User blog comment:Brandon Rhea/Why Social Media is Important For Communities/@comment-5083036-20160602204245/@comment-20644-20160603005411

I never said you needed it to be successful. It's a great tool for growing your audience, but it's not the only tool. It's one way to help bring more people to your community and engage with people who may be interested in your topic. It's certainly not going to bring in a RuneScape-level audience, though, but you also won't see me suggesting it will. So the idea that I'm somehow suggesting that quality be sacrificed in order to get traffic through tweeting is unfounded.

If a community doesn't want to have a social media presence, that's certainly up to them. I think they're missing out on a great form of engagement that can help grow the site even more, but each community has to make that decision on their own.