However, it has most certainly stayed the course with some recently released stats making mind-blowing reading, including the fact that there are around 2 billion active social media users on the planet now, accounting for around 30% of the global population, and Facebook ad around 500,000 new users every day….that’s about 6 new users every second!

So, what does a company need to do to get on board with social media and to be to take advantage of the huge benefits it can bring?

Well, first of all, you need to create company pages for the various social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google +, YouTube and so on.  Social media users have their favorite channels that they use on a regular basis – not everyone uses Facebook!  Creating social media channels for your organisation can be done by a digital marketing agency such as MultiChannel Creative, so bear this in mind when planning your activities.

Then you need to post regularly to your social media channels.  You need to build the number of followers that your company pages have, and the best way to do this is by posting engaging and interesting information, much in the same way that you would do for your website.  It’s also a good idea to use humor and also links to special offers and promotions that your company is offering at a particular time.  Ultimately you want social media users to like and share your company page with their friends, and their friends with their friends and so on – you get the idea.  Essentially, the more interesting the content, the more chance you have of building your fan base.  The holy grail is of course to get your picture or video to go viral!

You can also carry out paid campaigns on some of the social media platforms to build your fan base by targeting certain consumer groups, which many people would say is an excellent way to spend your advertising budget.  Again, this is something that MultiChannel Creative can help you with as part of your digital marketing and SEO strategy.

So, in answer to the question, it is vital that you invest time, energy and resource into your social media activities – after all, large companies have departments solely dedicated to social media, posting upwards of 5 times or more a day.  Of course, not all companies have that type of resource available, so just consider that you need to be posting regularly or as often as possible, with useful and interesting content, to ensure that social media works for you.