It blew my mind when I first learned that some people now have the job title: “Social Media Strategist.” For a while there, I thought that members of my generation had just brilliantly conned the system into paying them to play around on Facebook and Twitter (funny, several of my jobs in college did just that — only I don’t think they knew about it). But now the reality of business is that people more or less live online. They communicate online, hang out online, watch TV online, and shop online. I even work online, 8 hours a day. The folks at j6 design write: “Online culture is THE CULTURE. … Word of mouse = word of mouth,” and they’re pretty much right, especially if you’re trying to do business. Business that are slow to embrace social media are by and large falling behind their competitors — especially if those businesses are competing for the attention of the under-35 demographic.

So what’s the return-on-investment of social media? This infographic from j6 design answers that question. The tl;dr takeaway (look that up if you don’t know what it means): People want to engage with your business online, and they want to interact with human beings, not bots.

7 reasons to embrace online culture (social media)

Homepage Image Source: Scientific American