Although social technologies have been capturing marketers time for over four+ years in corporate, they’ve often been operated in a silo as experimental, or a separate deployment from traditional marketing. Yet the savvy marketing leader knows that reaching customers is increasingly becoming challenging as their touchpoints continue to fragment.

To reach the fragmented customer, marketers must apply an integrated approach. As an industry, we should dispel notions that social marketing and it’s subsequent tools should operate in a silo, but instead sit horizontally in the marketing organization as they impact so many different forms of marketing tactics, approaches, and mindsets.

The full article walks through the marketing tactic, why it’s important and the opportunities of social technology. It continues then with a series of recommendations around shattering the silo and integrate social across all marketing efforts now:

• Start by organizing your company in a Hub and Spoke, Dandelion, or Centralized model
• Cascade training and encourage sharing to reduce risk and decrease time to market
• Require marketing plans to consider a social technology integration –not be a last minute addition

Read the full article here.

 What are the major stumbling blocks in most organizations for fully utilizing social networking in their marketing plans? What are some easy steps that can be taken that would have an immediate impact?