how important is social media

Of course you can still make good money without it, but for me it helps massively. It help me connect with clients and interact with them. They can give you their opinions, they like to stay grounded on new upates of your company or site, to stay in the loop.

You don't have to depend on it, just use it so it help you grow and spread the word.

You've got to consider what you want to use social media for, what is your goal, if you can answer these questions then you can narrow down the types of social media sites you use and how you use them.

I want to use social media to drive new leads, so for me Facebook is a must, I use a fan page with a custom tab application so that I can build in a squeeze page for lead capture, I then build a relationship with those leads and bring them to my website where I do the selling.

I don't think social media is a must to where you wouldn't be able to sell otherwise, but it makes it easier. Think about advertising and not advertising. You can set up shop in a shopping center and people will walk in and buy and slowly word of mouth will bring more, or you can put an ad in a newspaper and more people will come. Think of social media as word of mouth but a lot more than regular because you say something once, but to many people, as opposed to telling people in person and then only one or two.

Focus your effort on one or two media - not all. not all media are good for what you want. And don't do social media just to have it - badly maintained facebook or twitter page is worst than no twitter or facebook page at all because it make you look not serious and not current.

Good luck!!

If you have a brand that you plan to develop in any way, social media is a must. There's no reason to not start a Twitter and Facebook page because they can only help you.

Even if you don't think you need it, down the line you will be glad you collected a bunch of followers when you feel like posting an announcement or something.

Social media is quite popular these days. Numerous people use it in order to gain clients so that they can sell their products or services with ease. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus have reached the top of the game when it comes to earning some big bucks!

I know people who do not Google search things. They go to You Tube, or Facebook, or some other social site and ask for advice. My wife is one of these. She hates Google and sorting through results to find what she is looking for.

Based on that social media is important if you want to be found outside of the search engines. I also think it is easier to build your email list when the traffic is coming from social sites. You may already have a little credibility which makes it easier to get a name and email address from them.

Of course list building is still a great way to make money so using social media to do it is a smart thing to do.

Social media is a good way to boost your business. Since, today the use of social media is world wide so you can easily get target audience at a single place.
In short the best way to market your product.

It's pretty important. People spend a good chunk of their time browsing social media.



ref: How The World Spends Its Time Online -

Social media is the new SEO. Social media is sooo important now that if you want a site to rank in search engines it needs to be connected with several social media accounts. The more active the social account the better.

Search engines are now looking to social media to look for signs of relevance. If they see that a link to a site is being shared a lot and looks popular, that site is now important and should be served up at top the serps.

Consider this. Youtube videos are hot and Google owns that. A video that starts to get tons of views and has a link to a site, that site starts to look good to Google. If that video is shared via other social media methods or if you get a lot of subscribers, that's instant backlinks. Bing and Facebook are no different.

Twitter is hot, when a link to a site is shared a lot and especially retweeted a lot, that site starts to look good. Tweets and retweets also create backlinks.

Consider this article:

I've noticed that when I connect my websites to facebook accounts and google accounts, they move up a lot in serps.

My two cents, social media will be, if not already, essential for getting traffic not only from the social accounts themselves...but also from search engines.

Social Media is now said to be impacting organic rankings so I would say it is important.

^^^Very true social media impacts organic rankings and can be a great way to gain some backlinks. Once you build your social media audience it will help brand awareness and bring you some referral traffic

Before, social media websites is not that important for marketing purposes. But now, most of the people were engaged in the social media sites so it is one of the best ways to advertise everything. This can help anyone a lot especially if you have your own website.

Well I hear what everyone is saying and I am sure when I do get some social media accounts up and running I will get more traffic but right now I have at least 8 of my main sites pages on page one of google and yahoo and 3 pages in position one. I guess I still don't understand the concept of putting up a page about myself then working my business stuff into the page. I also look at things as what good does it do to get a lot of friends or whatever if maybe just a few may be interested in what I am promoting. Is there a way to only get friends or people to be hooked in with a social media that are interested in what I am promoting.

Just Imagine every one is using social media in one or another.
From young to old aged people, everyone is involved in social media, therefore no business should ignore the power of social media.

The way things are going now, if you don't use social media to promote your business, you will most likely not be noticed. I am still trying to figure it out ... try and see if I can get a hang of it.

Social media is a must in today's ultra modern age. As we live in the greatest technological era of all time, it is very important for every business owners to take advantage of all that technology it has to offer. Now, if you don't move according to the latest inventions, your online business might get ruined or fall out of competition. Nowadays people or more precisely your online customers are following those social medias to greatest extent to keep themselves update regularly. So, your business strategy has to run in that parallel way in order to gain maximum success.

Since Goggles newer algorithm, they have been taking more notice of "social signals" ie. if some one likes or shares a "mediam" it's robots take morte notice. After all, their robots are kept pretty busy and need to take in whats important at the moment.
Hope that answers your original question.
Scotty

Well, you can make money without using any social media. but the thing is that using social media for this purpose will give you extra income, as many people are using them for attracting the people of same interests, this is a good way to spread your work. nothing you need to invest, just give some of your attention to your group or fanpages, that's all!

The people who succeeded in making their enterprises profitable are those who identified the trends of their time. In our time today, one of those trends is social media.

Indeed it takes work and effort to maintain a site. Just because social media platforms are accessed using a computer where you sit in front of all day long, people get the ridiculous idea that it's supposed to be easy. This is simply not the case. Once you educate yourself on how social media promotion and marketing is conducted, you will certainly appreciate it more.

You can imagine how our lives without facebook and yourtube.

Do you mean how important is social media for internet marketing? The answer is yes, important. Opportunities are endless there. Even paid ads on Facebook are much more responsive because of you can advertise your offer to the group, who is interesting in your niche. Look from this point. Who are members of those groups. People who are talking about subject, people who are investing their time into all of those discussions etc. So make them an offer. BTW it is cheaper then adwords.

I think they may be the most important source of traffic now.

As what they say... "No Man is an Island!"... meaning, you can be a business by yourself!

Especially if you are branding yourself! ... SOCIAL MEDIA is the only way to get effective with branding!

More success to you guys!

sure you can make money without social media. but it might be easier with because that is actually where your market it. no matter what market you target, they ARE on social media.
but except running from facebook to twitter i´d rather concentrate on one channel. or, you might ignore them all and concentrate on article marketing and content for your blog. from my own case studies i can say: it doesn't really matter what you do, the point is to stick to it.

Social networking is a great way to drive repeat business and to attract new customers. most important aspects of any business about their products and services.