Connecting the Social Web and Your Business

A very specific - but too often overlooked - aspect of social media-based marketing is integrating the social Web with your online (and by extension, offline) marketing conversion process. Creating an online presence is a 'Step 1/Must Have' for most businesses now, and right behind that is carving out a space in the social outpost for brands, products, and services whose customers and business objectives indicate a social presence. For the record, I'd argue that this means 'most, if not all.'

The missing step? Connecting the two. It sounds simple enough, but consider the marketing context: for many marketers, individual marketing channels are often treated as standalones, with an overall level of coordination (only) around the message and objectives. This is a hold-over practice that grew out of traditional media planning and creative, and it makes sense from efficiency and overall awareness campaign management points of view. However, from the vantage point of those learning about your product or service through collaborative interaction on the social Web, the experience is obviously much less compartmentalized.

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