You’ve done your research, you’ve carefully crafted a killer blog and you’ve published it on your website for all to see. Unfortunately, the only people who seem to be viewing it are the other employees in the marketing department to whom you sent a link. What gives?

Despite the ever-increasing popularity and, in fact, necessity of brands’ social media involvement, only 27% of companies have a dedicated social media-focused employee. For the rest of the business world, a marketing or communications professional has had social media tacked onto the rest of their duties. That can mean an overwhelming amount of work for one person, and often the brand’s online image suffers.

If you dabbled in social media last year, then you know being effective in social media can be a fairly heavy commitment of your time and resources. It takes dedication to generate a consistent feed of useful, compelling content, to interact with potential clients and customers and to seek out relationships with other thought-leaders in your field.

Commit to social media this year for your digital brand. It’s worth it. Want to know why? We’ve got the top five reasons why you should be making that commitment to creating a strong social media presence for your brand.

Flip through the marketing materials of any given company, and you’re bound to find a reference to its commitment to customers. It’s a brand value your customers and clients want to see, but it’s not always easy to prove or publicize.

Enter social media: the most public forum for customer interactions ever created. As the social networking sites grow, more and more consumers turn to a brand’s social media profiles to air their questions and concerns.

This is a major opportunity for your company to demonstrate its commitment to prompt, polite customer service that works to really solve the client’s problem. Don’t let the prospect of dealing with unhappy customers in a public way scare you away from the conversation!

We are constantly inundated with bad news. Rioting in a neighboring country. A tsunami on the other side of the world. Violent attacks in your own backyard. As social media marketers, these large-scale disasters present a complex challenge. On the one hand, they generate a lot of buzz on social networks and can be difficult – and dangerous – to ignore. On the other hand, speaking about them requires thoughtful posting and a good sense of timing.