We’ve all got a lot to thank social media for; different people for different reasons. But, whatever these reasons are, no single person or company can deny the usefulness of social media. It’s grown rapidly over the years and, in most quarters, is now the go-to way to get things done. The business world is one section that has benefited solidly from social media. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got an online store, physical office, or social media. When you know how to use it, it is worth it.

I’ll tell you why.

When you think of social media, what do you see? I’ll tell you what I see. Interaction, connection, communication, freedom. You can put in whatever you want based on your knowledge of social media, but these about cover it. In a fast-paced world like ours, social media helps many businesses meet up. It blurs the distances between locations, making it easy for information to pass fluidly from one spot to the other.

You can do about anything on there. It’s possible to market products, advertise, share information about your business, and so on. One interesting thing about social media is that when you use it, you get to interact, connect, and communicate all at once; very seamlessly at that.

Do you know that with the right move, social media can help grow sales for your business? We can talk about how good reviews are all day, but if you don’t push those reviews out to the right places, they’re useless. You’ve got to get them out into people’s noses so that they can see it, and that’s just what social media does. And the good thing is that you can either do this yourself or have a satisfied customer do it for you. You don’t even have to ask them to.

Say, for instance, you provide great service to a client. Because most people these days like to talk about stuff on social media, this client puts out the word about how so and so’s service was satisfactory. Social media isn’t a personal space, so she would want others to have exactly what she just had. Now, it doesn’t matter if she’s telling a bunch of her friends or just uploading stuff to random people. There are bound to be new clients from that bunch. That right there is the magic of social media.

A lot more people are on social media than you think. We’re talking people in hundreds of millions. And no matter how much of a traveler you are, you can’t reach as many people physically as you would through social media, and you’d do that in such a short time. It’s a marvel, honestly. All you have to do is shape your information accordingly, target the right audience, and it spreads like wildfire.

Social Media in our day to day lives

But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Because it’s hard to find people out there who aren’t on social media, businesses have now taken to holding official and unofficial communications and interactions on there. You can host anything from meetings to presentations, and it would be as though you’re all physically present. Some parts of huge deals like mergers and buyouts can even be carried out on social media these days. Don’t be surprised. That’s how big it is. It’s thoroughly equipped to carry out any form of communication-related to get things going, except maybe for touch and taste.

Employers have even taken to studying prospective employees’ social media profiles to run background checks on them. Most people wear their lives on their foreheads on social media these days, so it is easy to use what you see there to tell a thing or two about a person. It’s even possible to host interviews there.

Let’s take it that you didn’t want to hop on social media for the reasons mentioned above. However, you’d still have to at one point or the other. Business these days is more often conducted on the internet than it is outside of it, especially if that business is just starting. You’d need to market your services or products, and digital marketing seems to be de rigueur at these times. That’s the way to reach out to a large number of people and have a large impact.

Social media in business has grown to the extent that it’s now an “if you can’t beat them, join them situation” for people who aren’t yet on it. And trust me, there are no beating social media.