Mediaboss Marketing

If you were running a business five years ago, you'll recall how this crazy social media thing played out.

First, a bunch of people calling themselves "social networking consultants" or "new media experts" or some such thing showed up with their palms out. After giving them some cash to do stuff you didn't understand, you decided they were mostly flim-flam artists (and we can hardly blame you) and sent them packing. But then, all of a sudden, everybody and their mother was on Twitter and you wondering how the heck it all happened so fast.

The truth is, nobody knew what to make of social networking sites when they first exploded a few years ago, let alone how to leverage them to help a business. But times have changed and the new media just isn't so new anymore—it's matured to the point that anybody with a product to sell, a service to offer, or a brand to promote has to be dedicating resources to their social messaging.

There's a reason Web 2.0 companies like online coupon site Groupon, and business networking service LinkedIn, and Facebook, the biggest fish of them all, are lining up to go public.

Social is big business. And not just for the providers of social media services, but for the companies that use platforms like Facebook and Twitter to increase awareness of what their selling as well.

A new infographic (below) from visual.ly serves up the goods on just how pervasive social networking has become and what a bonanza it can be for businesses that handle it the right way.

Now it's true that as with all marketing and advertising, it can be difficult to determine just what you're getting in return for dollars spent on social media. That's why you should probably be on the lookout for the next crop of consultants calling themselves "social marketing optimization experts" and such.

But in the meantime, digest these numbers: More than 80 percent of Americans participate in at least one social network and of those people, 53 percent follow a particular brand. That's roughly 130 million customers of some company or companies out there, and as visual.ly puts it, "Shouldn't it be yours?"

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Infographic: Can Your Business Afford to Ignore Social Media?