Increase your exposure. I mean, this goes without saying, right? Or maybe not - which is totally fine! Worldwide, over 2 billion people use social media. Crazy, right?? And that is only expected to increase. Talk where your audience is at. And yes, even if your target market is grandmas - social media will still work for you. Personally, if I am thinking about going to a business, I will research them on Facebook first. If they don't have Facebook? They aren't even OPEN in my eyes. Yup, I actually think that business has shut down. Social media is incredibly important to increasing exposure and getting more customers in your door or purchasing your service.

Build your brand. This one is actually my favorite. Coco-cola spends 4.6 BILLION dollars on branding. Mind blown. But they are #1 and everyone knows them, and it is well worth it for them. It is worth it to invest in your brand. Build your name, build your image. You work hard, and you deserve for people to know who you are. Social media is a way to share feelings, images, thoughts, words and connect with consumers. 

Understand your audience better. It's great to have a target market, but what's even better than that? Truly understanding your customers. What are their tendencies? Their likes and dislikes? How do they communicate? What is their story? Social media allows you to really dig into your consumers and then you can respond appropriately. 

Drive a targeted audience. Personally, I think business owners get a little bit too caught up in this. Yes, you should know and understand your target market, but don't just be singing to them. You know your target market has family and friends and co-workers, right? And they can pass the word along? However, if you really want to target a specific person, social media allows you to easily do that. For example, if you own a horse farm and are trying to promote midnight rides under the moonlight, you can choose to send your ad to people who like "horses" or "moon riders" or really whatever you want. Pretty nifty, right?

Build a relationship with your audience. Social media may be a marketing tool to you, but it isn't to your consumers. It is a way to engage and build their social network. So if you're doing a "hard sell" approach and not seeing results, it's because you're doing it wrong. Think about when you are using social media, do you enjoy seeing all those ads that want you to buy something? Probably not. So why are you doing the same thing? Engage, educate, and have fun with your consumers! Trust me on this one. 

Boost your SEO. SEO stands for search engine optimization. SEO focuses on growing your visibility in (non-paid) search engine results. Basically, if someone searches for your business - are you coming in at the top or the bottom? Since we are talking about this being non-paid, it's important for your business to do whatever it can to boost your SEO. Social media is highly tied to your SEO. Better social media, better SEO.

Customer service. Fifty-two perfect of people expect a response in under two hours if they contact you on social media. I send Facebook messages all the time to businesses, and you better believe I end up going to the ones that actually answer me. So we know how important that is, but Facebook does not make direct messaging easy for businesses. So I guarantee if you have never checked your Facebook messenger, you have lost out on business. Or if you don't check it often enough, you have lost out on business. This is an easy (and 100% necessary) way to make your customers happy, whether they comment in a negative or positive way.