Hands down, social media marketing is one of the most cost-effective digital marketing strategies you can use to syndicate content and boost the visibility of your business. This means boosting the visibility of everything your business might have to offer, including apps.

Social media is used by many professionals. In fact, Social Media Examiner found that 92% of marketers say that social media is important to their business. What’s more, according to a 2016 eMarketer study, almost one-third of the world regularly uses social networks.

In this day and age, not having a social media presence simply isn’t practical if you want to be competitive, successful and grow and strengthen your brand. With that in mind, while there are numerous reasons why social media marketing is vital for your business and for app marketing, here are my top 5.

1. It boosts brand awareness

This one’s a no-brainer. Social media is one of the best, easiest, most cost-effective and quickest ways to reach consumers, engage with them and make them aware of your brand and business app. When social media users interact with your content, brand awareness is boosted and you can start building a reputation for your business.

Tip: Choose your social media channels wisely – There are plenty of social networks out there. You don’t need to use all of them. Pick the channels that are used the most by the consumers you’re targeting. Keep in mind, when it comes to marketing apps, Twitter and Facebook tend to be the best options. YouTube may also be a good fit for your brand, as well as LinkedIn, especially if your app is B2B.

2. It builds real relationships

One of the biggest benefits of using social media to market your business and your app is that you can directly interact with your customers. You can read their status updates, their tweets, etc. This gives an excellent view into their daily lives, which can help adjust your marketing efforts to better appeal to them.

It also gives you the chance to build relationships with non-competing businesses, tastemakers and thought leaders in your market. You might even connect with journalists who cover your industry. Making these friendly connections is a sound social media business idea because it can lead to more people in your market, sharing and retweeting your content, drawing even more attention to your app. Just remember to return the favor.

Tip: Listen more, talk less – Consumers tend to view Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms as social networks first. This is an advantage because they are less likely to view any of your content as promotional in nature. Respect this mindset by reading your target audience’s online content and taking part in their online discussions. Only when you know your audience, will you know what to post on social media to add value to their lives and increase the chances for them to connect, read and share your content.

3.  It improves your rankings and traffic

If you want to drive more traffic to app store pages and throw more support behind your app marketing initiative, social media can be helpful. Search engine crawlers are continually on the move and they know which pages consistently earn traffic and which ones don’t. Crawlers will give more priority to these traffic-drawing sites. Combining the regular posting of fresh, unique and engaging content, with an organic SEO strategy on your social media channels, you will earn higher rankings and drive traffic to these optimized pages.

Tip: Google+ can help improve the visibility of your app on search engines – You’ll likely find that paid app marketing using social channels, such as Google+, can be highly effective if you want to rank well with Google. Although not the most popular social media platform, Google+ is valuable due to its effect on organic rankings on Google. Content posted to this social network is immediately indexed in the Google results page. It’s also not uncommon for it to appear on the first page of results, outranking other social media channels.

4. It will get you more sales

According to an infographic from Go-Gulf, 67% of Twitter users are much more likely to buy from brands they follow on Twitter. In the same infographic, it was pointed out that more than 90% of these Twitter users follow businesses on Twitter to get promos and discounts. Essentially, social media gives you the opportunity to incentivize potential customers. Try sharing coupon codes or make paid apps free for a limited time, etc.

Tip: Follow trending topics and keywords in Twitter – You can set up streams that will allow you to follow keywords on Twitter. This process can be made even easier with the help of HootSuite. Doing this can make it easier for you to find people seeking products or apps you sell and direct them to your site or the appropriate app store.

5. It’s free

If you have a social media management tool, running an app marketing campaign via social network channels is free. Sure, you can hire someone to manage your social media for you or hire an online PR agency, etc., but ultimately, using social media is a free marketing opportunity.

Tip: Social media marketing success doesn’t happen overnight – You’ll need to work hard to succeed. Create a highly-focused social media and content marketing strategy and remember that quality always wins out over quantity in the end. It’s better to establish 1,000 online connections who regularly engage with and share your content, than have 5,000 connections who don’t return after the first connection.

Your brand doesn’t exist without social media

The bottom line is if your brand and app have zero social media presence, then they don’t really exist online, even if you have a website.

Social media offers an incredible opportunity for both content and app marketing. Based on the above tips and reasons to use social media for marketing your business and your app, remember to choose your social channels wisely. Never forget, in the end, quality always trumps quantity.