In the last five years the face of business marketing and social experience has changed dramatically with the unprecedented rise of social media sites.

A new survey has found that babies’ images appear on social media site within one hour of their birth and that only six per cent of parents said they never uploaded photos of their children to sites like Facebook.

Marc Phelps of baby photo agency Posteria, which commissioned the survey, said: “The fact that a picture of the average newborn is now online within an hour just goes to highlight the enormous impact social media has had on our lives in the past five years, and how prevalent these pages are in helping to keep loved ones informed on the special occasions in our lives, such as the birth of a new child.”

Most of the parents surveyed (56%) said they shared the images to keep in touch with distant friends and family. Significantly, parents also said they uploaded the images because Facebook was a good location to store images (34%), and as a record of their child’s early years for the future (28%).

This tells us that the majority of people believe that social media sites are here to stay, so much so that they are using them to store and record some of their most precious memories.

But what does this mean for businesses? First and foremost it shows the power of social media and how significant it is in the daily lives of the majority of the population. Making sure that you have a presence on social media sites is vital for you to reach new customers and also to provide value to your current customers. Having engaging content on sites like Facebook that gets shared and talked about will raise your profile and also give your customer some added value, contributing to customer retention and loyalty.

As the world turns increasingly digital and puts more stock into the online world, make sure your business has a piece of the social media pie.