Recent surveys all point to small and medium businesses still not using or not seeing the benefit from their use of social media to help drive their marketing or business forward, be it through a lack of understanding or the conflicting advice that is floating about the internet.

To that end here are 5 great reasons showing the rewards that can be reaped when a business decides to use social media in a strategic, planned and properly educated way.

1. Take control of your brand name. You wouldn't want someone else holding your business domain name on the web. So why let it happen on social media, before someone else captures your name or brand name on the popular social media sites like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn, you would be best to do it first.

2. Building links for S.E.O. When you build a profile on any social media site, it creates a link back to your business website. The more links you have pointing back to your site, the more likely it is to show up when potential a customer is searching for the products or services you offer.

3. Increased hits to your website. Since you will have created more links back to your site on these social media sites, you will be effectively increasing the targeted traffic to your website – Remember this is the place where you really want them, after all you are in business to sell your goods and services to the consumer.

4. Build better and stronger relationships. Social media sites offer a unique opportunity to build relationships and interact with your customers and customer base outside of them making a purchase. The nurturing of these relationships often leads to increased sales. If a potential customer or customer gets to feel a connection to your business, they are far more likely to choose to do business with you.

5. Great Public Relations. Social media sites will help you to get your message out about your business, achievements, products and activities. In today’s fast paced and electronic age no longer do newspapers or magazines dictate what sorts of stories are newsworthy? Using social networking sites will allow you a platform to get your information out there, making your business more visible, credible and worthy in the eyes of your customers and the wider world.

Get started today - no business can afford to be left behind when it comes to social media.