In our recent webinar, Social in Action: Streamline Your Social Content Marketing, ExactTarget Marketing Cloud's Global Social Media Manager, Dawn Devirgilio highlighted her alignment with our internal Content Marketing team. By collaborating with this team she has built synergies that help support her overall social strategy and continues to offer the most up-to-date content to her social audience. As she curates content, she aims to provide relevant material that will be most beneficial to the audience. Dawn has built out a calendar and plan around her social media efforts, which allows her to run meaningful campaigns with social through internal collaboration. As marketers, it is time to start thinking like a social media manager and begin incorporating social channels in our overall campaign planning as the social web continues to broaden.

As the social web continues to grow, the habits of consumers continue to change. According to Edison Research, "One in four social network users knowingly follow brands, products, or services on social networks. For those who use these sites and services several times per day, this figure increases to 43%." It is undeniable that consumers are turning to social media to connect with their favorite brands and is the responsibility of marketing teams to adjust to this evolution. By not incorporating social in our overall campaign planning we are missing an opportunity to connect with a highly engaged audience that already has an established relationship with your brand.

Campaigns are part of our DNA as marketers and can take on many different variations. Campaigns can incorporate multiple programs that host a number of tactics, which can produce a myriad of offers along the way. At the end of the day there are real life business objectives attached to campaign planning and learning how to incorporate social media can help us reach our marketing goals. We do not need to recreate the way we execute campaigns, but more importantly we need to make social media an integral part of our existing campaigns.

In order to get closer to our social customers we need to begin building out a content strategy much like Dawn and it begins with 4 Basic Steps:

Understanding the Changing Landscape
First, it is all about taking a step back and understanding how social media can enhance your overall campaign planning. While traditional tactics like direct mail, webinars, and event marketing remain relevant, it is about finding ways to next level the messaging with social.

Get to Know the Social Consumer
The social consumer is connected. They're all over the social web and that provides an excellent opportunity to bridge the gap with a new audience. Whether it is through listening, engaging, or publishing new content, the social web always provides an immediate opportunity to show consumers that you are interesting in dialog.

Create a Social Campaign
After we've done all the homework on the landscape and your potential audience it is time to launch the campaign. It is important to align social to the overall goals of your campaigns on the front end. We launch campaigns to generate leads, to acquire funding, to increase awareness, to increase sales, and to persuade. If done successfully your social efforts can generate an audience that matches the overall objectives of your campaign.

Make it Memorable
Finally, as brands all over the world are running thousands of campaigns simultaneously with each other is important to stand out from all the social clutter. Ultimately, for social to make its biggest impact in campaigns we need to be more relevant than our competition. Brands like Starbucks and Old Spice have both mastered incorporating social media in overall campaign planning and our great examples to follow.

Do you want more information and tips around how to incorporate social media in your overall marketing campaigns? Download 4 Basic Steps to Add Social Media to Successful Campaigns to learn how to add social media to create successful campaigns.