Everybody is on social media. Our friends, our grandparents even our pets have something to say about being part of the amazing network that exists nowadays. So, if anyone is on social media, brands have made a statement and have been working to be in the center of this dialogue all the time.

In Portugal, the top second-screen activities are being on a social network (43% of the population) just below chatting with friends (32% of the Portuguese population).*

So if brands want to be on top of mind they can (and should) be at your TV, your Desktop, your bus station and they must talk to you on social media because you’re going to notice them, even if you don’t want to.

Each piece is necessary.

Says Jon Loomer about an effective brand strategy and to create great content in every device that you choose for your brand. If we believe in that sentence (and I do) we should focus on a few points that can make any brand strategy coherent and effective and where social media can have a great impact.

What are the goals?

Another area to look at when creating an integrated marketing campaign is to identify the objectives. Creating goals will enable you to have a clear objective for a successful marketing campaign.

So, what are your goals? Create brand awareness? Reach a more targeted audience? Increase engagement? Generate leads?

When a brand has a clear goal and focuses on that it will help determine the “who, when, where, and how” for sharing content in order to have maximum reach and exposure. When objectives are defined the results will be better and measuring that will be great to know what worked and what didn’t.

Different targets, different social channels

When considering the target audience, the brand must be aware that different social media channels tend to attract a different people. So if you target your efforts to the social media channels that align best with your existing marketing strategy, the results will be better. Brands must have deep knowledge about its target, to make sure there is no waste of time or resources creating and promoting social media content on a channel that does not reach its intended audience.

Social customer care is a new tool

If a brand has various social channels like Facebook, Instagram, etc., it should also be using those touch points for customer service.. Nowadays, a brand has different ways to amplify its customer service: when a customer posts a comment, good or bad, the world can see it. They can also see how the company responds — if the company responds at all. It is extremely important to have a voice that cares about the community and not only about the likes and reach.

Work on good content

Scroll down is the new way to be in the real world. So if a brand has great content people will stop and work with it. Content should therefore be relevant and on a similar tone to other channels where the brand interacts. Brands could be more informal on social media, for sure. But they shouldn’t be bipolar.

Uniform message across channels

Consistency is essential to the success of business strategies. So, brands have to make sure that content and message are aligned, or are consistent with all channels of communication.
When a brand develops a piece of content — a blog post, a video, an article — it should ensure that it can be used across every media. Nevertheless, the brand should adapt it to each media where it’ll be used according to its nature. For example, if a brand has an interview it can be used on a newsletter; on Linkedin — with a little excerpt; make a post on Facebook with a specific sentence from the interview and some photos.
This sort of integrated marketing strategy can be extremely effective.

Trust in (an) agency expertise

Many companies outsource social media to multiple agencies. One for the content, another one for the media and sometimes another one for the daily management. This kind of structure affects the integration of social media in broader strategies negatively, because it’s harder for the agency to have a clear overview of your marketing efforts as a whole. This problem leads some companies to move more social media activities in-house or get different partnership models with their agencies.

When brands build an integrated strategy— with all the channels being coherent — this ensures that the strategy follows closely the goals, news, and interests of the whole brand. So, the social media can have a voice on the strategy and can communicate with the audience making sure they talk about the latest trending topics as well as what people are talking about in social media. In the end, an integrated marketing strategy with social media on it develops a better engaging customer relationship which generates an effective marketing capital and a sustainable competitive edge.

Global Webindex, PORTUGAL: GWI MARKET REPORT Q2 2016.

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Monday is a Consultancy agency based in sunny Lisbon. We believe in the power of brands and we work side by side with our clients transforming their customer experience. This core philosophy stands at the center of everything we create. Clients include: Snickers, Red Bull, Twix, Philips, M&M’s, Guloso…