Social media integration at its core

“The organisation of the constituent elements of the personality into a coordinated, harmonious whole.”

The world today sees the word “advertising” and understands it as a form of marketing to mass or niche audiences. However, what they don’t see from the outside is the level of integration that is required across the various disciplines within the advertising industry. Namely but not limited to are:

• Social media
• Radio
• Print
• Broadcast
• Public relations

Based on the above, social media was recently introduced within the marketing function as a new innovative tool which started out as an online peer sharing platform. The offering then skyrocketed in popularity and is now offered to the corporate world as a marketing tool must-have. Social media alone has the potential to reach around 34 million consumers – this is based on a split across the social media platforms available.

Audience engage immediately

To put this into perspective, let’s say a brand makes use of an Out of Home billboard to create awareness around a new product. How does one accurately track the number of cars driving past, let alone the number of eyes that actually viewed the board? Now the difference here is that social media allows for an accurate tracking of the number of people reached. The additional beauty of social media also allows consumers to engage with the brand almost immediately, making it one heck of an effective form of symmetrical communication.

To explain further, let’s say a radio campaign has gone live and you only caught just a bit of the main message. You caught which brand it was, but want to understand more. Given the current usage of social media, I can assure you that 80% of people would actively go to the brand’s social media page or ultimately the website to find the information they are looking for.

This exercise demonstrates how pivotal the role of social media is. My take on social media? Watch this space, it’s going to get a whole lot more disruptive…