is there even one study suggesting social media has the minutest possibility of maybe increasing

rank?

People always say this but I haven't read anything mentioning that it's correct.

it obviously does if youve read or tested anything

Social's correlations with Google rankings vary by niche. I have measured its effects very carefully for over two years now. I also have the benefit of having access to over 150 million facebook fans.

So FIRST:

FB likes DO NOT HELP with Google rankings. Buying likes for SEO is a mistake. Don't tell me they do because I have tested it 28 different ways with 150M fans and no... all tests confirm it doesn't directly influence rankings like backlinks do. That is not a thing.

I know people are saying well... Your fans can share the links and that builds page rank... Let me burst your bubble... unless your website is about edgy clickbait your posts about Ductless AC are not going to generate links from social sharing. That's not how social is used.

There are a ton of AWESOME reasons to use social but SEO isn't one of them today.

Integrating with social platforms does correlate strongly for some of my e-com categories but not for others. I don't know exactly why or what triggers the correlation but I suspect it might have something to do with either the amount of affiliate activity in the results and/or qualifying LSI terms to the query i.e. I search Gift Baskets but google often gets "best gift baskets" so they get treated the same and the "best" qualifier deserves "ratings, reviews, and social buzz"...

We know that successful brands are largely managed on social platforms so the correlation is very real but might not be causal and Gift Basket brands simply use social more than Ductless AC brands.

So two years of research later my advice to you is:

[ THE YES ]

YES do implement social on your website for likes and sharing.
YES do claim our brands on all 3rd party social or web 2.0 properties.
YES do fill out all your profiles and properly link your website to your social accounts.
YES do engage in conversations and share news with your audiences.
NO do not buy likes for SEO. Won't work.
YES do experiment with FB sponsored stories as an alternative to AdWords. (Best reason to use FB IMO)

The main reason is that an engaged audience will generally be more open to coming back. When people keep coming back THEN google probably notices and cares.

[ and THE NO ]

If you are hoping it will be a quick fix for your SEO then NO don't do it. A bunch of inactive social ghost town pages aren't going to make you look good and there are better ways to get 35 links that will work for you. There are simply better uses of your time if you are looking for quick fixes.

I see this question a lot. From my experience and this is my opinion based on my sites and research, Social Media does help with Rankings ONLY if there is traffic coming through them to your site. In google analytic, you see the amount of traffic coming from each SM such as Pinterst, Twitter, FB, instagram ETC. If you have a good amount of traffic that is consistent coming through all SM and the time on page is high from this traffic, I notice my rankings will go up(not incredibly high). But understand it takes time before SM brings any kind of consistent traffic(build trust)

Retweets and Favorits and likes and so on do not do anything to SEO rankings in my research which makes sense, because those can easily get manipulated.

At then end of the day, you need a variety of different traffic source and links to do well in SEO nowadays if you want long term success.