As a business owner are you still struggling with the idea of social media being worth the “hassle”?  This is a conversation I have regularly whether it is with business owners, family members, and co-workers.  I, of course, definitely think a social media presence is “worth it” socially and professionally.  The days of print newspaper and pen pals are coming to an end and the days of technology that enables instant gratification is here to stay.   

As I was pondering the “is it worth the hassle” question, I decided to do some data gathering.  I am a huge fan of Ted Talks (if you haven’t watched or listened to any Ted Talks I strongly suggest you check out ted.com). I put social media in the search box and 45 pages of social media related lectures popped up.  Now, that is just the number of pages, NOT the number of lectures.  Each page holds 10 videos so we are easily looking at 450 lectures about social media. 

Then I went to stratista.com to dig a little deeper.   I was able to see that currently Facebook has 1.79 BILLION users, Twitter has 317 MILLION users, and Instagram has 400 MILLION users; the magnitude of these numbers is unreal.  These are three FREE social media sites that your business can utilize to reach millions of potential customers.  I would say social media is worth the “hassle.”