Most businesses and startups make the mistake of focusing on marketing last. They put in on the backburner until they can no longer avoid it and realize they do need to invest in marketing. What’s the point of having a company if no one has heard of it? Here are 5 reasons social media is essential for your success in business.

Social Customer Care Meets Consumer Demand

Want to stand out from your competitors? Get live customer service through your social media and you will surpass them in no time. (Click to Tweet!) According to HubSpot, 72% of people who make a complaint to a company on Twitter expect a response within an hour. Imagine if you could fill that need?

Social Media Gives Brands Global Reach

Your reach on social media isn’t limited to your neighborhood. It expands beyond your state and country. Suddenly you could have international customers who love your product and are demanding more! But if you’re not on social media the chances of them finding just your website are much slimmer. And if you don’t have any social media, chances are they’ll be skeptical that you aren’t up to date with technology or current trends.  In a survey conducted by Forrester Research, where they interviewed 1,217 business decision makers worldwide late last year, 95% used social networks to some extent which means you should be doing it too.

Brands Find Collaboration Opportunities on Social Media

Perhaps, you have a new interior design product that you’d like to partner with architects on, well social media can make that happen quicker than you trying to find those people on your own. Almost every social media channel has a built in search engine to find these key people or businesses. By creating an established social media brand they’ll already have some trust in what you’re capable of and be more willing to partner with you especially if you have some influence online.

Brands Find Success with Lead Generation on Social Media

According to HubSpot in 2013, 52% of all marketers found a lead using Facebook.  If you monitor social media conversations by keywords and sentiment, whether that’s positive or negative, you’ll notice emerging trends in your field. You will also be able to connect with people talking about frustrations they have with competitors or products and services they are looking for in real time. Imagine a few friends are talking about what web hosting service to try and you could immediately join that conversation and sell your services? That’s the real power in social media.

Social Media Helps Establish Brands as Subject Matter Experts

If you regularly share content from the best industry sources in your field, people will notice and you will become a content curator—a person that is known for finding and sharing the highest valued blogs, videos and articles related to your audience. If you write blog posts for your business and share those on social media that’ll enhance your credibility and authority even more–demonstrating you are the expert people should trust.

So remember if you want to expand your customer base, provide better customer service and build up your credibility—social media can do all that and more for your business. If you hope to stay competitive in today’s market you’ll need to take your business to the next level and turn social media into a strategy that creates brand awareness and turns online relationships into sales.

Katie Leimkuehler, the founder and CEO of Leimkuehler Media, is an expert social media consultant and coach who advises and empowers business and individuals on the best social media strategies and demonstrates how to take their social media to the next level. She has over seven years of experience coaching corporations and showing them how to implement a winning social media strategy by providing the tools and techniques to launch, grow and manage their social media presence. She has spoken at Chicago Social Media Week 2013, Coldwell Banker, KI’s NeoCon Social Media Webinar, among others. To see more of her work, follow Katie on Twitter.