Everybody’s There Already
Social media sites have hundreds of millions of users and a handful of them are among the most visited websites on earth. A large number of users check their profiles daily to see what’s going on and they’re growing in leaps and bounds. If you’re there, you can be in daily contact with them.

2. Excellent Branding Opportunities
These sites put you in direct communication with your customers and there’s simply nothing better for branding your business. Your customers can have a personal dialog with you.

3. Listening Stations
Social media also offer wonderful market research opportunities. Message boards, updates, groups and reviews allow you to find out exactly what your target market likes and doesn’t like. You can use these resources to get to know them and better create products and campaigns.

4. Lead Generation
You can use social media sites to get more customers. People will see your posts and hear about you from their friends. Plus, you get global reach 24/7 not only to your fans, but to their fans, and their fans, and their fans.

5. SEO Benefits
Profiles, updates and other social media content appear in search engine results pages and often rank quite high up. This is one of the biggest ways that people will find your profile. You also get backlinks coming into your site from your social media content.

6. The Personal Touch
Your social media presence and interactions with your fan base give your business a personal touch. That’s what so many companies are lacking today. People like to know who they’re buying from.

7. Easy Promotion
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
You can use social media sites to reward your fans’ loyalty by offering exclusive discounts and freebies that are only available to them.

9. A Ready-Made Platform
There’s no need to create a new website when you can simply make a profile. On most of these the social media sites, it takes only minutes to sign up and get started. Not only is it easy, but you also get the built-in SEO benefits of using their already popular website.

10. It’s Free
You get advertising, marketing and branding tools at your fingertips without paying a dime for them. Social media networking is a dream come true for businesses.

Before you get started, it’s important to have clear goals. What do you want to do with your social media presence? What action do you want your fans to take? Stay focused on these goals and devote some time each day to building your social media presence.