Social media have become highly accessible and highly effective e-marketing tools, and, nowadays, it pays to take advantage of these powerful and multifaceted resources.

Social media marketing should be a part of any effective integrated marketing communications plan as it has the potential to bring a huge amount of traffic and attention to your business,products, and services.

Here are 5 reasons why:

1. Access to a huge pool of potential customers.

The Internet has become the global meeting place and more people than ever are going online to access information and services, and to communicate. Facebook alone has over 500 million users. Social media has made it possible to connect with those users.

2. It’s Easy

Social media resource are usually designed to be user friendly, which means that sites and applications can be easily maintained and updated. It also means that almost anyone, whether they are 18 or 80 from Vancouver or Vienna, can have access to your business.

3. It involves low costs and high rewards.

Most sites are free and can help increase your revenues. Enough said!

4. Diversity

A great feature about many social media resources is that they can be linked together so that the same message can be presented through a variety of platforms. This can not only save you time, but it also ensures a consistent message. Your Twitter account, for example, can be connected to your Facebook page so that all you tweets will automatically be posted on your

message board. In addition, many sites also allow for the use of videos and photos, which makes for a truly multimedia marketing approach.

5. Real time market research

Sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and personal blogs are all about communicating and, as a result, they allow companies to conduct their own free market research by tapping into discussions about specific market places, products, services. On the flip side, it’s also possible to see who is having those discussions.