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If you want your business to be successful, you need to observe the trends and keep pace with them. One of the current trends that gained a lot of traction over the past few years is social media. We all use Facebook and Titter, we love sharing cool stuff on Pinterest or to keep in touch with friends on Google Plus. 

Wherever people form communities, word-of-mouth marketing does wonders to a good product or service. People love to share. If your business caters to one of their greatest needs or wants, they will most probably tell the whole world about it. They would be your best and most convincing marketing agents, which you aren't even paying.

Social media offers the possibility of very narrow segmenting of your target group. This is very useful for your marketing campaigns, because you'll get a much better ROI when you target your best buyer. You know her profile from your past sales reports, and now you can talk directly to her, using the language she understands and resonates with, on Facebook, for instance. 

Paretto's law applies here, as well as in many other fields: 20% of your customers make you 80% of your sales. This is why it's much more effective to direct your marketing efforts towards this segment of the total population, because they want your product and they only need a little boost of their desire to make them click on a link or add something in a virtual shopping cart.

If you bring your business close to your consumers' heart, you only have to win. If you lead, they will follow. Social media is the perfect environment where good leaders thrive. Be one of them and crowds will follow you. 

Becoming a leader is not an easy task, though, so you'll need to have a very well-thought plan and a careful implementation. This is why many businesses prefer to hire specialists in social media to handle their online presence. Thanks to their expertise, specialists know better what works and what doesn't, so they are probably the most appropriate persons to recommend you comprehensive action plans that would bring you social media success and recognition.

Big PR agencies realized this need and developed special social media departments, to provide exclusively social media marketing and PR services to their customers. If you look at TV advertisements, you'll notice that most big advertisers give their Facebook page for people to stay updated with their news. Several years ago, this would have seemed totally crazy: not to lead people to your own website. Now it's not crazy, but it's something you should do if you want to keep in touch with the young generation. Younger target groups are better because their purchasing power is bigger. Besides, the older they get, the more money they will make, so the more they will afford to spend. You want to have them close to you even from their teen years. This will bring you long term benefits older people wouldn't, because as they age, they will rather make less money.