OK, so you’ve identified your relevant social media channels and now have several  outposts within social media.   Your initiatives have proven successful at generating awareness, engaging in conversations and acquiring new relationships.  The next logical step becomes how to evolve and connect these various pieces of your social media puzzle so that the whole becomes greater than the sum of the individual parts.

You may also be interested in creating paths where light touch consumer engagement can migrate into deeper relationships, in an atmosphere that the brand owns and controls.   (See interesting advertising agency executive roundtable discussion on this very topic at Beet.TV)

Integration can have many definitions; and it’s not until you take that deep dive
that you start to achieve the ultimate end goal – improved marketing efficiency.  For example, am I using an integrated approach to social media if I create a brand site that links off to my Facebook, Twitter and YouTube channels?  Short answer – no, you’re not.

To illustrate several potential integration opportunities we’ve broken the puzzle into 4 main pieces which move from light to heavy engagement:

• Social Media Channels (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.)
• Brand Website or Microsites
• Customer Community or Blog (established in this example as the hub of social )
• CRM Database

Integration Opportunity #1

Customer Community or Blog with CRM – connecting consumer registration data from a customer community with a proprietary CRM database.

Getting Started – Customer data submitted in a community gets securely transferred to brand’s proprietary database.
Up a notch – Consumer behavior and interests within community get transferred to brand’s proprietary database.

Integration Opportunity #2

Customer Community or Blog with Brand Website – passing blog posts or user-generated content to a brand website

Getting Started – Enable one dataset of community content to dynamically flow into one area of brand site.
Up a notch – Enable multiple datasets into multiple areas of brand site.

Integration Opportunity #3

Social Media Channels with Customer Community or Blog (two way) -  passing content dynamically between channels and creating paths for consumers to reach deeper engagement platforms

Getting Started – Utilize xml feeds or social network apis to syndicate content between your platforms.
Up a notch – Utilize Facebook Connect to lower the barrier of engagement.

Unfortunately, there’s no ‘one size fits all’ scenario and every brand will have different business objectives, hopefully working through these opportunities will assist in identifying a logical starting point.  If a brand marketer was able to achieve all three of these opportunities you’d end up with an ecosystem that looks like this:

The roadblocks to achieving an integrated strategy are many; first and foremost it’s difficult because it often involves achieving consensus between parties or corporate functions.   Additional roadblocks could include technology platforms, agency opinions and AOR obligations, and corporate structure.  At the end of the day it takes conviction, hard word and leadership but hey, nobody said innovation and competitive advantage come easy.