• by Amit Avner , Op-Ed Contributor, February 22, 2012

For social media advertising to become truly integrated and a powerful part of marketers’ successes, it’s time to move beyond limited “social campaigns.”

Many marketers are still pondering how they can create and implement impactful social media campaigns. Yet, campaigns alone aren’t social’s “secret sauce” for marketers. Social will reveal its true marketing power as marketers begin integrating social data into their campaigns -- and targeting campaigns and audiences based on social signals and intent.

Current social buying uses social to execute “traditional” media buys. It underutilizes available data by relying on static interests -- pre-defined audience assumptions -- rather than by addressing the new paradigm of fast-evolving social interactions.

Conversely, the new social buying will fully utilize social for agile campaigns by understanding, reacting and building on trending conversations. For example, the Super Bowl is going to be a major topic of social media buzz for the next couple of weeks.  But of the thousands of Super Bowl-related conversations, which will be the ones that attract your particular target audience members? They may actually be hanging out in the most unexpected places. 

Further, the new social buying will use social data beyond existing networks -- by leveraging social interests into traditional display and search campaigns.

The impact of the new social buying will be:

·  Improved ROI of social campaigns as measured by traditional metrics

·  A new understanding of social’s impact beyond “traditional” social media buys

·  The potential for greater brand agility, even when dealing with large-scale media buys.

With seemingly every Web site, app and other online vehicle now part of the evolving social network, the conversation is no longer limited to just Facebook pages and Tweets.  So why limit your social advertising?