In an age where social media consumes much of our lives, many small businesses still have little or no social media presence.

Many of these business owners cannot see a proven return on investment (ROI), so they opt not to go social.

In looking at several of the more popular social media outlets, here is what your business is missing out on if you are not actively engaged:

  • Facebook – By far the largest of the social media venues, this site provides companies with a great opportunity to create fan pages and share pertinent information with both current and potential customers. If you have a small retail business and have not done so already, create a fan page. Use it to interact with those interested in your business, offer them special deals related specifically to the site, start topic threads and engage in conversation with visitors. As Facebook is likely to pass a billion users later this summer, businesses not having a presence on the site are missing out on free advertising;
  • Twitter – Considered in some circles to be more for use by celebrities, Twitter is a great tool for businesses to interact with consumers. Although the site’s comments are limited to 140 characters, Twitter allows businesses to tweet out information on the company and share links to information that visitors will find informative. The site has also served in the last few years to be a venue that people turn to for news updates, etc., so visibility can certainly work in a company’s favor;
  • Google+ – While this site may not get all the attention that the first two mentioned do, Google+ is also a good option for businesses to share company products and services with the public. Just the fact alone that Google attracts more than a billion visitors a month to its search engine is reason enough to have a company Google+ page. Other reasons include the fact that its +1 button is not tied to usage just inside the framework of its social network, but throughout the search process when a visitor comes to Google;
  • LinkedIn – Even though many business professionals use this as a networking site, it has a number of advantages for companies. Along with being valuable to building links and driving traffic to both your Web site and/or blogs, LinkedIn is good for businesses because it is easy to use and will not involve a lot of time and effort in marketing your business. You can also interact with other businesses, so that you can do some cross-promoting with those that would not be considered immediate rivals;
  • Wikipedia – When you put together your company’s business reference page here, you can interact among other users on the site’s community portal. Business owners should be forewarned that their company will need to qualify in order to have a page on the site. Businesses that stand the best chance of getting such a page are those that have experienced some high-level media exposure and have some history behind it. Given the site is viewed as credible by most folks, having a page on it makes your information appear more valuable than on some other locations;
  • Pinetrest – Now reported to be the third most popular social media site, Pinetrest can be a very wise decision for businesses. Analysis shows that 60 percent of the site’s users are women, something that should be of interest to many businesses given the fact that women in families in particular account for many of the shopping decisions. The site is a good venue to tell your company’s story through pictures and give consumers more of a reason to want to come and do business with you, building brand loyalty when all is said and done;
  • Tumblr – Along with being easy to set up, Tumblr offers businesses the opportunity to have their coverage “re-blogged” around the Internet. When the content is re-blogged, it credits your site as the original source, meaning you bring more recognition to both your services offered and available products.

These are just a few of the social media venues that your business (and yes, nonprofit organizations) should have a presence on. If not, your audience may think of you as being “anti-social.” And in today’s competitive, on-demand, 24/seven, consumer-focused marketplace… business is social.