“If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends,” said Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. When it comes to the Internet, your social media presence will be your best defence.

Making sure your social media strategy is hitting the mark can be hard. Between the ever-growing number of platforms, threat of bad PR, different strategies for different niches, and a wide plethora of tactics to engage your audience—social media can get a bad rap for being complex. Fortunately, becoming a thought leader, gaining leads, and building your brand with social can be simplified into four digestible pieces.