Five Reasons Why You Should Pay More Attention to Social Media in 2013

1) Facebook now has more than 500 million users. At the rate that this number is growing, it won’t be long before we’ll get to see it reach 1 billion. If this does not convince you of the popularity and power of social media, I don’t know what will. And this is just for Facebook alone. There are other social networking and bookmarking sites out there that boast of users in the millions. On top of these group are Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Digg and so many others. Even MySpace which a lot of people are considering to be dead is still a relevant player with millions of members still.

2) People love talking about themselves. They like sharing photos of their trips to Mt. Kilimanjaro or the night before’s party at Gerry’s Bar and Resto. This is what drives the success of Facebook today and the popular social networks of before like Friendster and MySpace.

3) More and more people are getting their news from Twitter “trending topics” or from social bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit and Delicious. It’s because in these sites, they have the ability to share the stories that they like to their friends and contacts in just a click of a button. They can just retweet it, digg it, stumble it, or up vote it. Sharing things online have never been this simple and easy.

4)      It’s so easy for something to go viral within a social media site. Take YouTube for instance. Thousands of people amassed fame or fortune or both from just a video/videos that they or others posted on YouTube. Justin Bieber is a notable example of this. He was discovered on YouTube.

5) Social media sites make communication easy and cheap. Connecting and conversing with a friend or a family member from abroad doesn’t cost a dime. All it will cost you is the time you spend typing that message on Facebook messages or Facebook chat or replying to tweets sent your way on Twitter.

Business-wise or shall we say marketing-wise, social media is a gold mine. Billions of people login into them every single day. If you are smart enough to take hold of the opportunities that they offer, you can build and grow your online presence to higher levels. It doesn’t matter if you are a blogger, a website designer or an affiliate marketer, social media will benefit you.

So, are you on Facebook? Does your blog have a Facebook Page? Are you tweeting? Are you sharing your content on Digg? Do you have videos on YouTube? If your answer to any of these questions is “no”, it’s time you start working and turn it into a “yes”.